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ZooeyModerator
Required to miss a minimum of 4 games.
Over to you, AD.
ZooeyModerator“A lot of times they get the ball out quick.”
This is the blueprint for the Rams. Shula better find a response.
ZooeyModerator4th down qb-sneak: “It was a bad call. It was a bad call by me. … I’m sick right now because I put our players in a shitty spot, and I’ve got to live with that.”
I dont usually question playcalls, but that call did seem kinda 50/50 to me. The Rams Oline is not the Eagles Oline. I dunno. Just seems like one would expect McVay to have something better than a 50/50 call. I mean, to me that was not ‘more likely than not’ to push the pile.
w
vYeah, there was no surprise when that play failed.
ZooeyModeratorPablo is just describing what you would predict would happen to sports
under capitalism. imhoAdjacent to that, I’ve been thinking that the NFL – in pursuit of more money – is risking the popularity of the sport. I am fairly certain that they have more standalone games this season than ever before. And I see a future in which Wednesday and Friday games become more common. And the networks will pay for that. Netflix is broadcasting football now fer crissakes.
But one of the drivers of football’s popularity is its comparative rarity in contrast to other sports which have games every day. Football will still draw more viewers because there are only 17 games per team, but if I can watch football practically every day, I’m just not going to. Maybe that’s not really that different from what exists, though, since there are currently a bunch of games I CAN’T watch because they’re concurrent. I don’t know. But it seems to me that they’re diluting the product, to say nothing of consumer fatigue at having to subscribe to multiple premium outlets in order to watch the games.
I just think that they may be milking the cash cow a little too hard.
ZooeyModeratorZooeyModerator@speed_kills@speedk1lls
He has. And so has Matt Lafluer, now Mike McDonald, and Nick Sirriani. Yet I keep seeing McVay is a better coach than any of them. McVay is a great coach but he’s not the best coach in football. You can’t be the best coach when you don’t beat the best coachesI have come to this conclusion myself.
Shanahan is now 12-7 against McVay, and several of those victories came with Shanahan managing lesser talent than the Rams had on the field. (And it would be 13-6, and the Rams would not have played the Bengals in the SB if Tartt hadn’t dropped the easiest interception in NFL history). If it happens once or twice…well, it happens.
But this is now a plot through line.
ZooeyModeratorMy biggest concern is Garrett. He was held out of practice for two weeks or more, I dunno. And he had a very unproductive night on limited snaps.
What’s the injury?
ZooeyModeratorBrock Purdy’s average throw went 4.4 yards downfield for #49ers.
And Shula better find an answer to that because that’s what opposing QBs are going to do all season long.
ZooeyModeratorThe Rams came out like it was a mid season game against the Falcons, or something, and the 49ers came out with the intensity of a playoff game.
Bosa abused McClendon, Stafford was doing his Drake Maye impression, and Myles Garrett is hampered by an injury of some kind.
I hope Landman is okay, and I hope the Rams take the Giants seriously.
September 10, 2026 at 5:09 pm in reply to: around the Rams — season previews coming out of the preseason #165995ZooeyModeratorI haven’t finished reading this article which appears to be excellent. It’s better on The Athletic site, if you can access it, because it has images there, including one that is interactive.
The Rams are historic Super Bowl favorites, but have they fixed their fatal flaw?
By Mike Sando
Sept. 10, 2026 2:30 am PDTThis is a story of how two flagship NFL franchises squandered MVP quarterback seasons through a special kind of systemic neglect that could haunt them in the future, Super Bowl expectations be damned.
It might yet become a story of redemption.
The Los Angeles Rams and Green Bay Packers know the agony of flying high with MVP quarterbacks, only to suffer special teams implosions in the biggest games, sabotaging legacies in the process.
Recent trades for superstar pass rushers Myles Garrett (Rams) and Micah Parsons (Packers) distract from a pointed question: What good is adding horsepower to the engine if the radiator empties onto the highway when the car climbs a steep grade?
Can the Super Bowl favorites fix their fatal flaw?
