rams80

On 4/20/2022 at 2:39 PM, LA Fakers+ LA Snippers said:

This...might be a problem. 

If the Bucs, Rams, and Browns (especially the Browns) aren't more handicapped than an elbow-less man in a wheelchair within the next 5-10 years, then the salary cap will become useless (if it isn't already), free agency will be more of a bidding war then before, and we'll see most GMs with half a brain (sorry, Bears & Lions) and owner's funding competing in an arms race to stack up talent to make superteams, much like what we've seen in the NBA over the past decade. If the NFL wants to keep it's "Any Given Sunday" parity, then it needs to do something...fast.

All the talk about how the Rams don't need the draft, etc. kind of ignores that one of the biggest components of their roster, Aaron Donald, was a home-grown 1st Round draft pick.

Coincidentally, if everything hasn't fallen apart by the time he leaves, it will when he leaves.

On 4/11/2022 at 10:00 PM, Sodboy13 said:

This whole Dockhounds launch has had a strong air of a municipality wondering what it's going to do with an empty ballpark about two years from now.

Read that as Lake County and wondered if Zion had gotten snookered again.

10 hours ago, throwuascenario said:

 

But St. Louis had a much more vested interest. They paid hundreds of millions for a stadium to be built because they believed they were relatively safe from relocation due to the NFL's rules. Flores or whoever else spent what? A couple of hours? That's in no way comparable.

1.  St. Louis operated in as much bad faith with the relocation saga as the Rams did, but that wasn't germane to the lawsuit (to whit: somehow we went from "lease requires city to build a replacement stadium with civic money if it doesn't hit certain benchmarks" to "city will generously let Stan Kroenke spend his own money to build a cheap open air stadium in a blighted floodplain/swamp."

2.  St. Louis did not spend nearly that much money/commit that much in civic assets on the stadium; the damages were calculated off of the losses of future civic revenue from having the Rams in town, which, St. Louis' attorneys did really well on the deception check they rolled at advantage.

Anyway, Flores acted in good faith in trying to get a job, unlike both parties in the Rams vs. St. Louis, so let's drop this analogy.

On 4/7/2022 at 10:09 AM, CrimsonBull9584 said:

 

The last time Notre Dame played an FCS team was November 5, 1955. They played AT Penn.

 

And yes, they never played an HBCU.

Penn was still considered a top division school back then.

4 hours ago, Germanshepherd said:

And another one. Busy day. 

 

Perplexing add, America East is a bunch of bigger public schools with a mix of football and basketball only; Bryant is a small private school.  Guess America East just felt like it didn't have a lot of other options.

Not sure I believe the “party line” here.  I think it’s more likely MLB and the major league owners, in their arrogance, didn’t realize how poorly received literally every last bit of their remake of the minors would be and this is a fairly “painless” bone they can throw.  Certainly the vibe when they renamed everything last year wasn’t that these were just placeholder names (or at least placeholders while they secured legacy league IPs).

16 hours ago, Burmy said:

Most sports are joining on July 1, football in 2023 (so as not to risk the Big South champion's AQ spot in the FCS playoffs)

 

Would be a big pickup for the OVC...not only do they need football schools, but going straight into the heart of traditional MVC territory sends a message after the MVC picking up their two best members.

Is that message "Look, here's another one"?

5 hours ago, LA Fakers+ LA Snippers said:

Stafford did none of those things. He never complained about losing, never hinted at leaving, he just stood pat and padded his stats. He may have been a talented QB, but he’s missing that competitive itch that most Hall-ers have.

OK, gonna go after this general sentiment here point by point and ask what Stafford could have done REALISTICALLY.

1. Lobby ownership/management to make the team better:  So, we're going to try to ask the Ford family to stop being the Ford family for a little bit, which strikes me as a rather futile gesture because it's impossible to break a track record as long as theirs.

2. Convince Free Agents to come over: (Glances at Ford Family) Show of hands. Who wants to take a relative pay cut to live in Detroit in a likely Quixotic attempt to build a winner.

3a. Demand a trade before you are even consigned to Detroit.   Dude, we like Eli now because he's the funny one and he beat the Patriots twice, but Lordy, he had talent and the Manning bloodline and he got freaking dragged for telling the Chargers to piss off.

3b. Demand a trade earlier in his career.  Yeah, um, we have a word for players who do that, it's called "malcontent" (or locker room cancer, or the real problem, or....) The Narrative does not like it when star players demand trades.

3c. Find a FA landing site as a comparatively unproven QB with a good supporting cast but cannot, for whatever reason, come by a cost-controlled QB on a rookie deal.  Brady and Manning were able to move, but the general consensus was that Manning, coming off a missed season due to injury, was basically done and everyone hates Brady anyway except for Boston and the Brady-Belichick marriage had hit its expiration date.  Stafford's kind of lucky George Allen's ghost possessed Les Snead once the Rams returned to LA so the Rams had a good supporting cast and no hope of getting a rookie QB.

