Threads
-
To unlock all of features of Rams On Demand please take a brief moment to register. Registering is not only quick and easy, it also allows you access to additional features such as live chat, private messaging, and a host of other apps exclusive to Rams On Demand.
Rams Possibly Adding to Front Office
- By RamFan503
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 3 Replies
Not sure if this has already been posted but speculation in this article is that the Rams may be adding some type of oversight between KD and Snead.
Rams expected to make front-office additions
4:49 PM PT
Alden GonzalezESPN Staff Writer
INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- A thorough evaluation of the entire organization is ongoing, Los Angeles Rams COO Kevin Demoff said from The Forum on Wednesday, site of a ceremony that celebrated the Chargers' move to L.A.
The Rams are in the process of constructing a coaching staff under Sean McVay. And though Les Snead has been retained as general manager, changes could be made in the front office as well. Demoff wouldn't go into specifics, but did reference his comments from a Dec. 12 press conference, when Jeff Fisher was fired as head coach and Demoff said: "We need to take a look at this entire organization, and that includes personnel."
"We need to make sure we deliver on the rest of that analysis, which is how we get better as an organization," Demoff said Wednesday, shortly after speaking from the lectern and stating that the Rams and Chargers would "work hand in hand" in Los Angeles.
"I think it would be disingenuous to stand up there in December and say we all need to improve, and then not make any changes outside of the coaching staff. I think that would ring hollow. So, we're going to continue to evaluate. And I would expect that we will make additions to our front office to try to make sure that we field the best possible team that we can field."
A report by NBC's Pro Football Talk speculated that the Rams could look for someone who would have say over Snead on football matters, which would free Demoff to spend more time focusing on the business aspect of the organization. The Rams still seem to be in the process of determining that. They got plenty of feedback about their dynamics and their roster throughout the just-completed head-coaching search, specifically from Jon Gruden, Tony Dungy and Bill Polian.
"[Rams owner Stan Kroenke]'s demand of us, for the entire organization, is to field a Super Bowl winner as quickly as possible," Demoff said. "That's what he wants for the organization; that's what he wants for the fans in Los Angeles. And we need to make sure that we're evaluating every opportunity to improve."
Rams expected to make front-office additions
4:49 PM PT
Alden GonzalezESPN Staff Writer
INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- A thorough evaluation of the entire organization is ongoing, Los Angeles Rams COO Kevin Demoff said from The Forum on Wednesday, site of a ceremony that celebrated the Chargers' move to L.A.
The Rams are in the process of constructing a coaching staff under Sean McVay. And though Les Snead has been retained as general manager, changes could be made in the front office as well. Demoff wouldn't go into specifics, but did reference his comments from a Dec. 12 press conference, when Jeff Fisher was fired as head coach and Demoff said: "We need to take a look at this entire organization, and that includes personnel."
"We need to make sure we deliver on the rest of that analysis, which is how we get better as an organization," Demoff said Wednesday, shortly after speaking from the lectern and stating that the Rams and Chargers would "work hand in hand" in Los Angeles.
"I think it would be disingenuous to stand up there in December and say we all need to improve, and then not make any changes outside of the coaching staff. I think that would ring hollow. So, we're going to continue to evaluate. And I would expect that we will make additions to our front office to try to make sure that we field the best possible team that we can field."
A report by NBC's Pro Football Talk speculated that the Rams could look for someone who would have say over Snead on football matters, which would free Demoff to spend more time focusing on the business aspect of the organization. The Rams still seem to be in the process of determining that. They got plenty of feedback about their dynamics and their roster throughout the just-completed head-coaching search, specifically from Jon Gruden, Tony Dungy and Bill Polian.
"[Rams owner Stan Kroenke]'s demand of us, for the entire organization, is to field a Super Bowl winner as quickly as possible," Demoff said. "That's what he wants for the organization; that's what he wants for the fans in Los Angeles. And we need to make sure that we're evaluating every opportunity to improve."
Any of you Brits ever walked on the Broomway?
- By Prime Time
- OFF TOPIC
- 12 Replies
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/201...s-path-in-britain?ocid=tvl.syn.atl.we.0.partn
The Broomway is known as the most perilous path in Britain – and is a favourite walk of writer Robert Macfarlane, who describes it in this adaptation from his book The Old Ways
By Robert Macfarlane
If you consult a large-scale map of the Essex coastline between the River Crouch and the River Thames, you will see a footpath – its route marked with a stitch-line of crosses and dashes – leaving the land at a place called Wakering Stairs and then heading due east, straight out to sea.
Several hundred yards offshore, it curls northeast and runs in this direction for around three miles, still offshore, before cutting back to make landfall at Fisherman’s Head, the uppermost tip of a large, low-lying and little-known marshy island called Foulness.
This is the Broomway, allegedly “the deadliest” path in Britain, and certainly the unearthliest path I have ever walked. The Broomway is thought to have killed more than 100 people over the centuries; it seems likely that there were other victims whose fates went unrecorded.
Sixty-six of its dead are buried in the little Foulness churchyard; the other bodies were not recovered. Edwardian newspapers, alert to the path’s reputation, rechristened it “The Doomway”.
The Broomway, marked with a dotted line on this map, traverses the sand and mud flats of Maplin Sands (Credit: Liz Henry/Flickr)
Even the Ordnance Survey map registers, in its sober fashion, the gothic atmosphere of the path. Printed in large pink lettering on the 1:25,000 map of that stretch of coast is the following message:
WARNING Public Rights of Way across Maplin Sands can be dangerous. Seek local guidance.
The Broomway traverses vast sand flats and mud flats that stretch almost unsloped for miles. When the tide goes out at Foulness, it goes out a great distance, revealing shires of sand packed hard enough to support the weight of a walker. When the tide comes back in, though, it comes fast – galloping over the sands quicker than a human can run.
Disorientation is a danger as well as inundation: in mist, rain or fog, it is easy to lose direction in such self-similar terrain, with shining sand extending in all directions. Nor are all of the surfaces that you encounter reliable: there is mud that can trap you and quicksand that can swallow you. But in good weather, following the right route, it can feel nothing more than a walk on a very large beach.
The Broomway takes its name from the 400 or so brooms that were formerly placed at intervals of between 30 and 60 yards on either side of the track, thereby indicating the safe passage on the hard sand that lay between them. Until 1932, the Broomway was the only means of getting to and from Foulness save by boat, for the island was isolated from the mainland by uncrossable creeks and stretches of mud known as the Black Grounds.
The island is currently controlled by the Ministry of Defence, which purchased it during the First World War for “research purposes” and continues to conduct artillery-firing tests out over the sands.