Mike Sando
In January 2022, MVP-to-be Aaron Rodgers watched his top-seeded Packers suffer a blocked field goal and a blocked punt, the latter returned for a San Francisco 49ers touchdown, during a 13-10 playoff loss at Lambeau Field.In Rodgers’ 2014 MVP season, Seattle burned the Packers for a touchdown on a fake field goal and recovered an onside kick late in the NFC Championship Game. Those plays doomed the Packers on a day Green Bay intercepted Russell Wilson four times.
Last season, Rams MVP-to-be Matthew Stafford suffered a similar fate across three games against the eventual Super Bowl champion Seahawks. The punt-return touchdown his Rams allowed while leading 30-14 in the fourth quarter sparked Seattle to a 38-37 victory in Week 16, costing L.A. the NFC West title and No. 1 seed. In the NFC title game a month later, the Rams muffed a punt, leading to a Seahawks touchdown on the next play as Seattle advanced to the Super Bowl.
These were not isolated failures.
The Rams’ and Packers’ head coaches, Sean McVay and Matt LaFleur, have combined to employ 10 special teams coordinators, including Ben Kotwica’s interim stint with the Rams last season, during otherwise successful tenures. They have new coordinators again entering 2026, along with new hopes. But it’s clear the surface-level treatment of NFL special teams failures — fire the coordinator, hire a new one, act like everything will be fine, then repeat — cannot mask systemic problems.
And so, for the past six months, I’ve asked dozens of special teams coaches, head coaches, coordinators and front-office executives what really matters when analyzing the phase of the game that few truly understand and some head coaches treat as a necessary evil.
Their answers kept returning to decisions made long before kickoff: how much practice and meeting time the head coach commits to special teams, which players claim the final spots on 53-man rosters and which players are active on game day.
These decisions could determine whether McVay’s Rams, among the 10 strongest preseason Super Bowl favorites of the past 15 seasons, deliver on preseason expectations.
It’s late July, and the Rams are finishing practice at Loyola Marymount University when McVay strides over to check out the special teams commitment presentation I’ve prepared after all those conversations dating to the NFL combine.
The presentation begins by framing the Rams’ acquisition of Garrett as a reaction to their meltdowns against Seattle, and watching their division rival win the Super Bowl.
PowerPoint slides show the six special teams coordinators McVay has employed, each stacking over the other, from the venerable John “Bones” Fassel, who let his contract expire so he could coach in Dallas, through the latest hire, Bubba Ventrone.
“I miss him,” McVay says as Fassel’s face flashes onto the screen.
Joe DeCamillis’ face appears. He left the Rams after the 2022 season, taking a job in college because, as he said at the time, “I was just feeling like I wanted to get back with somebody that emphasized special teams.”
“Joe was good, too,” McVay says.
Next comes a look at those three Rams games against Seattle last season. The numbers tell McVay what he already feels. His offense and defense outplayed Seattle by more than three touchdowns (+23.7 expected points), but his special teams gave all of it back (-23.6, the seventh-worst differential out of 1,415 multigame season series this century, per TruMedia).
By this point, McVay has seen stark visual evidence as well: spider charts showing his 2025 team lagging far behind NFL norms in game day roster commitment on special teams, as measured by five categories:
• Core special teamers: Players whose primary role was special teams
• Depth ST rate: Rate at which depth spots were used primarily on special teams
• Depth ST degree: Degree to which depth players played special teams over offense/defense
• Low-use players: Players who were active on game day but played few snaps in any phase
• Starter relief: Starters on offense/defense who played regularly on special teamsA screengrab of a presentation shown to Sean McVay this offseason, illustrating how the Rams’ commitment to special teams lagged well behind the league average in several categories in 2025.Mike Sando / The Athletic
“We need to f—ing coach and play better, and it needs to be more important to me,” McVay says, “so I agree with everything you are saying.”The tension reaches into McVay’s football lineage. His grandfather, John McVay, was a 49ers executive during the Bill Walsh years and beyond.
“Who leads the NFL in punt-return average?” Walsh would ask back then. “OK, it’s so-and-so at 13 yards. Who is last in the NFL? OK, it’s so-and-so at 7 yards.”
Walsh would pause for effect and say, “I’ve got a lot of plays that can get 6 yards.”
Great organizations could build dynasties more easily before free agency and the salary cap evened the playing field starting in 1993. There was less need to win in the margins of special teams when Joe Montana was handing off to Roger Craig or throwing to Jerry Rice (those 49ers teams also had Hall of Famers on defense, led by Ronnie Lott).