Point is, it's easy to say he could do more, it's harder to actually successfully do more in some situations.

6 hours ago, DoctorWhom said:

You don't deserve the Hall of Fame because you were a really good player stuck on a :censored:ty team. 

What's his resume? A single Pro Bowl and now a Super Bowl ring. Yet somehow he's more deserving than a guy like Kurt Warner?  A guy that was a 2x MVP, 4x Pro Bowl, 2x Passing TD Leader, 3x Completion percentage leader, 2x Passer Rating leader

 

What does Stafford have in comparison to that?

For a time, Warner was considered the best QB in the NFL, when has Stafford ever been considered one of the best? 

Warner also had the exclusive services of a HOF RB/WR slashback, 2 HOF or should-be HOF receivers, and a freakish monster of a HOF LT in St. Louis.  Stafford had....Calvin Johnson, which is better than nothing mind you but, let's consider what Kurt Warner had at his disposal in the glory days.

10 hours ago, dont care said:

I don’t know how you can say he was “clearly the best player on the field” when I didn’t even notice him until the last 2 plays. Kupp made plays all game, and was the only option that last drive. He willed them to win.

Cincy's O Line trying to start  with him after that push of Burrow to send him out of bounds is arguably the moment the Rams front seven really awoke.  Also, perhaps Donald commanding double and triple teams is why his name wasn't being called.

The Coyotes are the perfect loss leader to drag down the cap.  Hopefully the NHL isn't dumb enough to have that written down for the next lockout/strike.

14 minutes ago, ManillaToad said:

 

Namath is in because of The Guarantee (the legacy of which is undersold more and more as the years go on), he won AFL MVP twice, SB MVP, ROTY, an NFL All Pro, 4 AFL All Pros, made the AFL All-Time Team, and threw for 4000 yards 12 years before anyone else.

Somehow his reputation over the years turned into "Dude sucked but said the Jets were gonna win the Super Bowl and he wore fur coats", I don't know why

Because the NFL has decided that basically we're not going to talk about the AFL (aside from a few snickering references to the Heidi Game.)

4 hours ago, tBBP said:

 

*RRRING* That'd be Barry Sanders' representatives on Line 1. (Because you know Barry ain't gonna pump himself up.)

 

Also EL OH to the EL @ Matthew Stafford being a HoF QB...really? This is our metric now? Look, I like dude. I respected the heck out of him in Detroit when all he had had Calvin Johnson and barely anything else. Dude was a competitor. (And Lord knows Detroit hadn't had a franchise QB since...what, Bobby Layne for the short time he was there?) But cut it out with the HoF talk. Shoot, have a hard time ranking Ben Roethlisberger as a HoFer...had he had that career with any other team, ain't nobody thinking about him.  Don't get me started on Eli Manning...and that's about the class I put Stafford in.

 

I did need a laugh this morning...this fit that bill.

Look, we put Warner in the hall for 5 or 6 really good years and a good story, so...

Kupp was deserving, Stafford wouldn't have been undeserving, I saw some line about how it's a shame you can't award it to the front seven of the Rams' defense, and that is true because they in their collectivity took over the second half.

24 minutes ago, DoctorWhom said:

I'm just saying, if not for that final drive, most people would be pointing the finger at Stafford for losing the Super Bowl (even if there were hundred other reasons). It's not like he was fantastic that game, really neither QB was. But in the end, Stafford did just the minimum of what he had to do to win.  

I'd have cited some mix of injuries, the Rams O-Line not playing well, and Sean McVay killing drives trying to make Cam Akers happen.

Anyway, you have to include that final drive in the ultimate calculus, especially since, again, Jared Goff could never have done that.

59 minutes ago, burgundy said:

 

As someone who has been forced to watch the Lions on local TV, Stafford was the type of QB you spend on. Unfortunately, his best years were wasted while getting beat up in Detroit. But even at his current level of play I'd take him over Tannehill or Carr.

 

There is no way in hell Jared Goff manages that comeback, that alone makes the trade worth it.  (Actually given how well the Cincy front was playing/how poorly the Rams front was playing it's even money he'd be curled up in the fetal position rocking himself and muttering about various terrors by the 4th quarter.)

2 hours ago, Lights Out said:

 

At least the St. Louis Rams weren't dragged kicking and screaming to their ring by Tagliabue. They also had more than ten fans to appreciate it. 

Not for  much longer though.