The Broomway is a path, but one that the tide sweeps clean twice a day (Credit: Adrian Miller/Flickr)
The route of the Broomway seems to have been broadly consistent since at least 1419 (when it is referred to in a manorial record for Foulness). Conceptually, it is close to paradox. It is a right of way and as such is inscribed on maps and in law, but is also swept clean of the trace of passage twice daily by the tide. What do you call a path that is no path? A riddle? A sequence of compass bearings? A Zen koan?
Before I left, my friend Patrick had given me a warning: “The Broomway will be there another day, but if you try to walk it in mist, you may not be. So if it’s misty when you arrive at Wakering Stairs, turn around and go home.”
It was misty when I arrived at Wakering Stairs. Early on a Sunday morning, and the air was white. It wasn’t a haar, a proper North Sea mist that blanked out the world. More of a dense sea haze. But visibility was poor enough that the foghorns were sounding, great bovine reverbs drifting up and down the coast.
I stood on the sea wall, looking out into the mist, feeling the foghorns vibrating in my chest, and wondering if I could imaginatively re-categorise the weather conditions such that I could disregard Patrick’s final warning. I felt queasy with anxiety, but eager to walk.
With me, also nervous, was my old friend David Quentin, who I had convinced to join me on the path.
The causeway heads out to sea, then disappears into water (Credit: Phil Nevard)
Where the road met the sea wall, there was a heavy metal stop-barrier, tagged with a jay-blue graffiti scrawl. A red firing flag drooped at the foot of a tall flagpole. Beyond the stop-barrier was a bank of signs in waspy yellow-and-black type and imperative grammar, detailing bye-laws, tautologically identifying themselves as warnings, indemnifying the MoD against drownings, explosions and mud deaths, offering caveats to the walker, and grudgingly admitting that this was, indeed, the start of a public right of way:
Warning: The Broomway is unmarked and very hazardous to pedestrians.
Warning: Do not approach or touch any object as it may explode and kill you.
Away from the sea wall ran the causeway, perhaps five yards wide, formed of brick rubble and grey hardcore. It headed out to sea over the mud, before disappearing into water and mist. Poles had been driven into the mud on either side of the path, six feet tall, marking out its curling line.
There were a few tussocks of eelgrass. The water’s surface was sheened with greys and silvers, like the patina on old mirror-glass. Otherwise, the causeway appeared to lead into a world of white.
After 300 yards the causeway ended, dipping beneath the sand like a river passing underground. Further out, a shallow sheen of water lay on top of the sand, stretching away. The diffused light made depth perception impossible, so that it seemed as if we were simply going to walk onwards into the ocean. We stopped at the end of the causeway, looking out across the pathless future. I took off my trainers and placed them on a tussock of eelgrass.
When the causeway ends, only marker posts dot the path (Credit: Nigel Cox)
“I’m worried that if we don’t make it back in time, the tide will float off with my shoes,” I said to David.
“If we don’t make it back in time, the tide will float off with your body,” he replied unconsolingly.
We stepped off the causeway. The water was warm on the skin, puddling to ankle depth. Underfoot I could feel the brain-like corrugations of the hard sand, so firmly packed that there was no give under the pressure of my step. Beyond us extended the sheer mirror-plane of the water, disrupted only here and there by shallow humps of sand and green slews of weed.
Out and on we walked, barefoot over and into the mirror-world. I glanced back at the coast. The air was grainy and flickering, like an old newsreel. The sea wall had hazed out to a thin black strip. Structures of unknown purpose – a white-beamed gantry, a low-slung barracks – showed on the shoreline. Every few hundred yards, I dropped a white cockle shell.
With so few orientation points and so many beckoning paths, we were finding it hard to stay on course. I was experiencing a powerful desire to walk straight out to sea and explore the greater freedoms of this empty tidal world.
But we were both still anxious about straying far from the notional path of the Broomway, and encountering the black mud or the quicksand.
Our directions said that we should reach something called the Maypole, a sunken telegraph pole with crosspieces that marked the southeastern edge of a tidal channel named Havengore Creek. But scale behaved strangely, and we weren’t paying sufficient attention to our pacings and distances.
We became confused by other spars sticking up from the mud here and there: relics of wrecks, perhaps, or more likely the mark points of former channels long since silted up by the shifting sands.
The tide rises with remarkable speed (Credit: Peter Shaw)
At last we found and reached what was surely the Maypole. It resembled the final yards of a galleon’s topmast, the body of a ship long since sunk into those deep sands. At its base, the currents had carved basins in whose warm water we wallowed our feet, sending shrimps scurrying. We took an onwards bearing and continued over the silver shield of the water.
My brain was beginning to move unusually, worked upon and changed by the mind-altering substances of this offshore world, and by the elation that arose from the counter-intuition of walking securely on water. Out there, nothing could be only itself. The eye fed on false colour values. Mirages of scale occurred, and tricks of depth.
Walking always with us were our reflections, our attentive ghost selves. For the water acted as a mirror-line, such that we both appeared joined at the ankles with our doubles, me more than 12ft tall and David a foot taller still. If anyone had been able to look out from the shore, through the mist, they would have seen two long-shanked walkers striding over the sea.
You enter the mirror-world by a causeway and you leave it by one. From Asplin’s Head, a rubble jetty as wide as a farm track reaches out over the Black Grounds, offering safe passage to shore. As we approached the jetty the sand began to give way underfoot, and we broke through into sucking black mud.
It was like striking oil – the glittering rich ooze gouting up around our feet. We slurped onwards to the causeway, the rubble of which had been colonized by a lurid green weed. Sea lavender and samphire thrived in the salt marsh.
By the time we reached the sea wall, David and I both wore diving boots of clay. We washed them off in a puddle, and stepped up onto a boat ramp. We had made landfall.
Beyond the causeway’s end, the shining sands stretched to a horizon line. One of Foulness’s farmers, John Burroughs, has spoken wistfully of coming out onto the sands in late autumn to hunt wigeon: he brings a board to use as a shooting stick and, leaning against it, feels that he “could be on the far side of the moon”. That felt exactly right: the walk out to sea as a soft lunacy, a passage beyond this world.
We walked back along the causeway to the point where the Broomway supposedly began, and there we turned into the wind and returned along the route by which we had come. Perhaps halfway back to the Maypole, emboldened by the day, we could no longer resist the temptation to explore further across the sand flats, and so we turned perpendicular to the line of the land and began walking straight out to sea, leaving the imagined safety of the Broomway behind us.