These are different times, especially with the NFL introducing the “dynamic kickoff” ahead of the 2024 season.
“Special teams wasn’t as important to me as offense and defense,” McVay said, “but now, I think it is more important because there are more action plays. You are covering more kicks, you are returning more kicks, and when the ball is on the 30-yard line, or a touchback goes to the 35, you are really one first down away from being in four-down territory.”
McVay has moved up special teams periods toward the start of practice. That’s progress from August 2025, when McVay’s Rams held a joint practice with the New Orleans Saints and there wasn’t a single special teams period on the schedule.
“Mind-boggling,” a special teams coordinator from an AFC team said. “Like, how is that even a thing?”
McVay and his Saints counterpart, Kellen Moore, built their reputations as offensive play callers. Neither employed established, empowered special teams coaches, who would have pushed back against being marginalized in that way.
The implications reverberated for the Rams, even in less obvious ways. The Saints’ orientation toward offense made it easier for them to trade Rashid Shaheed to the Seahawks at the November deadline. That move, more than any other in-season trade, altered the NFL landscape.
While the Saints were subtracting a one-dimensional speed receiver with modest offensive numbers, the Seahawks were adding a game-changing return specialist. Shaheed’s 58-yard punt return for a touchdown against the Rams in Week 16 helped Seattle take away home-field advantage.
“I told my guys in the special teams room, this play won Seattle the Super Bowl, even though it was a regular-season game,” another special teams coach said. “This changed the course of this game, which gave them home-field advantage in the NFC. That game was over. (The Seahawks) had no morale.”
This offseason, days before the Rams rocked the NFL by acquiring Garrett, Seattle quietly traded for Irv Charles, a special teams gunner from the New York Jets. “He’s just a monster special teams player,” general manager John Schneider said of Charles last month.
Matt LaFleur is back in his office at Lambeau Field following an offseason practice, worlds away from McVay, his former boss.
Beyond the obvious differences — Green Bay has fewer residents (106,675) than 37 Los Angeles suburbs — there are structural considerations.
While the Rams’ owner, Stan Kroenke, is adding MLB’s Los Angeles Angels to a stable of sports franchises that already includes the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche, the Packers continue to operate in a time warp. As a publicly owned team, their operating structure is firm. The general manager picks the players. The coaches coach them.
GM Brian Gutekunst has evolved Green Bay’s operation from the rigid draft-and-develop philosophy his predecessor, Ted Thompson, rarely strayed from while winning one Super Bowl but not reaching another from 2005 to ’17. Still, the subject of special teams remains a sensitive one in Green Bay after years of failures that predate LaFleur and short-circuited his best shot at a championship five years ago.
Deep into the same presentation I showed McVay, LaFleur encounters a visual so stark that there is no mistaking the implications. It’s a scatter chart comparing special teams commitment to performance in the core-four phases — kickoff, kick return, punt and punt return — from 2013 to ’25. A lonely Packers logo resides in the lower-left quadrant, far away from all others.
A screengrab of a presentation shown to coach Matt LaFleur during the offseason, illustrating how much less the Packers have invested in special teams than the rest of the NFL since 2013. The Packers’ logo is circled in red in the lower left quadrant, signifying weak commitment and weak performance, near the 25th percentile in both categories, while most NFL teams are bunched closer to the center.
LaFleur winces, until learning the Packers were a respectable 16th in core-four performance (as measured by Expected Points Added) last season. They ranked 28th in game day roster commitment.
“I felt like our kickoff coverage unit was solid, our punt team was pretty good,” LaFleur says. “We needed a punt returner and got one (Skyy Moore).”
Rich Bisaccia, the Packers’ special teams coordinator from 2022 to ’25, left Green Bay for Clemson in February, instead of coaching the final year of his contract. He came to the Packers for a chance to win with Rodgers, and because his good friend, Joe Barry, was the defensive coordinator. Bisaccia had worked with Gutekunst’s father, another plus. And he did make headway in Green Bay, as the team added Rudy Ford, Keisean Nixon, Dallin Leavitt, Eric Wilson and other special teamers.
“I’ll say this about Rich,” a coach from another team said. “He got something done up there that hadn’t really happened. He had dedicated teamers.”
