Forum Replies Created
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Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner?
I think I met him.
in Mombasa in a bar-room drinking gin?
Turns out he’s a Raiders fan btw.
Well first a board should have all sorts of views. It should range all over the opinion map. There should be surprising conversations that come from that interaction. No one should feel they have to apologize for a position they hold. Now, obviously, I think we all agree it can’t be personal, and posters shouldn’t be knocking each other…they shouldn’t be derisive and dismissive of other views. Humor helps lighten those things, and so does just ordinary respect.
But there should be lottsa views. My little motto is, I might disagree with a poster in one thread and at the same time agree in another. I try to act that way and I think pretty much everyone here does. The ideal is to be a community, and that includes no pressure to conform to some view of any particular thing: Bradford, Fisher, relocation.
Frankly I personally find both the major views completely understandable —both the view the losing is frustrating, AND the view that there are reasonable signs of optimism.
So that’s the board stuff. People should be themselves. What we hold out for is a day where we all agree because the results warrant it.
Now off of the Gettysburg Address part, and on to a minor disagreement:
The harping on Sam is weird. I have always liked Sam and feel he would make us better. But, a couple of problems with the blaming of all our problems on Sam: our record with him isn’t much better than with his backups.
I don;t think it;s just Bradford. They need a qb of at least Bradford’s caliber, a relatively healthy OL (not injury free, cause that;s unrealistic, but manageable), and a running threat. I’ve said all that before. A top defense would help of course and make it all easier. But it can even be upper-middling, and if they had the other things I list, it would work.
But what are the results when they HAVE had those things?
So far only 11 games in 3 years meet all 3 criteria.
And the results are:
they went 6-4-1. Across 16 games, if they had the same percentage (counting it as 6.5 wins), that’s 9-10 wins.
And that was against 6 top 10 defenses. Actually 7 top 12 defenses in 11 games. It includes a 2-1-1 record against the NFC west. It includes being 4-2-1 on the road.
And that was before 2014, which is the 1st time in the Fisher years where they had more at WR than just Amendola and Gibson (and in 2013 they didn’t even have that).
So I think that there’s a core of possibilities there that count toward a winning team. And bear in mind, that group of 11 games didn’t have the WRs, didn’t have the potential top defense, and didn’t have the relatively more mature roster. So I think they can have a team that’s better than 9-10 wins, just with what they have as of today…assuming they can field a qb and fix the OL (and I don’t see fixing the OL as a challenge, if all they have to do is find a center and a guard).
It’s just not the kind of thing I, personally, give up on. And I didn’t feel that way with Linehan. I also didn’t feel that way with Spags, though I didn’t write Spags off…I thought 2011 was a uniquely bad injury hell compounded by other things like the lockout. I just understood it when Spags got replaced…I didn’t begrudge SK signing his guy after a losing season, regardless of the injuries. I feel the same way with Fisher I did with Martz, for different reasons–that is, I don’t feel it’s ideal. But I saw Martz’s plusses along with everything else, and I hung on with him same as I do with Fisher. (Vermeil I just always believed in.)
So anyway, yeah, I am okay with Fisher, because I believe (as I said) they demonstrated that if they have the 3 things they need, they can win.
But as they say, that’s me. It’s not even really all football based. I just tend to think in these terms. I tend to see something emerging through all the damage, rather than just seeing the damage. That’s neither a valid or invalid way of seeing, it’s just a predisposition I have (which is why for example I never gave up on our board, no matter what was happening with it, and I mean going back to 2005.)
Still, I didn’t feel there was anything there with Linehan that promised the possibility of winning, and I do with Fisher. So it’s not completely undiscriminating.
ZN has assured us that OL ain’t a hard fix.
Well, no…OLs ARE hard to fix.
Usually. What I said was that if Saffold returns, and they keep Barksdale, filling in a guard and a center are not hard to do. There are any number of ways to do it.
But in GENERAL yes an OL is hard to fix.
I was just saying that THIS PARTICULAR FIX (assuming all they need is a guard and a center) is not hard.
In terms of Saffold’s shoulder, all this came out last summer when he returned to the Rams after being rejected by Oakland. At the time the Rams said that as was, his shoulder condition was known and was fine. He did re-injure it, but that was not something predictable. In other words, it was not inevitable that he would suffer a collision or trauma that would re-injure it. As I said, that was all out there in the open last summer.