Stormy skies shadow the Broomway (Credit: Emma Emmerton)
That hour was an hour I will never forget. We did not know where the sand would slacken to mud, and yet somehow it never felt dangerous or rash. The tide was out and the moon would hold it out, and we had two hours in which to discover this vast revealed world: no more than two hours, for sure, but surely also no less.
The serenity of the space through which we were moving calmed me to the point of invulnerability, and thus we walked on. A mile out, the white mist still hovered, and in the haze I started to perceive impossible forms and shapes: a fleet of Viking longboats with high lug-rigged square sails; a squadron of feluccas, dhows and sgoths; cityscapes (the skyline of Istanbul, the profile of the Houses of Parliament).
When I looked back, the coastline was all but imperceptible, and it was apparent that our footprints had been erased behind us, and so we splashed tracelessly on out to the tidal limit. It felt at that moment unarguable that a horizon line might exert as potent a pull upon the mind as a mountain’s summit.
Eventually, reluctantly, nearly two miles offshore, with the tide approaching its turn and our worries at last starting to rise through our calm – black mud through sand – we began a long slow arc back towards the coastline and the path of the Broomway, away from the outermost point. There was the return of bearings, the approach to land, a settling to recognisability.
Mud-caked and silly with the sun and the miles, we left the sand where it met the causeway near Wakering Stairs. There at the causeway’s frayed end, on the brink of the Black Grounds, were the marker poles, and there – perched on the top of their stand of eelgrass – were my faithful trainers, still waiting for me. I put them on and we walked out, off the mirror and onto the sea wall. For days afterwards I felt calm, level, shining, sand flat.
Adapted from THE OLD WAYS: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2012 by Robert Macfarlane.
This story is a part of BBC Britain – a series focused on exploring this extraordinary island, one story at a time. See every BBC Britain story by heading to the Britain homepage; you can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
The Broomway is known as the most perilous path in Britain – and is a favourite walk of writer Robert Macfarlane, who describes it in this adaptation from his book The Old Ways
By Robert Macfarlane
If you consult a large-scale map of the Essex coastline between the River Crouch and the River Thames, you will see a footpath – its route marked with a stitch-line of crosses and dashes – leaving the land at a place called Wakering Stairs and then heading due east, straight out to sea.
Several hundred yards offshore, it curls northeast and runs in this direction for around three miles, still offshore, before cutting back to make landfall at Fisherman’s Head, the uppermost tip of a large, low-lying and little-known marshy island called Foulness.
This is the Broomway, allegedly “the deadliest” path in Britain, and certainly the unearthliest path I have ever walked. The Broomway is thought to have killed more than 100 people over the centuries; it seems likely that there were other victims whose fates went unrecorded.
Sixty-six of its dead are buried in the little Foulness churchyard; the other bodies were not recovered. Edwardian newspapers, alert to the path’s reputation, rechristened it “The Doomway”.
The Broomway, marked with a dotted line on this map, traverses the sand and mud flats of Maplin Sands (Credit: Liz Henry/Flickr)
Even the Ordnance Survey map registers, in its sober fashion, the gothic atmosphere of the path. Printed in large pink lettering on the 1:25,000 map of that stretch of coast is the following message:
WARNING Public Rights of Way across Maplin Sands can be dangerous. Seek local guidance.
The Broomway traverses vast sand flats and mud flats that stretch almost unsloped for miles. When the tide goes out at Foulness, it goes out a great distance, revealing shires of sand packed hard enough to support the weight of a walker. When the tide comes back in, though, it comes fast – galloping over the sands quicker than a human can run.
Disorientation is a danger as well as inundation: in mist, rain or fog, it is easy to lose direction in such self-similar terrain, with shining sand extending in all directions. Nor are all of the surfaces that you encounter reliable: there is mud that can trap you and quicksand that can swallow you. But in good weather, following the right route, it can feel nothing more than a walk on a very large beach.
The Broomway takes its name from the 400 or so brooms that were formerly placed at intervals of between 30 and 60 yards on either side of the track, thereby indicating the safe passage on the hard sand that lay between them. Until 1932, the Broomway was the only means of getting to and from Foulness save by boat, for the island was isolated from the mainland by uncrossable creeks and stretches of mud known as the Black Grounds.
The island is currently controlled by the Ministry of Defence, which purchased it during the First World War for “research purposes” and continues to conduct artillery-firing tests out over the sands.
The Broomway is a path, but one that the tide sweeps clean twice a day (Credit: Adrian Miller/Flickr)
The route of the Broomway seems to have been broadly consistent since at least 1419 (when it is referred to in a manorial record for Foulness). Conceptually, it is close to paradox. It is a right of way and as such is inscribed on maps and in law, but is also swept clean of the trace of passage twice daily by the tide. What do you call a path that is no path? A riddle? A sequence of compass bearings? A Zen koan?
Before I left, my friend Patrick had given me a warning: “The Broomway will be there another day, but if you try to walk it in mist, you may not be. So if it’s misty when you arrive at Wakering Stairs, turn around and go home.”
It was misty when I arrived at Wakering Stairs. Early on a Sunday morning, and the air was white. It wasn’t a haar, a proper North Sea mist that blanked out the world. More of a dense sea haze. But visibility was poor enough that the foghorns were sounding, great bovine reverbs drifting up and down the coast.
I stood on the sea wall, looking out into the mist, feeling the foghorns vibrating in my chest, and wondering if I could imaginatively re-categorise the weather conditions such that I could disregard Patrick’s final warning. I felt queasy with anxiety, but eager to walk.
With me, also nervous, was my old friend David Quentin, who I had convinced to join me on the path.
The causeway heads out to sea, then disappears into water (Credit: Phil Nevard)
Where the road met the sea wall, there was a heavy metal stop-barrier, tagged with a jay-blue graffiti scrawl. A red firing flag drooped at the foot of a tall flagpole. Beyond the stop-barrier was a bank of signs in waspy yellow-and-black type and imperative grammar, detailing bye-laws, tautologically identifying themselves as warnings, indemnifying the MoD against drownings, explosions and mud deaths, offering caveats to the walker, and grudgingly admitting that this was, indeed, the start of a public right of way:
Warning: The Broomway is unmarked and very hazardous to pedestrians.
Warning: Do not approach or touch any object as it may explode and kill you.
Away from the sea wall ran the causeway, perhaps five yards wide, formed of brick rubble and grey hardcore. It headed out to sea over the mud, before disappearing into water and mist. Poles had been driven into the mud on either side of the path, six feet tall, marking out its curling line.
There were a few tussocks of eelgrass. The water’s surface was sheened with greys and silvers, like the patina on old mirror-glass. Otherwise, the causeway appeared to lead into a world of white.