Bisaccia’s successor, Cam Achord, came up under Bill Belichick with the New England Patriots, same as Ventrone, the Rams’ new special teams coordinator.
Belichick valued the third phase so much that he let his coordinator pick two or three players (beyond the kicker, punter and snapper) to keep during roster cutdowns. Larry Izzo, Matthew Slater and Nate Ebner were among the mainstays, rarely playing on offense or defense.
The Patriots ranked No. 1 in core-four EPA across Tom Brady’s tenure (2000-19), counting playoffs. The Packers ranked 32nd over Rodgers’ career in Green Bay (2005-22).
This year, Green Bay kept a few core special teamers — without obvious paths to playing time on offense or defense — on the 53-man roster. Moore, a backup at slot receiver, can handle both punt and kickoff returns. Receiver Bo Melton and linebacker Nick Niemann are among those who might not have made the cut under Thompson.
LaFleur, for his part, seems most excited about what the 39-year-old Achord offers schematically in this new era of the dynamic kickoff.
“Cam is always looking for an edge in terms of schematics, studying other people, trying to think outside the box to put us in the best possible situation,” LaFleur said.
Green Bay averaged 32.7 yards per kick return and scored on an 81-yard punt return during preseason, for whatever that is worth.
Field goal kicking, which the model treats separately from core four because it is harder for coaches to influence, was the Packers’ primary special teams issue in 2025. Rookie kicker Trey Smack made all nine tries this preseason, including from 51, 58 and 59 yards.
Mike McCarthy lived the Green Bay special teams experience as head coach from 2006 to ’18 before spending five seasons in the same role with the Dallas Cowboys.
Green Bay was 32nd in commitment and 29th in performance during his final six seasons with the team (data exists since 2013).
Dallas was second and ninth, respectively, with McCarthy from 2020 to ’24 (Fassel was his special teams coordinator).
Same coach, different franchise, totally different commitment footprint.
Not that game day roster commitment by itself guarantees anything. It can be an indicator, but players matter. Coaching matters. Practice time matters. Achord’s 2020 Patriots ranked 32nd in game day roster commitment but first in performance, with an outstanding punter and elite special teamers in Slater, Justin Bethel and Cody Davis (who combined for eight snaps on offense and defense all season).
In the end, there is no fooling the locker room. Players know how much special teams matters, so when the Packers cut third-phase mainstays back in the day — think Chris Banjo, who went on to flourish with New Orleans after his 2016 departure from the Packers and is now the Jets’ coordinator — those moves spoke for themselves.
“Organizational philosophy is the No. 1 thing,” a veteran special teams coach with no ties to the Packers said. “New England, back when they were amazing, their organizational philosophy was that the backup players were going to dress because of their ability on special teams.
“If they had to play offense or defense, they had to try to get (the team) out of that game, and they would worry about fixing it the next week.”
Coaching trees matter. Bill Parcells proteges such as Belichick, Sean Payton and Dan Campbell tend to emphasize special teams. Walsh obviously felt another way.
It’s an open secret in the NFL that special teams coaches from the Kyle Shanahan tree have to fight for every minute of practice time they can get.
But with Brant Boyer taking over the 49ers’ units last season after a nine-year run with the Jets, San Francisco surged to 13th in commitment and seventh in performance (the 49ers were 20th and 30th, respectively, over Shanahan’s tenure previously).
New kicker Eddy Piñeiro solved a major problem by making 28 of 29 tries.
Under McVay, the Rams’ game day commitment remained high for six consecutive seasons before cratering after DeCamillis’ departure. A top-heavy roster had something to do with the dip. Using later-round picks to fill holes on offense and defense, with less regard for special teams, was another factor after the Rams traded away first-round picks.
Like the Packers, the 2025 Rams were on the high end with nearly three starters per game logging heavy snaps on special teams.
But this is a new year, with new tools to separate teams that care about special teams from those who merely say they do.
“I promise you, getting Bubba Ventrone, getting (special teams assistant) Kyle Hoke, getting (linebacker/special teamer) Grant Stuard, signing (snapper) Joe Cardona, having more intentionality about the importance of it — we’ll be better on teams,” McVay said. “I’m f—ing committed to that.”
