OCinBuffalo

DJ just said "we're calling it a bruise, the x-rays were negative, but I haven't talked to Bud or the docs yet."

Are you watching the game? He played well, he's clearly got great feet. Are you telling me you didn't see that?

I agree this is serious. BillinNYC has been talking about lack of depth at O line before anyone, and we may end up being exposed there. But, I'm talking about one player, Bell, and he has clearly shown that he can play. I don't know that he's a world beater, but he's only been doing this for a few years. Playing at this level in such a short period of time is nothing short of impressive. The other thing is: no one has any idea how this plays out. Walker could end up fine, and Peters could report tomorrow. In that case, none of this is a big deal. However, it's true that it doesn't remove the problem of questionable depth. Finally, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but: Duke Preston had a pancake block on the goal line TD, and Omon jumped in right behind him. He also looked pretty good in pass protection. Perhaps Duke has finally learned the job? Or, perhaps I'm always too optimistic?

I'm not so sure. Demetrius Bell has looked darn good out there tonight.

Sorry if this was already posted....a few years ago. They actually thought this was a good idea. Safe to say there won't be many fights with Seahawks fans at the game. More like that awkward, "not that there's anything wrong with that" feeling. To add insult to Hasslebeck's back injury, What the heck is this? Coincidence?

Choice #2.

Great thread. Dibs should be commended for that proper statistical analysis. I hope it's now clear to everyone that while DTs are important, there is no causal, and no corollary, relationship between drafting DTs high and wins, and Dibs won't have to do this wonderful work again.(Then again, I really like this stuff, perhaps we can get him to do the dame thing with O line? or OTs? Maybe I will create a new screen name and post a scurrilous statistical model about drafting O lineman and wins and get him to do it again.) Now that we got that out of the way.... Has anybody considered the fact that "over the last 8 years" includes Donahoe AND Levy/Brandon? I'd like to see a model that analyzes length of service time, and # of starts of players drafted by each GM, and then adjusted for # of years in office. A sort of "bust meter", if you will. I know I'm going out on a limb here but: How much do you want to bet Levy/Brandon's drafts are better than Donahoe's? Therefore, I think we are playing into Chris Mortenson's attempts to get his buddy Tom out of the doghouse by lumping all the drafts of the last 8 years together. I don't know if anybody has noticed, but this is almost a completely different team than we had in 2004, the last time we had a playoff shot.(minus Crowell, Schobel, Kelsey, Evans, Moorman, Lindell, Losman--> which only serves encourage blind squirrels the world over) This has all happened in a relatively short period of time, but so many more players that have been drafted by Levy/Brandon have panned out and been better, there's not much of an argument left. There is still much to be proven, but somehow I don't see this team losing to Pittsburgh's backups and our QB hitting the other team in the chest to end the game.

The fact that our European friend here can get the game, but people in Rochester, Syracuse and Elmira/Corning can't is patently retarded. When are they ever gonna solve this NFL Netwrok nonsense? How hard is it to settle on a price? Bunch of babies on both sides.

Um, yeah, but I thought that the riots you had might have finally awakened your people? Have they? You need to integrate your people and teach them how France does things downtown. Perhaps they don't teach this in France anymore, but, how in the F did you produce Napoleon Bonaparte, Rousseau, Curie, and Le Clerk all in the same country?(Such a shame that there hasn't been a name like that in so long...why the F are we waiting? Jean Claude Van Damme doesn't do the job) We don't hate France, we hate that you have become lazy and haven't inspired us, or the rest of the world, in a long damn time. You guys have the ultimate culture to spawn new ideas, with the discipline of respecting history, at the same time. That list of people alone proves that you guys invented the concept of diversity of thought, and the concept of intellectual responsibility, and about 50 other philosophical and scientific tenets we all live by today. How sad is it that you continue to allow France, of all the countries in the world, to be limited by socialist mediocrity and/or by phony, guallist stupidity? Or by both, at the same time? Your country lost your ability to lead the rest of us, because you de-emphasized your God-given ability to lead the rest of us(Joan of Arc, 3 Musketeers?)...it's as simple as that. You don't lead by showing up at the board room and saying "who is ready to kiss my sorry ass because I am French, and here's what we did 200 years ago, and Du Gaulle said...." You lead the way France used to = "we French have better ideas, we can prove it, and here's our work = deal with it." Where do you think the US learned that from? Who invented the concept of modern artillery for Pete's sake? Why is artillery a French word? Why do you have a phony commission to make up French words for things, instead of doing what you did for a 1000 years and define the word in the first place? This world has learned many, many things from France. But you haven't been teaching us much lately. It's time to get off the bench and back into the game. We understand that you lead for 100s of years and suffered for it. Ok, break time is over. You've had your 70 years off. Let's go already, where the F is my modern day Rousseau...because we could certainly use him/her right now.