After 300 yards the causeway ended, dipping beneath the sand like a river passing underground. Further out, a shallow sheen of water lay on top of the sand, stretching away. The diffused light made depth perception impossible, so that it seemed as if we were simply going to walk onwards into the ocean. We stopped at the end of the causeway, looking out across the pathless future. I took off my trainers and placed them on a tussock of eelgrass.
When the causeway ends, only marker posts dot the path (Credit: Nigel Cox)
“I’m worried that if we don’t make it back in time, the tide will float off with my shoes,” I said to David.
“If we don’t make it back in time, the tide will float off with your body,” he replied unconsolingly.
We stepped off the causeway. The water was warm on the skin, puddling to ankle depth. Underfoot I could feel the brain-like corrugations of the hard sand, so firmly packed that there was no give under the pressure of my step. Beyond us extended the sheer mirror-plane of the water, disrupted only here and there by shallow humps of sand and green slews of weed.
Out and on we walked, barefoot over and into the mirror-world. I glanced back at the coast. The air was grainy and flickering, like an old newsreel. The sea wall had hazed out to a thin black strip. Structures of unknown purpose – a white-beamed gantry, a low-slung barracks – showed on the shoreline. Every few hundred yards, I dropped a white cockle shell.
With so few orientation points and so many beckoning paths, we were finding it hard to stay on course. I was experiencing a powerful desire to walk straight out to sea and explore the greater freedoms of this empty tidal world.
But we were both still anxious about straying far from the notional path of the Broomway, and encountering the black mud or the quicksand.
Our directions said that we should reach something called the Maypole, a sunken telegraph pole with crosspieces that marked the southeastern edge of a tidal channel named Havengore Creek. But scale behaved strangely, and we weren’t paying sufficient attention to our pacings and distances.
We became confused by other spars sticking up from the mud here and there: relics of wrecks, perhaps, or more likely the mark points of former channels long since silted up by the shifting sands.
The tide rises with remarkable speed (Credit: Peter Shaw)
At last we found and reached what was surely the Maypole. It resembled the final yards of a galleon’s topmast, the body of a ship long since sunk into those deep sands. At its base, the currents had carved basins in whose warm water we wallowed our feet, sending shrimps scurrying. We took an onwards bearing and continued over the silver shield of the water.
My brain was beginning to move unusually, worked upon and changed by the mind-altering substances of this offshore world, and by the elation that arose from the counter-intuition of walking securely on water. Out there, nothing could be only itself. The eye fed on false colour values. Mirages of scale occurred, and tricks of depth.
Walking always with us were our reflections, our attentive ghost selves. For the water acted as a mirror-line, such that we both appeared joined at the ankles with our doubles, me more than 12ft tall and David a foot taller still. If anyone had been able to look out from the shore, through the mist, they would have seen two long-shanked walkers striding over the sea.
You enter the mirror-world by a causeway and you leave it by one. From Asplin’s Head, a rubble jetty as wide as a farm track reaches out over the Black Grounds, offering safe passage to shore. As we approached the jetty the sand began to give way underfoot, and we broke through into sucking black mud.
It was like striking oil – the glittering rich ooze gouting up around our feet. We slurped onwards to the causeway, the rubble of which had been colonized by a lurid green weed. Sea lavender and samphire thrived in the salt marsh.
By the time we reached the sea wall, David and I both wore diving boots of clay. We washed them off in a puddle, and stepped up onto a boat ramp. We had made landfall.
Beyond the causeway’s end, the shining sands stretched to a horizon line. One of Foulness’s farmers, John Burroughs, has spoken wistfully of coming out onto the sands in late autumn to hunt wigeon: he brings a board to use as a shooting stick and, leaning against it, feels that he “could be on the far side of the moon”. That felt exactly right: the walk out to sea as a soft lunacy, a passage beyond this world.
We walked back along the causeway to the point where the Broomway supposedly began, and there we turned into the wind and returned along the route by which we had come. Perhaps halfway back to the Maypole, emboldened by the day, we could no longer resist the temptation to explore further across the sand flats, and so we turned perpendicular to the line of the land and began walking straight out to sea, leaving the imagined safety of the Broomway behind us.
Stormy skies shadow the Broomway (Credit: Emma Emmerton)
That hour was an hour I will never forget. We did not know where the sand would slacken to mud, and yet somehow it never felt dangerous or rash. The tide was out and the moon would hold it out, and we had two hours in which to discover this vast revealed world: no more than two hours, for sure, but surely also no less.
The serenity of the space through which we were moving calmed me to the point of invulnerability, and thus we walked on. A mile out, the white mist still hovered, and in the haze I started to perceive impossible forms and shapes: a fleet of Viking longboats with high lug-rigged square sails; a squadron of feluccas, dhows and sgoths; cityscapes (the skyline of Istanbul, the profile of the Houses of Parliament).
When I looked back, the coastline was all but imperceptible, and it was apparent that our footprints had been erased behind us, and so we splashed tracelessly on out to the tidal limit. It felt at that moment unarguable that a horizon line might exert as potent a pull upon the mind as a mountain’s summit.
Eventually, reluctantly, nearly two miles offshore, with the tide approaching its turn and our worries at last starting to rise through our calm – black mud through sand – we began a long slow arc back towards the coastline and the path of the Broomway, away from the outermost point. There was the return of bearings, the approach to land, a settling to recognisability.
Mud-caked and silly with the sun and the miles, we left the sand where it met the causeway near Wakering Stairs. There at the causeway’s frayed end, on the brink of the Black Grounds, were the marker poles, and there – perched on the top of their stand of eelgrass – were my faithful trainers, still waiting for me. I put them on and we walked out, off the mirror and onto the sea wall. For days afterwards I felt calm, level, shining, sand flat.
Adapted from THE OLD WAYS: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2012 by Robert Macfarlane.
This story is a part of BBC Britain – a series focused on exploring this extraordinary island, one story at a time. See every BBC Britain story by heading to the Britain homepage; you can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Hope as big as Horns
- By Ramhusker
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 10 Replies
I think our hope is as big as this set!!!!
How the "Final Four" teams were built
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 0 Replies
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/01/19/how-nfc-afc-championship-teams-built-nfl-playoffs
How the Four Championship Game Teams Were Built
The commonality among the Packers, Falcons, Patriots and Steelers is obvious. But look past their elite quarterbacks, and other trends emerge.
by Albert Breer
Photo: Getty Images (4)
This all makes so much sense, now that we’re at the end of it.