Mike Sando joined The Athletic in 2019 as an NFL senior writer after 12 years with ESPN. He is a selector for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, an officer for the Pro Football Writers of America and has covered every non-pandemic Super Bowl since the 1998 season.
September 10, 2026 at 12:29 pm in reply to: comics, jokes, one-shot memes, funny tweets, etc. #165987ZooeyModerator
ZooeyModeratorwhich says to me that if the rams lose they will have lost to a niner team at their lowest ability to perform vs the rams’ highest ability to perform. so the worst possible outcome for the rams.
That seems right to me.
I don’t think I’m going to take any Rams setback/loss well this season. I need the win tonight to start my season right.
ZooeyModeratorI have to say, i was unable to root for the Patriots. I just couldnt do it.
Darnold has what, some sort of bad hip-bruise? Not a great start for QBs.
w
vI was conflicted. I picked Seattle to win in my Confidence Pool, but I wanted them to lose. This is the same problem I had with fantasy football.
After one game, I have to say that the confidence pool is an interesting place. I picked Seattle to win, got it right, and I’m in 22nd place. 3 people gave the outcome of this game their highest confidence, so they all got 16 points. I had it 8th, so I’m 8 points behind already. 1 person is 32 points behind because she ranked her highest confidence of all of Week One as the Patriots beating Seattle. I picked the Chargers over Arizona as my highest confidence, and I’m baffled by anyone placing the SEA/NE game as their highest confidence of the week, regardless of which team they chose.
Anyway. We shall see how the Patriots’ season unfolds. How long will AJ Brown be out? How come Romeo Doubs was invisible?
BTW, I’m pretty sure Darnold took a dive, just so he won’t have to face the Rams in week 16.
ZooeyModeratorhttps://www.instagram.com/reel/Dcwhz0vo5hg/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&stkn=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Can’t find this one on youtube, or anywhere else. It’s the latest in the Hitler Bunker riff.
ZooeyModeratorI’ve seen all of it except for the 3rd quarter, and Drake Maye has made some bad, bad throws. Like…this guy was considered the MVP by 49.9% of the country last season?
The Seahawks have just turned this whole thing around, and they look like they’re going to wipe the Pats out here in the 4th.
ZooeyModeratorThe Niners have now adjusted to a different time zone where the game is played at 10am. Not the time their body is trained to perform
I’ve seen this observation made multiple places.
The body isn’t “trained” to perform at certain times. This is just one of those things people say that sounds kind of plausible.
The NFL has early starts, late starts, and very late starts, and every team experiences those different start times. And it just doesn’t matter.
On the west coast, the early kickoff time is 10:00am. The Australian game kicks off at 10:35am local time.
It’s not the kickoff time, or the time zone that is going to affect this game. IMO the 9ers’ problem is that they probably had some less-than-100% film sessions, meetings, and practices because of jet lag. And I’m not sure how big of a deal that’s going to be. Like I’ve said, I think it’s Advantage Rams, but I don’t know how big of an advantage it is. It’s probably not as important as the fact that the Rams are just a vastly superior team.
ZooeyModeratorZooeyModeratorThis is why the Rams have chosen this strategy. It makes total sense.
Yep. Cowherd compared the Rams today to the Bellichek Patriots. Constantly relevant. Let players go a year early. And… the trip to Australia…he says it’s a “Seal Force 6” move. Get in there. Execute the mission. Get out.
ZooeyModeratorhttps://www.instagram.com/reel/DYpv5HHyqFl/?stkn=MTg0cXpnMXYxdGZpeg==
Why isn’t the Embedding working? I looked up how to embed Instagram, and it shows that ya just paste the link, and it seemed to work in 2014.
ZooeyModeratorNick Wagoner@nwagoner
#49ers DT Alfred Collins tore his patella tendon in practice yesterday. He’s out for the season.See?
If Shanahan had waited, the 49ers would have been on a plane like the Rams, and this guy wouldn’t have been practicing.
ZooeyModeratorOn the flight, I think it makes a big difference if you’re sitting in traditionally, cramped, economy, class or in the upgraded business and first class seating the team will be on for their charter plane. Room to move around and stretch. Periodically is big.
