I flew into LA Friday morning, right over the Inglewood site, at about 8 am. There were about 20 huge earth movers all lined up, and just lurching into motion. Nothing but dirt. It looked all graded from the sky, but they are pushing dirt around still. They are not laying in any underground pipes or anything yet.

I can’t tell you how much Rams junk I saw. There were restaurants where every employee was wearing Rams T-shirts – and I mean Thai restaurants, and pizza places – not sports bars. Buses, metro, billboards, bus shelters. And loads of humans with Rams shirts and jerseys. The Dodgers are in the playoffs, but you wouldn’t know it. I am here to report that the “LA is apathetic about the NFL” theory is pure bunk. Rams old school, old colors, new school, new colors, logos from every era, the place is ablaze. There are even mixtures of the eras. Even in the stadium, you see the “new” logo of the grimacing Rams head in profile with white horns. There were a few Kings billboards, but I saw nothing of the Lakers, Clippers, or Dodgers. And, oh, I guess none of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, either, but no-one ever gave a fuck about them in the first place.

So I leave Hollywood Sunday morning to go pick up my rotten kid, and I can’t believe how many Bills fans I see. All over the metro, and even on his campus (apparently you can park in the university garages for $50 on game day, so it is spillover from the coliseum which is a stone’s throw from the campus). Significant number of them. And I was astonished because I didn’t know there were any Bills fans in Buffalo, let alone in LA. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a lot of Giants fans, or even Jets fans – LA and NY, you know…there’s bound to be a lot of people from each place that move to the other city. But Buffalo? I don’t remember ever meeting a real life Bills fan in my life before Sunday.

So we walk to the stadium and marvel at all the food vendors along the way (thank god there is no wall between America and Mexico, is all I can say). And it’s already getting kind of toasty outside.

The stadium appears empty. But it is pretty clear to me that it is empty because sitting in the direct sun all day is tough. My son and I sit in a small patch of shade until game time, and right around the anthem, the coliseum fills up with 90,000 fans.

I think most of the game observations I would make have already been made by other people, so I won’t repeat them here. One thing we did note that I haven’t seen mentioned by anyone is that Mike Thomas took a pop on a kick return. We were sitting four miles above the field, and we could hear it. Just a brutal shot. So we watch him get up and go to the sideline, and he clearly got clocked…and NOBODY goes over to him. He’s walking around kind of shaking things around to make sure they are still attached, and squatting, and standing back up and clutching his helmet, and spinning to his left, and shaking things…and nobody approaches him. My son and I were just beside ourselves, and threatening to go down to the field, and generally losing our minds. And Thomas tears off his helmet and squats, and wobbles to his feet, and finally somebody goes up to him (not a player) and talks to him for 10 seconds. And leaves. And Thomas wobbles around. And the Rams punt, and out goes Thomas on the field as a gunner. He gets ridden out of bounds easily, and I lost track of him after that. But I was pretty amazed by that. Honestly, it seemed criminally delinquent.

There were some drunken Bills fans immediately behind us, and I thought I was going to lose it during the first half. One of the guys was bragging incessantly about how well liked he is, and how women love him, and cussing this way and that, and yelling out that every penalty flag was for “grabbing the lineman’s penis,” and all this sort of crap. They left at halftime, and I noticed a number on the scoreboard to text in the even of abusive fans, but never used it because they never returned for the second half. The other Bills fans around me were all normal people, and friendly. It was a nice day except for the scoreboard.

Anyway, after the game we went to a restaurant, then back to my son’s dorm to pick up my stuff, and away to the metro. I plan for the metro to take about an hour, and that would get me to the airport about an hour before my flight. The recommendation is 90 minutes, but I know an hour is enough. But about 50 minutes into the metro trip, I realized I was cutting it close. From where I was, I knew I had about another 15 minutes on the metro followed by a wait for a shuttle bus (indeterminate time), and about a 15 minute shuttle to the airport after it arrives. I don’t like that, so I decided to get off and grab a taxi. There was only one taxi. So I grabbed it, and as I’m loading my stuff in, a couple of Bills fans approach, and ask if I’m going to LAX. So we split the ride. As we get close to LAX, their anxiety gets greater, and they ask how far it is, and so on. Just as they are getting anxious, I realize that I was right on my original calculation, and I had plenty of time before my flight. On the metro, I had a brainfart and had been thinking 8:00 when I really didn’t leave until 8:50. Then traffic jams up. And they let it out that their plane leaves in 40 minutes, and our poor Mexican taxi driver is listening to the Backstreet Boys Live pretty loudly, and even when they get him to turn it down, he doesn’t understand what they are saying really.