In March, the Eagles gave injury-prone quarterback Sam Bradford a deal worth $36 million over two years. It was less than a week before the Texans handed Brock Osweiler—who started nine games before being benched in Denver—a four-year, $72 million contract.
A month later, the Rams gave up two first-round picks, two second-rounders and a third to get Jared Goff, and the Eagles dealt two 1's, a 2, a 3 and a starting corner to acquire Carson Wentz.
And that was all four months before the Vikings flipped a 1 and a 4 to Philly to get Bradford, because their former first-round pick, Teddy Bridgewater, got hurt.
The lesson? There’s no price too high for a franchise quarterback. Just look at this weekend. Three of the four quarterbacks still alive to see this weekend’s conference title games are making in excess of $20 million per year, and the fourth isn’t by choice—and he may be the greatest football player of all-time.
This isn’t just us on the outside thinking it, either. The coaches and GMs for the other 28 teams felt it, too, when they looked at that bracket after last weekend and saw the final four we’re all looking at: Aaron Rodgers at Matt Ryan at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, then Ben Roethlisberger at Tom Brady after that.
“They’re so hard to find,” one AFC head coach told me Tuesday. “If you go all in and make a decision that this is the guy, then you have to go get him. And then you have to support him, so he can be the guy you envision him being. If you go get a guy and you don’t support him—you don’t put what he needs around him, i.e. the right receivers, the right protection—then it doesn’t matter. It’s all gonna look bad.
“So it’s gotta be the right fit, the right coach, the right environment, it has to be the right everything. But you’ve gotta have a quarterback to win.”
In this week’s GamePlan, we’ll look deeper at the idea of investing at running back, what sets Aaron Rodgers apart in Mike McCarthy’s eyes, Le’Veon Bell as a pass-game weapon, Keanu Neal as a trend-setter, a quarterback who thinks Kyle Shanahan could be Bill Belichick and much more.
We’ll start with the four teams still alive, their rosters, and what lessons other teams are taking from watching. Again, the most obvious: Find a franchise quarterback. As our coach above said, though, there’s more to it than that. And so to dive in a little deeper, I repeated an exercise I did in my column at this time last year, and looked closely at the makeup of each team’s 53-man roster. Here they are:
* * *
ATLANTA FALCONS
Homegrown Players: 27 (20 draftees, 7 college free agents)
Outside Free Agents: 24
Trades/Waivers: 2
Quarterback Acquired: Drafted Matt Ryan with the 3rd overall pick in 2008.
Last Five First-Round Picks: S Keanu Neal (2016, 22); OLB Vic Beasley (2015, 8); OT Jake Matthews (2014, 6); CB Desmond Trufant (2013, 22); WR Julio Jones (2012, 6).
Top 5 Cap Figures: Ryan $23.75M; Jones $15.9M; DE Tyson Jackson $6.35M; G Andy Levitre $5.375M; Matthews $4.48M.
GREEN BAY PACKERS
Homegrown Players: 44 (34 draftees, 10 college free agents)
Outside Free Agents: 7
Trades/Waivers: 2
Quarterback Acquired: Drafted Aaron Rodgers with the 24th pick in 2005.
Last Five First-Round Picks: DT Kenny Clark (2016, 27), S Damarious Randall (2015, 30), DB Ha Ha Clinton-Dix (2014, 21), DE Datone Jones (2013, 26), DE Nick Perry (2012, 28).
Top 5 Cap Figures: Rodgers $19.25M; OLB Clay Matthews $13.75M; CB Sam Shields $12.00M; OLB Julius Peppers $10.5M; WR Randall Cobb $9.15M.
NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS
Homegrown Players: 37 (27 draftees, 10 college free agents)
Outside Free Agents: 10
Trades/Waivers: 6
Quarterback Acquired: Drafted Tom Brady with the 199th overall pick in 2000.
Last Five First-Round Picks: DT Malcom Brown (2015, 32); Dominique Easley (2014, 29); DE Chandler Jones (2012, 21); LB Dont’a Hightower (2012, 25); OT Nate Solder (2011, 17).
Top 5 Cap Figures: Brady $13.76M; Solder $10.32M; Hightower $7.75M; DE Jabaal Sheard $6.81M; TE Rob Gronkowski $6.62M
PITTSBURGH STEELERS
Homegrown Players: 30 (23 draftees, 7 college free agents)
Outside Free Agents: 21
Trades/Waivers: 2
Quarterback Acquired: Drafted Ben Roethlisberger with the 11th overall pick in 2004.
Last Five First-Round Picks: CB Artie Burns (2016, 25); OLB Bud Dupree (2015, 22); ILB Ryan Shazier (2014, 15); OLB Jarvis Jones (2013, 17); OG David DeCastro (2012, 24)
Top 5 Cap Figures: Roethlisberger $23.95M; ILB Lawrence Timmons $15.13M; WR Antonio Brown $11.88M; C Maurkice Pouncey $10.55M; DL Cam Heyward $10.4M.
* * *
Clearly, the Falcons aren’t built like the Packers, the Steelers’ construction is different than it was with their most recent (drafted-player heavy) title teams, and the Patriots’ high percentage of homegrown talent belies the fact that half of their first-round picks since 2012 are on other rosters. But when other teams look, they do see a few commonalities.
First, the teams have strong leadership, and that’s beyond just the quarterbacks—there are characters here (i.e. Martellus Bennett, Antonio Brown), but there’s character too. None of the four is overrun with knuckleheads.
“I do think the scouting departments now, the GMs are listening to coaches on what they need,” said an NFC head coach. “We’re the ones with these players all the time. And you don’t have to get the most talented player. If you’re always holding your breath, and he’s a ticking timebomb, that’s a problem. You have to be careful. You want quality people, guys you can rely on.”
Beyond that, the teams are built with purpose. The Patriots found Chris Hogan, the right kind of outside receiver for their offense, at a cheap rate. The Falcons plucked Keanu Neal to be Dan Quinn’s next Kam Chancellor. The Steelers brought James Harrison back to play a very specific role. The Packers have gotten way more out of the previously frustratingly talented Jared Cook than other clubs.
Those acquisitions worked because there was vision for what players would do. These aren’t collections of talent. They’re mosaics with each brushstroke tying into the next.
“Talent doesn’t win; talent in right places, coached right, motivated right gives you the best opportunity,” said the AFC head coach. “The most talented player might not be the best guy for your football team. The right fit is the right guy for your team. Nobody does that better than Belichick.
“It’s not about talent with him, it’s about fit. You can be the most talented guy, you might not fit what he wants to do, and he’s gonna pass you by. The teams (alive), I don’t think they really care about what other teams think.”
