zn wrote:

% of 3rd down incompletions which were due to receiver error:

28% – Joe Burrow

27% – Kyler Murray

26% – Matthew Stafford

I just think that was a combination of things, all unique to 2023. Higbee and Kupp being beat up when they were on the field and not their normal selves. Nacua actually being a rookie in certain ways in spite of not really being one in other spectacular ways. Robinson not really playing till the 2nd half of the season. Atwell not really being a solid 3rd or 4th WR type.

Zooey wrote:

Well, alright. I see that, and I agree with it. She is not an academic voice. It’s armchair op-ed kind of stuff, and a careful, responsible voice wouldn’t use the term “dementia” without meaning dementia. You know, I think that if I was reading that with my teacher hat on, I would stop a student in their tracks right there, too.

Well that’s a good reply. And I think implicitly you’re suggesting you like that genre of political writing more than I do. Which is fair. I think in this discussion I got set off. Thinking about it, I sort of realized I got set off because of the stories from my wife’s work. Mixed in with all the normal “X patient did this or that” stories are the stories of uncomprehending kids of elderly patients who are awful to parents with dementia. They do awful things either because they are inconvenienced by it, or insist the parent has it when they don’t, or deny they have it when they do (there are also many stories that contain those 3 listed elements that are also not horrible at all).

And speaking of genres I don’t respond to that well, to be honest, when I read my own “got set off” writing, I kind of cringe a bit. It’s not that I need to be rational all the time…it’s that my more irrational moments, aren’t good ones in my own eyes. I read people all the time who are really good when they’re set off. My being set-off makes me think I crossed lines I actually respect.

from: https://www.turfshowtimes.com/2024/7/2/24190991/rams-offensive-line-rankings-brandon-thorn

The Los Angeles Rams have invested more capital into the interior of their offensive line than any other team in the NFL recently, so you would hope that they have a top-5 guard and center trio going into the 2024 season. According to Brandon Thorn, a respected expert on offensive line play and author of the Trench Warfare newsletter on Substack, that’s exactly what the Rams have now.
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On The Athletic Football podcast, Thorn was asked to give four teams who aren’t getting enough respect and his final answer was the L.A. Rams:

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“I think this offensive line could be very good and that’s the Rams, that really starts with the interior offensive line which has a care this year going in to be one of the five best interior lines in the league. There’s a little bit of projection there with Steve Avila moving to center but he played center more at TCU than left guard, so I think that shouldn’t be too difficult of a transition for him. Then you have one of the biggest centers in the NFL, which is kind of cool, especially for what they want to do.”

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Thorn then goes onto talk about Jonah Jackson as a good signing as long as he’s healthy, and Kevin Dotson, giving the Rams “the most physically imposing interior in the entire NFL in terms of run blocking and considering what McVay has morphed into with this duo lead run game, this could be a lot of fun this year.”

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He then calls Rob Havenstein “unspectacular, but solid” and says that while A.J. Jackson has questions in pass protection, but is a “powerful run blocker”.

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Thorn not only sees the Rams as having a good offensive line in its own right, but that McVay finally has the right pieces in place to do what he wants to do in the run game with Kyren Williams and Blake Corum. That’s what could make the Rams a very dangerous team in the NFC.

Zooey wrote:

I think there are signals that he is headed in that direction, and maybe that’s where we disagree

Yeah that is where we disagree.

For example about 40% of people will have some memory loss after they are 65, but only a minority of those are quickly moving toward severe impairment, let alone dementia. (And there are other sign of the severe stuff.) And that kind of memory loss does not mean that the person in question is suffering from an overall, general, simultaneous severe decline.

However, again, that isn’t in itself an argument to “vote for Biden.” Even if I wanted it to be. Someone can decide that their idea of a president is someone younger who does not have those kinds of ordinary geriatric psycholgy issues and therefore has a more compelling preseence.

I agree with the  “imperial murder machine” stuff. That’s been true for a couple of centuries. Though I have to admit, that kind of bumper sticker diction never works with me. It just sounds like the extreme right turned upside down. I prefer lucid analysis. And of course people know the president doesn’t really run the country, but then…everything the Supreme Court is doing illustrates the fact that presidents actually can actually can have profound effects on our own lives and history. It’s not a simple thing. Johnson did a lot of awful stuff but then Thurgood Marshall was a blessing. There was nothing fake about that and the results have often mattered…even if they are always very mixed results.

I was just arguing though with her statement that the current president has dementia–which she did flat say. In fact her whole statement depends on that. See the president really does have dementia and that just proves that the homogenous oligarchy runs it all. To me that (again) just sounds like a Maga argument, but upside down. (As Chomsky points out, the oligarchy is frequently divided against itself.) To me it’s just bumper sticker talk and again, I tend to avoid people who talk like that, it just just feels creepy as opposed to enlightening or useful. And that admittedly let alone obviously, is not an argument either–it’s just personal taste.

I prefer it when the left acts like a big alliance. And in the present they all to different degrees really do recognize that the post-war empire was not a gift to the world. She strikes me as being a purist type who is always deliberately and judgmentally driving people away for not being “party oriented” enough. What I’ve never seen from her is dialogue. That’s just personal taste too so I will hereafter just drop it. 😎 Let a thousand flowers bloom.

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Sorry about the piled up posts but I’m on my phone travelling and longer posts will  just disappear. I have to stick to mounted up short ones.

I’m no different than I was years ago in the Iraq War discussions. I read widely and I synthesize and I rarely read purely political commentators, who usually just strike me as corner-cutting flag wavers. The medical people I have been reading on geriatric psychology have shown me that many people mistake common geriatric issues like slower word searching (“that’s a…um…cat? lion? feline? Oh yeah…leopard!”) for general overall simultaneous total decline. And that assumption is just simply not valid.

You guys clearly aren’t real Rams fans. I’ll remember that when it’s time  to distribute the year-end bonuses.

from https://ramblinfan.com/posts/la-rams-running-back-kyren-williams-talks-2024-goals-with-rich-eisen-01j18x61ezza

Since hiring Coach Sean McVay, no other running back has averaged more yards per carry than Kyren Williams (5.0 ypc in 2023). While there is always room to improve, the real growth for his rushing production most likely lies in keeping him healthy and upright throughout the 2024 NFL season.