I am leaving Terminal One, as it happens, and I have an hour and a half before my plane leaves, and I can see my terminal. It’s 150 yards away, so 4 or 5 minutes, probably. They are leaving from Terminal 6, which is…like…a mile away, probably. And they start discussing getting out of the cab and running. And they are not getting any advice from Juan, who merely nods his head and says, “yes, okay” to every question they pose. So I try to tell them they don’t want to do that. He will get them there faster than they can run, and that they should wait. The delay is just a temporary knot of something, and as soon as he drops me off, he will pull away from the curb, and get past the knot and the pace will pick up. And these guys look like football fans from the northeast, btw. A man and a woman with significant love handles. They have no shot on foot. It’s a mile, and they have baggage. But they can’t take the pressure. As soon as we get near Terminal One, they bolt the car before I do. Juan yells at them, but off they go.

There is no WAY they made it on time. No way, whatsoever.

And I go in, check my bag, and head to security where I come to the crossroads monitored by some security woman. She looks at everybody’s boarding passes, and waves them to the left or right. She waves me to the left. It is a long, empty course that leads directly to a checkpoint whereas everyone else was in a queue that had to be 30 minutes long. I pass through security in a minute and a half, emerge on the other side, and learn my flight is delayed. And it gets a second delay. I end up with about an hour and a half of time to kill on the other side of security for all my pains to get there on time. Dunno what happened to the Bills fans, but my guess is their blood pressure was higher than mine by that point.

Anyway. Great weekend for me. I got some good stuff out of the conference, saw a play Saturday night, and got to hang with my kid at a Rams game. Great time. And he’s doing great. He was raving about his experience at university, and it looks like he is really settling in well, and embracing his privileged educational opportunity, so it’s all good.

Well, I dunno about Fisher. I do not buy the “5 years of crap” argument because he inherited a team with about 4 or 5 “real” players on it. They didn’t even have a single decent starting unit. So they have been building, and they have quite a few good players now. And the discipline is better. I am inclined to give Fisher a couple of years of time with Goff at QB. So I’m good with him up to the move.

I am less sure about Boras. Am I the first Boras Skeptic?

Something has to be done for Gurley. And the things that seem obvious to little old me are to run more of the Jet sweeps that worked last year, more Austin runs from the backfield, more screen passes (remember when we used to cry for how they threw too many of those? Now they never throw them), get Gurley out wide with pitchouts, run some draw plays with him, and – for the love of God – throw more slants across the middle! Those work a LOT. Do more of them. And where are the TEs? Kendrick pops up once in a while to great effect. Do Higbee or Hemingway have any receptions this year?

With no chart in front of me, seems like the Rams run up the gut, throw long passes horizontally that are short vertically, and once in a while throw a slant or deep ball. They NEED to find some other effective attack. Last year it seemed like their only effective attacks were Austin and Gurley. Seems like this year, they forgot they have Austin, and defenses just load up on Gurley.

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

So the next best thing is to return to Keynes.

This nation hasn’t left Keynes and that is the problem. Nearly $20 trillion in debt but to a Keynesian its all la la land.

Okay. Nobody here is going to take that comment seriously. I’m just saying.

I am the best pussy grabber. The best. No one is better. Believe me.

zn wrote:

sanbagger wrote:

I was wondering if they were going to make a move with Sens after he went from starter to not even activated.

You know, this is how bad they wanted to dump CS. It actually costs the Rams cap space to cut him. No savings; they take a 650,000 hit.

..

I am not sorry the Sensabaugh era has ended.

He was not my favorite player.

Gattopardo. I like that word. If I were a novelist, I would write a book with a character named Gattopardo. Hillary Gattopardo. And I would have her run for president on the “most progressive” agenda of All-Time.

zn wrote:

You guys forget what the locker room and coaches said about Massey. Remember when they said he should spend more time with the playbook and less time reading The Bhagavad Gita?

So he was not without controversy.

Oh, come ON!

They say that about EVERY player.

I have to say, I totally buy his explanation for what he said about Donald. Donald was a rookie, and he was busy with his own coaching, and didn’t see Donald play. He liked his guy, and threw some off-the-cuff comment out there. This is not a thing. Thank god nobody records all the shit I say.

Eternal Ramnation wrote:

ESPN First Take

So what I’m hearing is some experts talk who don’t know much of anything about the Rams, or have any idea about how big of a rebuilding project they were, and what obstacles to improving they have faced, or any real idea of their potential.

Okay.

At least they speak with arrogant self-righteousness. That makes it edgy, and entertaining as hell.

Whatever. I don’t know that Donald needs (or even has room for) more motivation.