An NFC GM reinforced the point, saying, “It’s pretty clear with those four teams, if you have philosophical alignment, you can win.”
And the third one that was pointed out repeatedly to me—the teams can run the ball, and have defensive identity. The Packers, because of their injury issues, are the exception on both counts, which speaks to what Rodgers has done the past two months.
The Patriots and Falcons were both in the top quarter of the league running the ball. The Steelers weren’t, ranking 14th, but no one’s been better carrying the mail since Veteran’s Day than Le’Veon Bell. And that, as their rivals see it, is no mistake.
“Outside of Green Bay, they all have the ability to run the ball,” said an AFC GM. “And if you’re able to run it, it makes the quarterback that much better. If Matt Ryan has a run game like that one, he’s a top five quarterback every year. If he has to throw it 50 times every week? Any quarterback’s gonna have a hard time if that’s the way it is.”
So having a good locker room mix, a roster built with a purpose, and a run game to take the heat off the quarterback matters. But it’s hard to get away from the central theme—getting it right at the most important position is the starting point, and generating the right environment for that guy is next.
The flip side is there, too, with how disastrous it can be to force it with the wrong guy. (Surprise! Brock Osweiler’s name came up repeatedly).
“There probably isn’t a price too high, but you have to be careful selling the farm to get one piece,” said the NFC coach. “You have to be careful. You don’t want to just go get the best available. Look at Houston.”
Of the Texans, the AFC coach says, “The coach saw, ‘This guy isn’t gonna get us there.’ And then, eventually, the coach was right. He was right. So now they have a huge investment that’s killing them. And they have a decision to make.”
Something for everyone to remember in a few months when we’re all sorting through names like Jimmy Garoppolo, Kirk Cousins, Tony Romo, Mitch Trubisky, DeShone Kizer and DeShaun Watson—with the temptation being the payoff that the four franchises left standing are reaping now.
How the Four Championship Game Teams Were Built
The commonality among the Packers, Falcons, Patriots and Steelers is obvious. But look past their elite quarterbacks, and other trends emerge.
by Albert Breer
Photo: Getty Images (4)
This all makes so much sense, now that we’re at the end of it.
In March, the Eagles gave injury-prone quarterback Sam Bradford a deal worth $36 million over two years. It was less than a week before the Texans handed Brock Osweiler—who started nine games before being benched in Denver—a four-year, $72 million contract.
A month later, the Rams gave up two first-round picks, two second-rounders and a third to get Jared Goff, and the Eagles dealt two 1's, a 2, a 3 and a starting corner to acquire Carson Wentz.
And that was all four months before the Vikings flipped a 1 and a 4 to Philly to get Bradford, because their former first-round pick, Teddy Bridgewater, got hurt.
The lesson? There’s no price too high for a franchise quarterback. Just look at this weekend. Three of the four quarterbacks still alive to see this weekend’s conference title games are making in excess of $20 million per year, and the fourth isn’t by choice—and he may be the greatest football player of all-time.
This isn’t just us on the outside thinking it, either. The coaches and GMs for the other 28 teams felt it, too, when they looked at that bracket after last weekend and saw the final four we’re all looking at: Aaron Rodgers at Matt Ryan at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, then Ben Roethlisberger at Tom Brady after that.
“They’re so hard to find,” one AFC head coach told me Tuesday. “If you go all in and make a decision that this is the guy, then you have to go get him. And then you have to support him, so he can be the guy you envision him being. If you go get a guy and you don’t support him—you don’t put what he needs around him, i.e. the right receivers, the right protection—then it doesn’t matter. It’s all gonna look bad.
“So it’s gotta be the right fit, the right coach, the right environment, it has to be the right everything. But you’ve gotta have a quarterback to win.”
In this week’s GamePlan, we’ll look deeper at the idea of investing at running back, what sets Aaron Rodgers apart in Mike McCarthy’s eyes, Le’Veon Bell as a pass-game weapon, Keanu Neal as a trend-setter, a quarterback who thinks Kyle Shanahan could be Bill Belichick and much more.
We’ll start with the four teams still alive, their rosters, and what lessons other teams are taking from watching. Again, the most obvious: Find a franchise quarterback. As our coach above said, though, there’s more to it than that. And so to dive in a little deeper, I repeated an exercise I did in my column at this time last year, and looked closely at the makeup of each team’s 53-man roster. Here they are:
* * *
ATLANTA FALCONS
Homegrown Players: 27 (20 draftees, 7 college free agents)
Outside Free Agents: 24
Trades/Waivers: 2
Quarterback Acquired: Drafted Matt Ryan with the 3rd overall pick in 2008.
Last Five First-Round Picks: S Keanu Neal (2016, 22); OLB Vic Beasley (2015, 8); OT Jake Matthews (2014, 6); CB Desmond Trufant (2013, 22); WR Julio Jones (2012, 6).
Top 5 Cap Figures: Ryan $23.75M; Jones $15.9M; DE Tyson Jackson $6.35M; G Andy Levitre $5.375M; Matthews $4.48M.
GREEN BAY PACKERS
Homegrown Players: 44 (34 draftees, 10 college free agents)
Outside Free Agents: 7
Trades/Waivers: 2
Quarterback Acquired: Drafted Aaron Rodgers with the 24th pick in 2005.
Last Five First-Round Picks: DT Kenny Clark (2016, 27), S Damarious Randall (2015, 30), DB Ha Ha Clinton-Dix (2014, 21), DE Datone Jones (2013, 26), DE Nick Perry (2012, 28).
Top 5 Cap Figures: Rodgers $19.25M; OLB Clay Matthews $13.75M; CB Sam Shields $12.00M; OLB Julius Peppers $10.5M; WR Randall Cobb $9.15M.
NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS
Homegrown Players: 37 (27 draftees, 10 college free agents)
Outside Free Agents: 10
Trades/Waivers: 6
Quarterback Acquired: Drafted Tom Brady with the 199th overall pick in 2000.
Last Five First-Round Picks: DT Malcom Brown (2015, 32); Dominique Easley (2014, 29); DE Chandler Jones (2012, 21); LB Dont’a Hightower (2012, 25); OT Nate Solder (2011, 17).
Top 5 Cap Figures: Brady $13.76M; Solder $10.32M; Hightower $7.75M; DE Jabaal Sheard $6.81M; TE Rob Gronkowski $6.62M
PITTSBURGH STEELERS
Homegrown Players: 30 (23 draftees, 7 college free agents)
Outside Free Agents: 21
Trades/Waivers: 2
Quarterback Acquired: Drafted Ben Roethlisberger with the 11th overall pick in 2004.