Stop terrorism, and all of your other nutty ideas? I'm down with that. Um, btw, what are your other nutty ideas? As long as they don't include bringing fried bologna back to the Ralph, I'm OK.

I mistook you for DC_Tom. My mistake. Although I can't imagine how that happened, Mr. "I-have-my-own-blog-where-I-write-posts-about-my-young- daughter's-critique-of-the-artwork-in-downtown-philly" guy. Rolling eyes indeed. Hey, I liked it when I read it the other day, but please, spare us your base, "superiority" front. Apparently you believe "It's ok when I do it", as evidenced by your post above. Not quite 7 paras, but still, are you sure you want to be calling me kettle there pot? You wouldn't be a lawyer by any chance would you? I know I write long some days(EDIT: Most Days ), and I appreciate everyone's patience when I'm trying to complete a thought. I have learned that all too often I will have to end up writing it all in a thread anyway, might as well get it out in one contiguous post. Hell sometimes I write the whole thing out and dole it out paragraph by paragraph, and see if I guessed right about the dopey responses beforehand. This was fun when Molson was around.

I agree. Although I would broaden it a little to include non-military programs. Some kids just won't be able to "get over that f'ing wall!"( you %#-ass mother#@#ing GD POS)...and might freak out from the amount of venom being directed at them. I always wanted to be able to swear as well as enlisted DIs, but my rank and expected bearing didn't allow it. Their ability to combine 30 swear words in a sentence, but still have it be meaningful, was legendary. Anyway, having a real-deal drill instructor might just give some of them a real-deal heart attack, or make them lose their minds. The military can't use them. Therefore, I'd make a similar disciplined training program as basic, but I'd tailor it towards teaching, public works, even teaching the arts, so that we put the right kids in the right spots, but toughen them up with long hours, heavy work loads, real teamwork, and real opportunities to learn followship/leadership skills and use them. Besides getting to blow up more stuff than in my wildest dreams as a kid I never could've imagined, the most interesting part of the service is being thrown together with other people from all kinds of backgrounds and from all over the country. (Make no mistake, for me it seemed the cool stuff = 5%, the boring = 95%, which is why I left). It challenges your views on some things, and reinforces them on others(there are good people and azzholes, everywhere). The important thing is you have to work together with strangers to get things done, and you get about 30 seconds to realize that. Early on, working together immediately and effectively is much more desirable than the alternative, because the alternative earns you a PT, or a literal, beating.<-- only at where I was, no place else that I know of, and I heard they got rid of that stuff. Later on, and because you've dealt with the BS early stuff, you get a chance to talk with your squad and learn about other parts of the country, especially while shining shoes. I learned more while shining shoes about the country and about how different people look at things, etc., than I had learned in any class. For example, I learned why people from the south view weapons as tradition, not power. I had always thought guns = hicks, for no other reason than that's what I was told, especially by my extended "enlightened liberal" family. On the flip side, I learned that without school food some of my classmates (different races, different parts of the country) would have gone hungry every day, and often starved, and therefore stole, in the summer, because the public assistance wasn't going into food. This, and usually the sport they played, was their only chance at getting out. This one guy from Oklahoma was a wrestler and never had a problem making weight in high school because he was usually starving anyway. This was a shock: I learned that many times African Americans think that because of affirmative action, everybody always assumes that it's the only reason they are there, even when nobody had a chance to even think about it one way or the other(um, we were too busy getting our asses kicked). Therefore, they create their own inferiority complex because they think everybody else thinks they shouldn't be there. I had always thought it was a good idea and beyond reproach until that day, when I realized it was putting everybody behind the 8 ball before anybody had said or done anything. How is that "progressive"? I still don't know. I think everybody should get a chance at that kind of experience. I am in favor of a 2 year, national service program, military or otherwise, because the positives far outweigh the negatives. If nothing else it will serve to explain things in a much more real manner and there's everything to like about mixing class and race in a common goal. And come on, it's not like we absolutely have to have another 22 year old tomorrow. I am often knee deep in them, this is why I B word about college professors today, because their students, like Reagan said "Know so much that simply isn't so" and they rarely know what they need to know, even after 4 years in a major that does what we do.

