Mark Long Beach

That's my understanding as well. I've only seen him briefly at guard, but he looked good to me. I'll take him, especially since I'd really like to see Hang be our first guy off the bench for the interior. He's smart and pretty decent. Ridiculously better than any of the centers that we've had recently (Preston, Fowler etc). I just want more of a mauling interior so that we can run the ball vs the excellent 3-4's that we face.

You can't be hired as head coach if you aren't even interviewed. More minority candidates are being interviewed and more minority coaches are being hired.

Ah thanks for the clarification. I have neither anymore but used to watch them when they were available. But it was often true that the game that I was most interested in was on at a rough time slot. It's really hard to get a feel for the game though. You don't get much perspective on how the momentum has switched or if a team is down on itself, it's kind of surreal to watch.

I think that you mean NFL "Rewind" not "Replay". Rewind is the online subscription for $40 that is indeed awesome (I'm a biased subscriber). IIRC Replay is the shortened game that NFL Network shows at various times later in the week for most but not all games. It's also pretty good. But without TIVO it's hard to watch those games when they're on at 3am.

As others have pointed out, leading the league in tackles means only one thing: a LOT of plays are getting run at you, this is a bad thing. Again, having our safety amongst the team lead in tackles is also a bad thing. ...but, it still means that those two are sticking there heads in and getting to the guy with the ball. So it still means something positive. IMO Whitner is having his best year by a pretty good margin.

I was truly amazed at how often and successful we were running it up the gut against TWO good NT often playing at the same time. I think Hang has gotten more grief than he deserves and is a competent center, BUT Woods sure looked good.

Agreed. I enjoyed the game on tv. It wasn't always a thing of beauty, but NOTHING last last years Cleveland abomination. And heck, we WON! We showed some real grit and determination vs the run and it looks like the coaching staff did some real good things and the players listened and executed. Shoot, I like that.

This was my intent. I have this (not necessarily grammatically correct) habit of writing sentences as though they were spoken. I find that readers will often "hear" the sentence as though someone had spoken it. In this case, I prefered to run the two sentences together as someone would if they were bellowing it into the room to chastise misbehaving children.

Good Lord, what do we have here 5th graders? It's fine if you can't read 4 consecutive sentences without losing interest but do you really need to be proud of it? This is an analysis of our football team and a good one at that. If all you want to do is B word and whine stay in those threads. Thanks R. Rich, I always look forward to your insights on the game. Especially this one, I'm not sure how you were able to stomach that one as we were pretty brutal in just about every facet of that game.

The OPs essential point is correct. Look, our OLine settled down after the first few games and became competent. Not great, but decent, and a whole lot better than the start of the season or last year. The problem is that we have no good RT and little to no depth. We got decimated with injuries vs the Vikings. Their front 4 is close to if not the best in the NFL. They were beating our starters and crushed our replacements. We were due for a down game and they helped us by disrupting everything. They were beating on Fitz all game long (after first mauling our OL). No QB looks good on his back. Pro-bowl filled D-Line >>>>>>>>>>>>> than weak replacement O-linemen. If any of us would have known before the game started that we wouldn't have Wood, Hangartner nor Urbik due to injuries we'd all figure that we'd lose the game. Heck I was worried with just Wood MIA.

A little harsh, but not that far off. Leonard was a guy who was easy to root for, but he's undersized and relatively speaking undertalented. However, he's worked hard and has improved significantly. Very much unlike Ko Simpson, who started out better, but never really took a step forward. That's why guys like Leonard stick around for a while. They work hard and overachieve. They are known as journeymen and can fill a role for a year or three.

Or she likes it!

I agree. I don't miss the seemingly endless streams of 3 and out at all. While I felt that our teams have generally played hard too the end, it always seemed to me that under DJ we were playing not to lose. Relying solely on the other teams to make mistakes. Good teams wouldn't make those mistakes and would beat us regularly. Bad teams would make just enough mistakes to allow us a narrow victory. It just never felt like good football. We were simple in schemes and plays for both offense and defense. Scores were artificially low because we wouldn't give up big plays but would allow tons of little plays. Letting the other team methodically march downfield eating up tons of clock, and scoring just enough to win. I don't miss those days at all. Our defense is still bad, but at least they're finally playing together. It sure didn't feel that way in the beginning of the year. Our offense has been impressive. I no longer feel a sense of doom every 3rd down.

Tell him I said "hi"! Loved it!

Thx for the update. I thought he was a standup guy who worked hard and seemed to finally figure out how to maximize what talents he had as a receiver. The problem was that he was essentially too small for the position and got hurt a lot (significant injury every year). With our generally weak TE position, and his marginal blocking this became too much of a liability for us. But I'll always wish hardworking type guys well.

Having watched a fair number of Shanahan games, I can't tell you how relieved that I am that we didn't land him. When he was younger he was a good coach. Now he knows he is, just ask him. The more power he has and has gotten the more poor his coaching has become. As an added bonus his player acquisition skills are _horrible_. Worse, he gives up on middling players too quickly now because he plans on replacing them. But those middling players often need to be put into service because of injury. But they're not well prepared and the coach hasn't put any energy into them unlike when he was a younger coach. IMO. Let him drag some other team into chaos. No thank you, no thank you, no thank you. Or more accurately: thank goodness we didn't get him, thank goodness, thank goodness.

It's the beard that does it.

BTW, Thanks for pointing out the formation, I didn't notice it. Although while Kelsey is listed as a LB, it's still a stretch to call him one. So that leaves us two DLineman, but still both of them would be considered undersized for a 3-4 DLineman. But it sure seemed to work a little better than previous tries.

I wish it were that easy to make 'em stop. A little high current through the internet? But seriously, I just hope that the bitching here will help them be better human beings in real life rather than it being a reflection of a miserable existence. Try not to let it drag YOU down, and ignore 'em in whatever way works best for you.

Also agreed. It was quite refreshing to see competence.

Buffalo Bills - ouch. Cleveland Indians - ouch. my local LA Lakers! - not ouch. I guess they keep me on an even keel when dealing with the Bills and Indians. But talk about extremes... sheesh!

Sadly our good play allowed us to rise to the occasion and... lose a winnable game there for our taking. sigh.

Best summary I've seen. I completely agree. He has talent I don't dispute that. But so did Losman and Edwards. Blech, I wouldn't touch him with a 39 1/2 foot pole.

It is incredible, but he had a good start. The Lakers were already one of the premier teams in the league as one of the powers in the Western Conference. His first draft pick wasn't too bad in Magic Johnson. Hollywood and other advantages work together (with him being a good owner) to help keep them on top. Can't forget about two hall-of-fame coaches during that span either. Current coach is Phil Jackson who has been a head coach for 21 years. He's been to the Championship game 13 of those 21 years (winning 11)! He's had the most dominating coaching run of any coach in any of the major professional sports. Heck he even won 2 championships as a PLAYER. The dude understands what it takes for a team to win. Jerry Bus is a good owner, but there's a lot that goes into the Lakers being successful.

Good Times, Good times.