Seriously, you want to know who was probably the most upset about the Rams' move? The fans of every other NFL team in middle America because they had just lost their cheap road trip to see their teams play in person.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Anyway, I'm excited, and happy for Stafford, and Donald, and OBJ, and Kupp, and Whitworth, and the rest of the team.  I'll have tonight to think about when the entire kludge falls apart in a few years.  (But no, seriously, this is probably going to be my all-time favorite team just from their playoff run alone: Ended the Pete Carroll/Russell Wilson era in Seattle, at minimum showed the cracks in Arizona, even if they didn't break that team for good, ENDED TOM BRADY, won the one that counted against San Fran, and oh yes, WON THE FREAKING SUPER BOWL.)

11 hours ago, Cujo said:

 

The likes of also 'very good 'coaches like Marty and Dan Reeves will never see the HOF because they never won it all. And then there's the case of Mike Shanahan. It's laughable he's not in Canton if they're opening the doors to Vermeil

 

Vermeil

1 Super Bowl win

120 wins

.524 win %

6 playoff wins (.545 %)

 

Shanahan 

2 Super Bowl wins

170 wins

.552 win %

8 playoff wins (.571 %)

Vermeil also managed a down-to-the-studs rebuild of the Rams defense in three years; taking an absolutely atrocious unit and turning it into a Super Bowl champion.  Fewer wins, but Denver wasn't nearly as bad a situation for Shanahan as the Rams or Eagles were when Vermeil stepped in.

On 2/10/2022 at 8:58 AM, Seadragon76 said:

 

At least two more football schools to help make up for Murray State's departure in 2023. This is where schools like Hillsdale and Grand Valley State would come in if they were looking to make the leap to Division I.

I'm not sure the OVC is "take Hillsdale" desperate, because I don't think any group of D1 league school presidents would be up for dealing with Hillsdale on a regular basis.

19 hours ago, oldschoolvikings said:

 

I understand you're a fan, and you have to stay loyal to your guy, and all that. But as an outsider looking in, with no team loyalty or rooting interest to either one? I'd take Burrow over Jackson so fast the person making that offer wouldn't be able to finish the question.

Eh, contract money being equal, I'd take Jackson, but only because he's more proven a back.

I mean, the long term negative consequences for baseball's public perception from blowing up the minor league system, at the behest of people who got busted for cheating really blatantly, should put Manfred in front right there.

1 hour ago, GDAWG said:

 

A local Houston media guy says it was likely a business move in that it would have been really hard to sell team sponsors on Josh McCown.  If they had hired McCown, NRG Stadium would be a ghost town on Game Day.

Rasputin's gonna recycle and repeat next year though.

1 hour ago, rams80 said:

Just pulled up football reference to check.  For my 27 seasons of fandom....9 playoff appearances and a WTF level 4 Super Bowl appearances.

Just did a check out of curiosity at this point, Super Bowl appearances from the 1995 season onward:

New England Patriots 10

Denver Broncos 4

Los Angeles/St. Louis Rams 4

Pittsburgh Steelers 4

Green Bay Packers 3

New York Giants 3

Seattle Seahawks 3

Atlanta Falcons 2

Baltimore Ravens 2

Carolina Panthers 2

Indianapolis Colts 2

Kansas City Chiefs 2

Philadelphia Eagles 2

San Francisco 49ers 2

Tampa Bay Buccaneers 2

Arizona Cardinals 1

Chicago Bears 1

Cincinnati Bengals 1

Dallas Cowboys 1

New Orleans Saints 1

Oakland Raiders 1

Tennessee Titans 1

Observations: Rams are a real feast or famine organization here: 2nd most appearances and a literal lost decade plus in the same era! LOLWTF.  The Packers, by contrast, have had a first ballot HOF QB like every season in this period, and a relatively anarchic NFC, and have fewer appearances to show for it.

Similarly the NFC West was a joke shop division for most of the 2000s/early 2010s and....has the most appearances of any NFC division and as many as the AFC East Patriots.

Tom Brady vaccuuming up all those Super Bowls totes jobbed the rest of the AFC powers out of more appearances.

Is this the part where we dunk on the Cowboys and Dan Snyder Era Washington? Yes, this is the part where we dunk on organizations that were responsible for 13 of the first 30 NFC appearances and have managed 0 since. (The Raiders' collapse is bad too, but more understandable)

On 2/5/2022 at 8:03 AM, Red Comet said:

Also, the Rams and Kroenke for what they did to St. Louis. I don’t care if they were stealing them back, it’s still stealing because that defense sure as hell didn’t work for OJ Simpson. 

Nobody, I repeat, NOBODY, including various St. Louis governmental bodies, acted in good faith in the St. Louis stadium negotiations.  I'll just leave it at that.

Just pulled up football reference to check.  For my 27 seasons of fandom....9 playoff appearances and a WTF level 4 Super Bowl appearances.

41 minutes ago, Cujo said:

 

At the same time, tonight has gotta be at least the 8th time the 49ers have lost an NCFFG.

Per wikipedia, 10 (they've won 7).

LA Rams 1.0 were snakebit af in this round; they went 1-6; haven't lost during my time as a fan though.