Last Five First-Round Picks: CB Artie Burns (2016, 25); OLB Bud Dupree (2015, 22); ILB Ryan Shazier (2014, 15); OLB Jarvis Jones (2013, 17); OG David DeCastro (2012, 24)
Top 5 Cap Figures: Roethlisberger $23.95M; ILB Lawrence Timmons $15.13M; WR Antonio Brown $11.88M; C Maurkice Pouncey $10.55M; DL Cam Heyward $10.4M.
* * *
Clearly, the Falcons aren’t built like the Packers, the Steelers’ construction is different than it was with their most recent (drafted-player heavy) title teams, and the Patriots’ high percentage of homegrown talent belies the fact that half of their first-round picks since 2012 are on other rosters. But when other teams look, they do see a few commonalities.
First, the teams have strong leadership, and that’s beyond just the quarterbacks—there are characters here (i.e. Martellus Bennett, Antonio Brown), but there’s character too. None of the four is overrun with knuckleheads.
“I do think the scouting departments now, the GMs are listening to coaches on what they need,” said an NFC head coach. “We’re the ones with these players all the time. And you don’t have to get the most talented player. If you’re always holding your breath, and he’s a ticking timebomb, that’s a problem. You have to be careful. You want quality people, guys you can rely on.”
Beyond that, the teams are built with purpose. The Patriots found Chris Hogan, the right kind of outside receiver for their offense, at a cheap rate. The Falcons plucked Keanu Neal to be Dan Quinn’s next Kam Chancellor. The Steelers brought James Harrison back to play a very specific role. The Packers have gotten way more out of the previously frustratingly talented Jared Cook than other clubs.
Those acquisitions worked because there was vision for what players would do. These aren’t collections of talent. They’re mosaics with each brushstroke tying into the next.
“Talent doesn’t win; talent in right places, coached right, motivated right gives you the best opportunity,” said the AFC head coach. “The most talented player might not be the best guy for your football team. The right fit is the right guy for your team. Nobody does that better than Belichick.
“It’s not about talent with him, it’s about fit. You can be the most talented guy, you might not fit what he wants to do, and he’s gonna pass you by. The teams (alive), I don’t think they really care about what other teams think.”
An NFC GM reinforced the point, saying, “It’s pretty clear with those four teams, if you have philosophical alignment, you can win.”
And the third one that was pointed out repeatedly to me—the teams can run the ball, and have defensive identity. The Packers, because of their injury issues, are the exception on both counts, which speaks to what Rodgers has done the past two months.
The Patriots and Falcons were both in the top quarter of the league running the ball. The Steelers weren’t, ranking 14th, but no one’s been better carrying the mail since Veteran’s Day than Le’Veon Bell. And that, as their rivals see it, is no mistake.
“Outside of Green Bay, they all have the ability to run the ball,” said an AFC GM. “And if you’re able to run it, it makes the quarterback that much better. If Matt Ryan has a run game like that one, he’s a top five quarterback every year. If he has to throw it 50 times every week? Any quarterback’s gonna have a hard time if that’s the way it is.”
So having a good locker room mix, a roster built with a purpose, and a run game to take the heat off the quarterback matters. But it’s hard to get away from the central theme—getting it right at the most important position is the starting point, and generating the right environment for that guy is next.
The flip side is there, too, with how disastrous it can be to force it with the wrong guy. (Surprise! Brock Osweiler’s name came up repeatedly).
“There probably isn’t a price too high, but you have to be careful selling the farm to get one piece,” said the NFC coach. “You have to be careful. You don’t want to just go get the best available. Look at Houston.”
Of the Texans, the AFC coach says, “The coach saw, ‘This guy isn’t gonna get us there.’ And then, eventually, the coach was right. He was right. So now they have a huge investment that’s killing them. And they have a decision to make.”
Something for everyone to remember in a few months when we’re all sorting through names like Jimmy Garoppolo, Kirk Cousins, Tony Romo, Mitch Trubisky, DeShone Kizer and DeShaun Watson—with the temptation being the payoff that the four franchises left standing are reaping now.
All-22: Sean McVay's Offensive Scheme.
- By Scirca
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 6 Replies
@LACHAMP46 @Zero @-X- @den-the-coach @jrry32 @Mackeyser @Dxmissile @CGI_Ram @RamFan503 @SteezyEndo
Login to view embedded media
Marshall Faulk: "Jared Goff is an Arm talent."
Login to view embedded media
Marshall Faulk: "Jared Goff is an Arm talent."
Jake McQuaide picked for Pro Bowl
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 20 Replies
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2017/01/18/rams-long-snapper-picked-for-pro-bowl/
Rams long snapper picked for Pro Bowl
Posted by Zac Jackson on January 18, 2017
Getty Images
Rams long snapper Jake McQuaide has been selected to represent the NFC in the Pro Bowl.
McQuaide is a first-time Pro Bowler. He’s been the Rams’ long snapper since 2011.
The Pro Bowl is Jan. 29 in Orlando.
McQuaide becomes the third Rams player to be selected for the Pro Bowl, joining punter Johnny Hekker and defensive tackle Aaron Donald.
Rams long snapper picked for Pro Bowl
Posted by Zac Jackson on January 18, 2017
Rams long snapper Jake McQuaide has been selected to represent the NFC in the Pro Bowl.
McQuaide is a first-time Pro Bowler. He’s been the Rams’ long snapper since 2011.
The Pro Bowl is Jan. 29 in Orlando.
McQuaide becomes the third Rams player to be selected for the Pro Bowl, joining punter Johnny Hekker and defensive tackle Aaron Donald.
Ravens owner: Cut commercials to fix TV ratings
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 41 Replies
My favorite quote is: "I still don’t know any owner that’s in this business because of the money."
********************************************************************************************
http://www.baltimoreravens.com/news...mercials/3fdd160c-bc8e-4c41-a2ca-7d2246a8c62f
STEVE BISCIOTTI ON NFL'S RATINGS: FIX COMMERCIALS
Ryan Mink/BaltimoreRavens.com Staff Writer
This is for fans who will grow tired of watching commercials during this weekend’s playoff football slate.
Ravens Owner Steve Bisciotti is right there in agreement.
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that nobody wants to see two minutes of commercials, come back, kick the ball and then go to a minute-and-a-half of commercials,” Bisciotti said Tuesday. “I’ve thought that was absurd since I was 20 years old.”
The NFL’s declining ratings have been widely reported this season, and there’s been much talk about why. The 2016 election, the referees, players’ off-field-issues, the crackdown on player celebrations, the injury-inducing big hits (and lack of big hits) have all been cited as possible factors.
