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Two former NFL players admit to drinking alcohol before games
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 22 Replies
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...-santana-moss-admit-to-drinking-before-games/
Clinton Portis, Santana Moss admit to drinking before games
Posted by Mike Florio on December 6, 2017
Getty Images
As Washington closes in on a grievance hearing that could raise plenty of questions about the handling of alcohol by the organization, a couple of former players freely admit that they routinely drank alcohol before games.
“Prior to the game, on our way, we would take a little shot,” former Washington running back Clinton Portis told NBC4 in D.C. (via the Washington Post) regarding himself, receiver Santana Moss, and the late Sean Taylor. “Not like going out and getting sloppy wasted. Just adrenaline. You know, you take a shot and you were done with it. Me, Santana and Sean, we did this for a year and a half before anybody knew. We never told anybody. It was just, hey, here’s a little sip, bam, that was it.”
The drink of choice was Hennessy, and the tradition was sparked by a claim from Portis that he had one of his best games with the Broncos when he played with a hangover. Other players began doing it, and it continued until former coach Jim Zorn caught wind of it. Zorn believed they were doing it in honor of Taylor, who had since been killed as a result of a home invasion.
Portis defended the habit by pointing out that teams routinely pump players full of drugs.
“They give you shots [of medication], they give you all these pain meds, they give you all this [stuff],” Portis said. “Me, I didn’t take shots. You ask anybody. We needed to get an IV one time; it took me three hours to get an IV bag, because I hate needles. I don’t take meds. I don’t take shots. That just wasn’t me. So in pain or anything else, what did I do? You know what, I’ve got to play. Get my mind right, take my little sip, and I’m out of here.”
Moss downplayed the impact of the habit of taking a pregame shot.
“Once you get out there and all that adrenaline going on, that [alcohol] is out you, you know what I mean?” Moss said. “You’re taking all this Gatorade and water you don’t have it in your system no more . . . And that was just kind of having fun. You know what, let’s take that stress out of our heads and say let’s just have fun and not care so much. Because sometimes as players, you put so much pressure on yourself to go out there and perform. Man, let’s relax.”
They’re hardly alone when it comes to pre-game efforts to manage stress, especially in today’s climate. From the 60,000 fans who are scrutinizing what you do in the stadium to the hundreds of thousands watching at home to the millions with the ability to scream “you suck!” on social media whenever they want, players are processing plenty of stress — along with the constant risk of serious injury.
It should surprise no one that guys in their early-to-mid-20s would take a shot of alcohol (or more) or smoke marijuana or do whatever they need to do to handle the intense mental and physical demands of playing in the NFL.
Clinton Portis, Santana Moss admit to drinking before games
Posted by Mike Florio on December 6, 2017
Getty Images
As Washington closes in on a grievance hearing that could raise plenty of questions about the handling of alcohol by the organization, a couple of former players freely admit that they routinely drank alcohol before games.
“Prior to the game, on our way, we would take a little shot,” former Washington running back Clinton Portis told NBC4 in D.C. (via the Washington Post) regarding himself, receiver Santana Moss, and the late Sean Taylor. “Not like going out and getting sloppy wasted. Just adrenaline. You know, you take a shot and you were done with it. Me, Santana and Sean, we did this for a year and a half before anybody knew. We never told anybody. It was just, hey, here’s a little sip, bam, that was it.”
The drink of choice was Hennessy, and the tradition was sparked by a claim from Portis that he had one of his best games with the Broncos when he played with a hangover. Other players began doing it, and it continued until former coach Jim Zorn caught wind of it. Zorn believed they were doing it in honor of Taylor, who had since been killed as a result of a home invasion.
Portis defended the habit by pointing out that teams routinely pump players full of drugs.
“They give you shots [of medication], they give you all these pain meds, they give you all this [stuff],” Portis said. “Me, I didn’t take shots. You ask anybody. We needed to get an IV one time; it took me three hours to get an IV bag, because I hate needles. I don’t take meds. I don’t take shots. That just wasn’t me. So in pain or anything else, what did I do? You know what, I’ve got to play. Get my mind right, take my little sip, and I’m out of here.”
Moss downplayed the impact of the habit of taking a pregame shot.