I read somewhere – maybe on this board, maybe not – that the Rams are flying on a double decker Airbus with several private rooms. Like… they all have bedrooms on the plane. Plus there is undoubtedly at least one lounge area. They’re on a flying cruise ship. They will be fine.
ZooeyModeratorBullshit. Terrible decision.
Throw caution to the winds.
z
dZooeyModeratorhttps://www.instagram.com/reel/Dcwhz0vo5hg/?stkn=YjhoMHc2NTQ2cjJh
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This reply was modified 5 days, 21 hours ago by
Zooey.
ZooeyModeratorAccording to Neil de Grasse Tyson, Thursday at 5:35pm AND simultaneously at 10:35am on Friday, heads will roll.
ZooeyModeratorLos Angeles Rams: Rams will break NFL’s sack record
The Rams will have the only defensive line in NFL history with two players with 100 career sacks and a 20-sack season in Myles Garrett and Aaron Donald. Garrett just set the single-season sack record with 23 last season with the Browns. So could this line break the 1984 Bears’ record of 72 sacks in a season? I think it has a chance, because in addition to Garrett and Donald, they feature two players who have topped seven sacks in each of their three seasons in Kobie Turner and Byron Young. Josaiah Stewart and Braden Fiske should chip in, too. Add in a secondary with two-time All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie and coveted players like Jaylen Watson, Quentin Lake and Kam Curl, and these guys can get to an average of 4.3 sacks per game with how many teams will have to answer their own high-powered offense that just led the NFL in scoring last season. — Nate Atkins
I was talking with my son today about this prediction.
4.3 sacks per game is a lot.
The defense-and the DL in particular-is the principle storyline, at least early in the season.
ZooeyModeratorOkay, well the Hacksized version is Australia is really only 7 hours time difference, not 17. And London is an 8-hour difference, and McVay’s plan worked fine.
Is this a “how your body clock relates to daylight” thing v. “the actual hours as determined by a timer” thing?
I don’t know. I’m sure there are scientists who have studied jet lag, but they’re all liberals with a liberal agenda, so they are probably lying about their findings because they hate America. And no other countries have any scientists that study jet lag, or infectious diseases, or climate change, who could reinforce the findings. But I don’t know.
All I know – from my personal experience – is that the first time I travelled internationally (when I moved to England), I was whacked out for about 5 days, and every other time I’ve travelled, it’s been a quicker recovery. And I don’t think a 7 hour difference would really throw me off if I was an athlete who had to compete.
ZooeyModeratorOk, well tell your wife, she didnt dum it down nearly enough for me. I got lost in all that time-stuff.
What i want to know is: what did you see/do in Hawaii?
I always wanted to see the Pipeline. Sposed-to-be a beautiful wave.
w
vOkay, well the Hacksized version is Australia is really only 7 hours time difference, not 17. And London is an 8-hour difference, and McVay’s plan worked fine.
As for Hawaii, I already told you about the shark encounter.
The other thing I saw was a wedding. Which is why I was in Hawaii because there is no way I would have gone to Hawaii given a free choice.
Since we were going anyway, we decided to stretch out the thing to 10 or 11 days, and make the best of it. We were on Maui the entire time. We drove the “Road to Hana” on the eastern side of the island which is verdant whereas the rest of the island is more arid. That’s an all day trip, there and back, with several points of interest to visit along the way: waterfalls, a black sand beach, botanical gardens, and so on.
Otherwise, we largely “beach-hopped” and snorkeled along the west coast where we stayed the entire time.
Oh, we went to a luau a couple of days before the wedding (with the bride and her family, who are the reason we went at all). There was Hawaiian dancing and historical narrative (which neither entirely embraced nor entirely rejected the harsh facts of colonization). It’s allegedly the best one of several on Maui, but it was kind of a passionless event at which I felt it was painfully clear that all the Hawaiians involved were just doing their job. Given 24 hours in their control booth, I could have made their lighting 10 times better. They had the equipment, but didn’t put any creativity into it which is sorta inexcusable because they were grossing between $75,000 and $100,000 a night (depending on how many “comps” or discounts they were giving). The direction wasn’t very good, either.