Bisciotti first questioned whether the ratings drop is just a reflection of problems across television. Consumers have turned more and more to their smartphones.
“This is the most precipitous drop we’ve ever had, right?” Bisciotti said.
“It has to be compared with everything else that [the television networks are] doing. I don’t know if ‘CSI’ is down 10 percent also. You’d have to compare apples to apples by looking at general viewership. But yes, those numbers were pretty stark at the beginning of the year.”
Still, Bisciotti thinks altering the commercials during games could be a place to start. The NFL already began experimenting in Week 16, as networks played with the number of ads in a break, the length of the ads and the frequency of the breaks.
“We’ve got to figure that out,” Bisciotti said. “Again, if you change that, it could mean a reduction in income, but that’s going to hit the players more significantly than it’s going to hit the owners. I still don’t know any owner that’s in this business because of the money.
“Everything is on the table, and if we have to go to ABC and NBC and say that we’ve got to cut some commercials out and give some money back and half of that money doesn’t go into the player pool, maybe that’s what we’re going to have to do. But our expenses would be adjusted accordingly too. So, I’d like to see some things cleaned up.”
********************************************************************************************
http://www.baltimoreravens.com/news...mercials/3fdd160c-bc8e-4c41-a2ca-7d2246a8c62f
STEVE BISCIOTTI ON NFL'S RATINGS: FIX COMMERCIALS
Ryan Mink/BaltimoreRavens.com Staff Writer
This is for fans who will grow tired of watching commercials during this weekend’s playoff football slate.
Ravens Owner Steve Bisciotti is right there in agreement.
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that nobody wants to see two minutes of commercials, come back, kick the ball and then go to a minute-and-a-half of commercials,” Bisciotti said Tuesday. “I’ve thought that was absurd since I was 20 years old.”
The NFL’s declining ratings have been widely reported this season, and there’s been much talk about why. The 2016 election, the referees, players’ off-field-issues, the crackdown on player celebrations, the injury-inducing big hits (and lack of big hits) have all been cited as possible factors.
Bisciotti first questioned whether the ratings drop is just a reflection of problems across television. Consumers have turned more and more to their smartphones.
“This is the most precipitous drop we’ve ever had, right?” Bisciotti said.
“It has to be compared with everything else that [the television networks are] doing. I don’t know if ‘CSI’ is down 10 percent also. You’d have to compare apples to apples by looking at general viewership. But yes, those numbers were pretty stark at the beginning of the year.”
Still, Bisciotti thinks altering the commercials during games could be a place to start. The NFL already began experimenting in Week 16, as networks played with the number of ads in a break, the length of the ads and the frequency of the breaks.
“We’ve got to figure that out,” Bisciotti said. “Again, if you change that, it could mean a reduction in income, but that’s going to hit the players more significantly than it’s going to hit the owners. I still don’t know any owner that’s in this business because of the money.
“Everything is on the table, and if we have to go to ABC and NBC and say that we’ve got to cut some commercials out and give some money back and half of that money doesn’t go into the player pool, maybe that’s what we’re going to have to do. But our expenses would be adjusted accordingly too. So, I’d like to see some things cleaned up.”
Brandon Marshall
- By RamsJunkie
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 70 Replies
Jets to cut Brandon Marshall this offseason?
ESPN Jets reporter Rich Cimini expects the team to release Brandon Marshall this offseason.
Marshall is entering the final year of his contract and is coming off arguably the worst season of his career. He had a 10-year-low 59 catches for 788 yards, just the second time since 2006 that Marshall was held under 1,000 yards. He also found the end zone just three times after scoring a combined 45 touchdowns the previous four years. Everything can't be blamed on Marshall, however, as the quarterback play was truly atrocious. But Marshall turns 33 in March and is due a non-guaranteed $7.5 million. The Jets are going nowhere fast.
Source: ESPN.com
Jan 17 - 8:18 PM
Marshall Has still got it. I believe he is still a top 10 WR in this league and would love to have him on a two year deal if the jets were to cut him. Hell I would even offer them a 7th rounder to trade for him to ensure we get him.
ESPN Jets reporter Rich Cimini expects the team to release Brandon Marshall this offseason.
Marshall is entering the final year of his contract and is coming off arguably the worst season of his career. He had a 10-year-low 59 catches for 788 yards, just the second time since 2006 that Marshall was held under 1,000 yards. He also found the end zone just three times after scoring a combined 45 touchdowns the previous four years. Everything can't be blamed on Marshall, however, as the quarterback play was truly atrocious. But Marshall turns 33 in March and is due a non-guaranteed $7.5 million. The Jets are going nowhere fast.
Source: ESPN.com
Jan 17 - 8:18 PM
Marshall Has still got it. I believe he is still a top 10 WR in this league and would love to have him on a two year deal if the jets were to cut him. Hell I would even offer them a 7th rounder to trade for him to ensure we get him.
Just a little something to fire you up
- By Legatron4
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 18 Replies
I stole this from Facebook. It gets me HYPED for the future. Go Rams!!!
Ricky Proehl to resign from coaching
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 12 Replies
I was hoping he would consider joining the Rams as wide receiver coach but alas...
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...e-receivers-coach-ricky-proehl-stepping-down/
Panthers wide receivers coach Ricky Proehl stepping down
Posted by Zac Jackson on January 17, 2017
Getty Images
Panthers wide receivers coach Ricky Proehl has informed the team that he plans to resign.
Per the Panthers’ official website, Proehl is stepping down for family reasons. He has two sons who will be playing college football next fall.
Proehl spent six years with the Panthers, the last four as wide receivers coach. He had a 17-year career as a player and played three seasons with the Panthers.
Proehl caught 669 passes and 54 touchdowns passes in his career while playing for the Cardinals, Seahawks, Bears, Panthers, Rams and Colts.
Login to view embedded media View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t-6iZk8dJk
Login to view embedded media View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-Qhg874mnU
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...e-receivers-coach-ricky-proehl-stepping-down/
Panthers wide receivers coach Ricky Proehl stepping down
Posted by Zac Jackson on January 17, 2017
Panthers wide receivers coach Ricky Proehl has informed the team that he plans to resign.
Per the Panthers’ official website, Proehl is stepping down for family reasons. He has two sons who will be playing college football next fall.
Proehl spent six years with the Panthers, the last four as wide receivers coach. He had a 17-year career as a player and played three seasons with the Panthers.
Proehl caught 669 passes and 54 touchdowns passes in his career while playing for the Cardinals, Seahawks, Bears, Panthers, Rams and Colts.
Login to view embedded media View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t-6iZk8dJk
Login to view embedded media View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-Qhg874mnU