I always wonder when I hear something like the quote and your response to it: are you saying it was a mistake, and that he screwed up? Or, are you saying that he believes it, but shouldn't have said it? While we're at it: same question for you also.

Or it could be that they don't know how to think critically, therefore aren't capable of using logic and comparison, and coming to the inescapable conclusion that Abortion and/or Gay rights and/or the Environment and/or whatever other little issues are way down the priority list in comparison to a nuclear weapon being detonated in this country. Or, a biological attack in London, slowing making it's way around the world. If that were to happen, all the wackos on both sides of Abortion would be =. They'd all be dead, and so would all the pregnant women = nobody left to be right one way or the other. Same thing on the Environment, same thing on the Economy, same thing on everything else. Yes, terrorism is the only #1 priority, it trumps everything else, and it's certainly not a matter of opinion, or "choice". You can't "choose" to not have your bones bleached at 10,000 degrees, or not have a virus kill you. Only a fool or an affected person can't see the simple logic here.

Ask Al Gore, I'm sure he knows.

What you are referring to is only going be exacerbated by the fact that our world is becoming more and more abstracted every day. If educators don't start doing a better job of teaching abstract thinking skills, we are going to be in real trouble. Abstraction isn't easily defined as simply as: math(but you probably know that, huh). We need pre-K work on this, as well as k-6 reinforcement. By the time kids get to college today, or by the time it's time to work(and God forbid they get a project manager like I was, or the ones I had), it's already too late. I think a focus on abstract thinking will help us do better in the kind of outcomes we need, math being only one of them, going forward. Critical thinking skills? HA! You have to be kidding me thinking that they will emphasize those over individual, and now group, self-esteem. Most of the silly posts on this board demonstrate the fact that not enough people were taught the ability to think critically. Critical thinking is on the "endangered concepts" list. Pretty soon we will have people who can't tell the difference between things sucking and being good. Used car-salesman all over the world can't wait: a crappy, 1979 K-car will suddenly be "good", because it's all a matter of "perspective" and "some people like crappy cars, we need to be tolerant of their views, and of the people who sell crappy cars, because we don't want to hurt their self-esteem". The very fact that it has changed from "critical thinking" to "critical assessment" tells us all we need to know. The implication of changing the wording, of course, is that using the word "thinking" means that: if you aren't thinking critically you aren't thinking at all. Unfortunately, that's exactly correct. They shouldn't be getting away from that point by trying to use the word "assessment" instead. As though: some days it's ok to be an idiot, depending on your "assessment", as long as you aren't hurting people's feelings. These days if you can't apply critical thinking you are almost certain to be duped by just about everybody who tries. If critical thinking isn't a problem: why have so many people, in such a short period of time, automatically accepted that Global Warming is all man's fault, we can fix it, and that growing corn or carbon credits are viable solutions? It's only going to get worse, because in our daily lives we meet 100 times the # of people that our grandparents met, whether its in person or on the internet. And, of course, this is all a part of "lowering the expectations" in preparation for socialism. You can't convince people socialism is a good idea, until to make them all equal talent-wise. So, they need to dumb some of us down, and especially get rid of Gifted & Talented class.

Teehee! You know what I really do and I can't help but notice you never replied to my health care post a few months back. No big deal. All I can say is you'll being seeing it, right in front of you, soon enough. I'd rather show than tell.

Any comment on the content wise-guy?

You of all people should know what that means. Damn Linux kids! Get off my lawn! Don't give me a hard time, I'm still angry about that one, and it was years ago.

Boy, couldn't see that one coming. I wonder if Peters Parker will take it seriously though????