“Once you get out there and all that adrenaline going on, that [alcohol] is out you, you know what I mean?” Moss said. “You’re taking all this Gatorade and water you don’t have it in your system no more . . . And that was just kind of having fun. You know what, let’s take that stress out of our heads and say let’s just have fun and not care so much. Because sometimes as players, you put so much pressure on yourself to go out there and perform. Man, let’s relax.”
They’re hardly alone when it comes to pre-game efforts to manage stress, especially in today’s climate. From the 60,000 fans who are scrutinizing what you do in the stadium to the hundreds of thousands watching at home to the millions with the ability to scream “you suck!” on social media whenever they want, players are processing plenty of stress — along with the constant risk of serious injury.
It should surprise no one that guys in their early-to-mid-20s would take a shot of alcohol (or more) or smoke marijuana or do whatever they need to do to handle the intense mental and physical demands of playing in the NFL.
Rewatched the Goff & Wentz draft
- By Florida_Ram
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 7 Replies
I know we all understand that this game is more than these two young stud QB's and their overall NFL draft selections.
As the super hype gets bigger each day leading up to the game, this first contest between the two young field generals could light the torch to a quarterback rivalry that lasts for several years.
The epic trades that the Los Angeles and Philadelphia general managers made to move up in the 2016 NFL Draft, turned these franchises into heavyweight contenders in less than 2 years.
I thought some of you like myself might want to relive both of their selections by the commissioner in the below clips that will forever link them together.
Only days away from their first ever meeting. :yess:
Login to view embedded media View: https://youtu.be/l_F4k9g-7aI?t=139
Login to view embedded media View: https://youtu.be/k8hLnTVAErY?t=160
______________________________GOFF________ WENTZ
_
_____________________
________________________
_________________________The Beginning of a classic
__________
_____________________
As the super hype gets bigger each day leading up to the game, this first contest between the two young field generals could light the torch to a quarterback rivalry that lasts for several years.
The epic trades that the Los Angeles and Philadelphia general managers made to move up in the 2016 NFL Draft, turned these franchises into heavyweight contenders in less than 2 years.
I thought some of you like myself might want to relive both of their selections by the commissioner in the below clips that will forever link them together.
Only days away from their first ever meeting. :yess:
Login to view embedded media View: https://youtu.be/l_F4k9g-7aI?t=139
Login to view embedded media View: https://youtu.be/k8hLnTVAErY?t=160
______________________________GOFF________ WENTZ
_
_____________________
________________________
_________________________The Beginning of a classic
__________
_____________________
Language Question
- By Farr Be It
- OFF TOPIC
- 21 Replies
There are thousands of different languages and dialects in the world. Most of which I do not speak. I have a feint grasp of conversational Spanish. That grasp seems to be fading a bit every year. English is my thing. I can do English.
I probably make my share of grammatical mistakes and misspellings. (Thank goodness for spellcheck.) Also, there are multiple acceptable ways to express ideas, and even spell words. Our British ROD pals may express their opinions with more “colour” and our Aussie friends are probably nodding their head, saying “fair dinkum”.
But I’m trying to figure out a way to finesse some questions I have about recent language trends I have seen. In light of new communication methods, such as texting, twitter, social media forums such as ROD, there have been language shortcuts that have become part of the lexicon of our culture.
However, I have noticed a trend that bothers me a bit. (I recently noticed it with one of my millennial sons, too)
Is our language getting dumbed down, or am I just uptight?
Probably.......”prolly?”
alm:
Would have....would’ve....”would of”alm:
I’d say these are just ignorance, lack of education, or the result of “feelings” concerns in our education system, but I see guys I consider smart (many smarter than me, no doubt) using these phrases, among others.
Please don’t think I’m being elitist. I’m looking for input from you guys. Why has this become the norm?
I probably make my share of grammatical mistakes and misspellings. (Thank goodness for spellcheck.) Also, there are multiple acceptable ways to express ideas, and even spell words. Our British ROD pals may express their opinions with more “colour” and our Aussie friends are probably nodding their head, saying “fair dinkum”.
But I’m trying to figure out a way to finesse some questions I have about recent language trends I have seen. In light of new communication methods, such as texting, twitter, social media forums such as ROD, there have been language shortcuts that have become part of the lexicon of our culture.
