PA Ram wrote:

For whatever reason, Chip Kelly just didn’t like Foles. Even when he had his great season his enthusiasm for Foles was lukewarm at best. I can recall Philly fans even questioning why Kelly did not embrace Foles more during that season.

This is just an observation and meaningless in the big scheme of things but obviously there was something Kelly saw that he didn’t like.

Having said that, I see no reason why Foles can’t be successful here but he needs all the pieces around him to do that. I don’t think he particularly trusts the line that’s in front of him right now and that’s going to take time. He obviously needs more time with the receivers. And the BIG key is he will absolutely need that running game to work. If that’s getting stuffed I don’t think he’ll look very good. He is not Peyton Manning. But he can be a winner.

On another note, I’ve been more impressed with Case Keenum than I thought I’d be. I think it was a smart move giving up a 7th rounder to get him. I think he can be a solid back-up.

And Mannion looks very promising.

Yeah, I have often thought the same thing.

And with all the internet resources, and intrepid posters we have around here, I have not seen anybody explain why Kelly didn’t like Foles. There is a reason. There is something Foles can’t do that Kelly places a premium on.

What is that?

I think we are for the first time able to foresee the time Fisher is on the hot seat.

Next season.

A lot of us are now voicing frustration that expected improvement is not manifesting. I’m guessing that that is happening with Rams fans out “there” as well (stadium issues aside).

A mediocre season this year leads to lost patience next year.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Carolina contacted the Rams to see what they want for Austin. I think there are teams that would give up a later round pick for him if the Rams were interested in selling. But I don’t think the Rams, at this point, have given up on him, so this ends up meaning nothing, imo.

bnw wrote:

Then why be against compensation to end the practice entirely while avoiding bloodshed?

Should the government compensate me if my cat runs away while I’m on vacation?

There are reasons both moral and practical. Forget the moral aspects for now. Let’s look at the practical. First of all, who would pay? Remember “the North” isn’t actually a legal thing. It’s either the Federal government, or a state government. It can’t be the Feds because that government is of the United States. And the slave hasn’t left one country for another; he/she has left one state for another. Which state pays? The border state through which the slave entered? The state where he went next? The state he went to after that?

Whose job is it to track down the escaped slaves? How do they determine their identity, and which southerner is entitled to compensation?

Who determines the compensation? Do we set up a depreciation table? You paid $800 for this slave, worked him for 12 years, and now he’s got a bad back from an injury, and a cataract in one eye. Do you get the full $800? What if the slave was born into slavery and not paid for at all?

What are you going to do about the black market that develops where unwanted slaves (old, unproductive, etc) are helped to “escape” so that the owner can get cash for them? What about the straight up fraud cases where purchase papers are falsified to show a greater amount was paid for a slave? Now you’ve developed a secondary market for humans in the south where unscrupulous men buy slaves just to “resell” them to the north for a quick profit.

I have a better idea.

No to slavery. No to racist policies.

If you buy a slave, you assume the risk. If the slave dies, the slave dies. If the slave runs away, the slave runs away.

It is the same thing with the split infinitive. It literally can’t be done in Latin since infinitives are a single word.

John Dryden was to blame for some bad theatre, too. A pox on Dryden, I say.

bnw wrote:

zn quote

“For example, I just posted something by a top, very cool historian who makes a good case debunking the idea that the civil war was about states rights, since one of the complaints from the leaders of the confederacy was that the federal government would not clamp down on states that ignored the fugitive slave act. They openly claimed that was a violation of federal law and that states did not have the right to do that.”

That is states rights. States rights per the US constitution ca. 1861. Slaves were property. The underground railroad dealt in stolen property. When the northern states refused to return the stolen property the compact was broken. Northern states aiding and abetting anti-slavery terrorists was a de-facto war against the south. Property rights then as now are guaranteed by the US constitution. If you see your stolen yankee car in my southern driveway and demand it be returned, and I say no, and my local law enforcement refuses to act other than to arrest anyone attempting to steal a car from my driveway, and your yankee financial judgement is not honored by my local and state authorities, what recourse do you have? It was always about states rights.

So….the secession wasn’t motivated by slavery.

It was motivated by states’ properties rights, and the only property rights in question were those pertaining to slaves. But it wasn’t about slavery. It was the principle of the thing.

I see.

Oh, god. Of course. It didn’t even occur to me it was a fetish. I didn’t know there were that many women. I thought it was 2 or 3. I haven’t followed the story.

Wow. Well, I am pretty lenient towards people’s fetishes, I guess, but I draw the line at non-consensual. If you want to tie her up, or fuck her toes, or whatever, it’s none of my business if she’s into it, too, but the second you start imposing yourself, man, that’s crap.

I can’t wrap my head around the act itself. I mean…I just can’t imagine thinking that drugging someone to make her unable to resist sex is a good idea. It is just not something I can conceive of doing. First of all, the sheer demeaning violence of the thing stuns me, but I also can’t see how it would even be satisfying to have sex with someone who is passed out. I couldn’t bring myself to do it even if we were headed that direction and she was consensual, and totally passed out all by herself with booze, or something. Even if she was my girlfriend. I just can’t wrap my head around it at all.

And I would have thought that sex would come pretty easily for a celebrity anyway. So I don’t understand that part of it, either.

Right.

And where are you going………….?

Seattle?

Interesting. I didn’t know any of that.

I had always assumed that the evangelicals were always right wing, but not politically galvanized.

The fundamentalist church I grew up in had an Us/Them mentality where we just assumed The World was an evil place doomed to hell, and we just minded our own business.

I don’t believe there is much “misguided” pride.

I’m pretty sure that is sophistry.

I’m pretty confident that nobody – NOBODY – is oblivious to the racist quality of that flag, even if they don’t endorse it whole-heartedly. I will allow that it is possible that some people care much more about the Southern Pride thing. But I do not believe that they are ignorant of how it offends descendants of slaves, and lots of other people, too.

The cynic in me wants to point out that they said the same thing last year about how scary they would be.

But I am fairly optimistic this year.

They do have the continuity of Williams at DC this year. There is a learning curve, both for the players, and for the coach. While the Giants game, in particular, was pretty disturbing, nevertheless the overall trends on defense were good as the season progressed.

Secondly, the Rams have a lot of youth. They were the youngest team in the NFL for two years in a row, and I am sure a number of their breakdowns were youth/experience related. One guy to watch in this regard is Jenkins. Is this guy going to grow up this year? That is one of the things I will be looking for in camp reports, but even if he doesn’t, I feel pretty good about the depth in the secondary after last year’s draft and the emergence of a couple of players there who were longshots (Gaines, McLeod) and performed well. And there are still a couple of guys who got red-shirted back there who might emerge this year. In any event, this is a defense with most of its players early in their prime.

Finally, I like the message this year. RFL has complained about the coaching. Well, this is what we want. A sense of urgency right from the beginning. A fast start. They are instilling that right now. That’s good. That’s corrective. That mindset will yield results.

Herzog wrote:

Yeah, I agree with you. Although I still don’t think he’ll be any good.

Sorry to say, I agree with you.

nittany ram wrote:

Weird that the Rams are ranked so high when it seems that most of my 44 years as a fan have been spent waiting for a them to find a great QB.

I had the same thought.

Of course, two of the three played before we were born.

Then Warner was here today, gone tomorrow.

And if the list were to extend beyond three, the Rams would still fare pretty well. There’s Gabriel, Hadl (albeit briefly), Everett (comparable to Romo, maybe?), and Bulger.

Yet most of the past 44 years has felt like a QB drought.