I doubt that I will ever return to Hawaii. I would actually rather live there than be a tourist. I liked the vibe. The Aloha/Mahola energy is really nice. I don’t know about the big cities (Honolulu and Hilo), but on Maui, everybody was pretty relaxed. No anxious rat race energy. All kind of “easy come, easy go” “what’s mine is yours” kind of thing. I actually looked up the high school in Lahaina (which is the oldest high school west of the Mississippi River (1831), and which escaped the devastating fire there 3? years ago), and wondered about getting a teaching job there. I could do that for a year or two. But I have no interest in being a tourist in Hawaii again.
P.S. Go Rams! Got a big game coming up against the 9ers, I heard.
P.P.S. The pipeline is on the north coast, and it exists only in the Winter, so we didn’t go there.
ZooeyModeratorAntmanGee
AIN’T NO SUPER TEAMS
Yes, the Rams have 6 players ranked in the top 100, and 3 ranked in the top 10, but the following teams also have 6 players ranked in the top 100:
Denver Broncos 6
Detroit Lions 6
Philadelphia Eagles 6
And the these teams have 5 players ranked in the top 100:
SF 49er’s 5
Baltimore Ravens 5
Houston Texans 5
Carolina Panthers 5
The reality is every team is trying to position themselves to compete for the ultimate prize, and even with a loaded roster there are so many other variables that come into play in the pursuit of the Lombardi Trophy. Philly has 5 players in the TOP 50!! Plus, we still have to play the games!! Yes, we have Super Players, but not a Super Team!! But I love our chances…GO RAMS!!!
I appreciate the point, but this is a narrow way of looking at it. It kinda assumes that outside the top 100 players, all rosters are basically equal. And they’re not. It’s not how many players a team has in the top 100 – although that matters – it’s how good the entire team is. You have to take every player into account.
ZooeyModeratorI’m on McVay’s side.
The plane trip is brutal, and there’s no getting around that. But that’s why he’s getting there 24 hours early. Everyone gets a bit to recover, but stick to the PST rhythms. Play the game, and get out.
I think it would be harder to acclimatize to a wildly different time zone and body rhythm twice in 3 weeks than to stick to the schedule, and ignore the sun. It’s minimizing the adjustment. All you have to do is rest up mentally from a 16-hour flight, not totally readjust to a completely different sleep and eating cycle as well, and then do all that again.
Well, I’m on Shanahan’s side like any clear-thinking Ram fan would be.
I despise this whole Australia thing. Its ridiculous. Like, can you imagine any fan of any team clamoring for ‘more games in Australia’.
w
vHere is a way to look at this (courtesy my wife):
Everybody is framing this as a time difference of 17 hours (between PST and Aussie time). But as we all know, the world is round, and calendars and time zones are arbitrary. So while Australia is 17 hours ahead of us (California) on the worldwide, agreed-upon calendar, they could be seen as being 7 hours BEHIND us. Instead of seeing Melbourne as having its sunrise 17 hours before California, as far as the human body is concerned, it’s sunrise is 7 hours AFTER ours. So if you set the calendar date aside – and we are because we will be watching the game on Thursday even though it will literally be played on Friday – the time difference is actually LESS than the time difference between Los Angeles and London.
It strikes me that what the Rams could have done – similar to the way they stayed in the EST zone prior to their London trips – is flown to Hawaii a few days ago. The time difference is 3 hours between CA and HI, and having just returned from HI myself, I can attest that the adjustment was pretty minimal. That would have placed the Rams a mere 4 hours difference from Melbourne (or 20 hours if you wanna stick to the calendar – which, I think, emphasizes the absurdity of saying it’s 17 hours different from CA, as Hawaii would be FARTHER away from Melbourne than Los Angeles according to the current way of thinking about this).
When you consider this, it would be far WORSE for east coast teams to play in Australia even though they are “only 14 hours different” because it would 14 hours one way, and 10 hours the other. IOW, we will probably never see the Eagles or Jets play in Melbourne.
ZooeyModeratorSo….are we Patriot fans this week?
Is that what its come to.
Wed, Sept 9. Pats v Seattle
w
vSure. Ja. Ya’betcha.
But I took Seattle in my Confidence Pool which I’m already regretting having joined. As with Fantasy Football, this creates conflicts of interest, and I like my hope for a rival team’s demise to be pure, undistilled animosity.
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This reply was modified 5 days, 21 hours ago by
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