I didn't remember it that way, but you're right. My fiends at school were so happy about having finally beaten Pittsburgh(a giant mountain to get over at the time), I don't think anybody thought about the Raiders. It was a bad weather day. I just remember thinking that the Chargers were going to be the big game, and that the Raiders were going to killed. The Browns were a young team that had won so many close games that year at the very end(hence Cardiac Kids) and the irony of losing the same way they had won was not lost on me. The point is that the Raiders were able to trade on their team being bad in certain areas, because their O line and Upshaw, could keep them in games. That, and a whole lot of "stickum" on Lester Hayes hands. Remember that?

Or when his major constituent, Comcast cable, knocks on his door and tells him it's time to pay up for all those campaign contributions and that he better get his sorry ass on the Senate floor and make the NFL look stupid = retaliation for the NFL Network debacle. His period...hehe. With all this talk about the NFL being a monopoly, I was waiting for this to show up. The picture of the look on Donald Trump's face when he got his three dollars(like the paper boy in "Better off dead" = 2 Dollars!) is still priceless. I still wanna know what the legal fees were for that $3 windfall, and which idiot thought it was a good idea to pay lawyers to try and resurrect a fundamentally bad idea/league. Lawyers are usually more trouble than they are worth and rarely prove to be a cost effective way of handling anything, for me anyway, but this thread has been genuinely entertaining.

Yes. I saw him play back in the 1980 playoffs. It was the first SB/season where I actually "knew"(as much as a 2nd grader can) what was happening. We were living in Cleveland at the time, and I will never forget the Browns ("cardiac kids") losing to the Raiders in the playoffs. My dad kept saying that the Raiders had the best offensive line and that's why they kept that game close against Cleveland's high powered offense = they stayed on the field and kept the score low. They eventually won/got lucky because Brian Sipe decided to throw a pick on 2nd down from the Raiders' 12 yard line, down by two with 10 seconds left on the clock. Yes, all the Browns needed was a 30 yard FG to win the game. The Raiders went on to win the whole thing. The first Wild Card team to win the SB. I remember that like it was yesterday, partly because it was exciting, partly because I remember my dad saying the same thing about their line, over, and over, and over.... Each beer cut the time between him saying in half I remember rooting against them the rest of the play-offs because I thought they got lucky. I didn't know enough to recognize it, or understand it then, but their line kept owning people. The only reason they didn't win their division was because San Diego was good(Dan Fouts, Kellen Winslow Sr.)

BillinNYC: Interesting, I was thinking along the same lines in that there's two completely different ways to look at this. Two posts in a row usually don't make sense, but they do here. I agree with both.

Do you think Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, or Magic Johnson would dream of turning down an invitation to compete? They most certainly would not. The fact that 14 players did in 04 merely underscores my point. If the NBA can't be bothered to play when we need them, I can't be bothered to watch them when they "feel like it". I am very aware of the guys that did show up and they did a good job, but my beef is not with them, it's with the NBA on the whole. If the NBA, or it's players, want to take our money, the least the can do is show up and play for the country once every four years. A point which was not lost on the NBA executives, hence the results we are seeing now. My other point is: how "great" are you if you turn down an invitation, any invitation, to play on the world stage? All we had been told is how "great" the players were from 2000 on. Well, you're not great if you get beat, and you're a candy-ass if you don't even bother to show up. Which makes any claim the NBA made about the "greatness" of it's product laughable. After 2004, I'd rather watch re-runs of the Bulls and see some truly great players play. But, I guarantee nobody is laughing now, not me, and certainly not the rest of the world. Yes, and I bet Duncan and Garnett are sorry now. I will give Duncan a pass because of what happened last time around. If somebody is hurt or trying to recover from injury, I can also see letting somebody else who is 100% go in their place. The big difference in this team? Respect. Respect for themselves, each other, their team, what's on the front of their jersey, the other teams, the game in general. Subjecting what's on the back of their jersey to whatever role Coach K needs them to play, going out there and doing that job to the best of their considerable ability, and then doing even more than they are asked(Bosh rebounding, Wade's d and passing) while staying within that role = devastating, and wildly entertaining. That's why we are winning games by 30. Sure the rest of the world has gotten better, but, when the USA truly plays as a team(really in anything, not just sports) we can usually expect a lot of ass to get kicked. What I am seeing is the best "college team" ever assembled. They look like the old Bulls(but better), who also found a way to play as a team, and excelled in their individual roles. Edit: Oh, and how much do you wanna bet we see a significant increase in the quality of the NBA in general after these games? These guys are almost certainly going to want to feel the way they feel right now, all the time.