However, I have noticed a trend that bothers me a bit. (I recently noticed it with one of my millennial sons, too)
Is our language getting dumbed down, or am I just uptight?
Probably.......”prolly?”
alm:Would have....would’ve....”would of”
alm:I’d say these are just ignorance, lack of education, or the result of “feelings” concerns in our education system, but I see guys I consider smart (many smarter than me, no doubt) using these phrases, among others.
Please don’t think I’m being elitist. I’m looking for input from you guys. Why has this become the norm?
What Eagles Fans Are Saying Before The Game
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 299 Replies
Let's get the party started!!!!!!! :rockon:
Login to view embedded media View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW1dbiD_zDk
************************************************************************
Login to view embedded media View: https://twitter.com/Eagles/status/938044213303721984
http://www.philadelphiaeagles.com/n...ce-Field/925f7fa0-e73c-405f-bafc-b9ee83347bff
Pederson: Eagles Must Improve On Practice Field
By Dave Spadaro
COSTA MESA, CA – After an overnight flight and quick unpacking from Seattle to California for a week-long stay in a hotel with training facilities at Angel Stadium of Anaheim, head coach Doug Pederson dug out from the loss to the Seahawks and trained his focus on the 9-4 Los Angeles Rams.
(Giving your team a win before the actual game is played, Dave? The Rams are 9-3 and will be 10-3 soon).
And he did so with a couple of messages in mind.
First, he wants the Eagles to have a great week of practice prior to Sunday’s game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum against the Rams. It hadn’t been that way the last couple of weeks and Pederson thought the lack of crispness in practice caught up to the Eagles in a sloppier-than-usual win over Chicago and in Sunday’s loss at Seattle.
“I feel strong about, you win games during the week and sometimes things come up and as a coach you’re always maybe a little more nervous than you should be (about) the way we practice. What you saw previously to the last couple of weeks – you didn’t see the penalties, you didn’t see the turnovers, you didn’t see the negative things that have been going on. And that’s a direct correlation to how we’ve practiced during the week. We’ve got to get that erased this week.”
The Eagles, of course, are in a unique setting away from Philadelphia, so it’s important that the coaches have their preparations and teaching points very sharp, and that the players get on the practice field and get to work.
The players were off on Monday after an early-morning arrival at the temporary team hotel.
“The challenge is that we try to eliminate distractions. It’s hard, when you’ve got back-to-back like this, West Coast trips, to be able to fly back home and practice and then come back home this way at the end of the week, so try to keep the week as normal as possible for the guys, for the coaches,” Pederson said.
“We’ve got a great setup here at the hotel. Coaches have offices and workspace to get the work done. The players have everything they need right here, from treatment, rehab, doctors, medical facilities, all of that.
“When we set this trip, there was an advance team that put all of this together for us and they’ve done a great job. I’m just looking forward to the week.”
In the course of nine consecutive victories to tie a franchise record, the Eagles were incredibly impressive. But they were also sloppy at times and they were able to get away with four fumbles and 11 penalties in a 28-point win over Chicago because, let’s be honest, the Eagles are just a much better football team.
You can’t play sloppy football, as the Eagles did in Seattle with a pair of turnovers and eight penalties, and beat good teams.
“Winning can kind of cover up, or mask, some things, some deficiencies, a little chink in your armor if there is any,” Pederson said. “Coaches and players fall into the same boat sometimes. We need games where we get hit in the mouth and we have to fight, battle and scratch. Yesterday’s game was one of those games.
“When I start seeing the same mistakes in ballgames that I see during the week, we just gotta get back to just focusing in on all of our jobs and owning that.”
As the Eagles prepare this week, they’ll hope that tight end Zach Ertz works his way back to the field after suffering a concussion in Sunday’s loss. He’s in the protocol program and is day to day. Otherwise, the Eagles are in good shape from the game.
Now they have to get better from a performance standpoint to beat Los Angeles on Sunday. The Eagles, at 10-2, are tied with Minnesota for the best record in the NFC and have a magic number of one to clinch a playoff berth.
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more than improving on the practice field, you need to call a more
aggressive game, march that ball down the field early in the game and score.
You have been amazing thus far, Doug...but this was not your best called game
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It's true, we should have taken vertical shots deep early and often, but we failed to stretch the field. And we REALLY could have! I was watching their corners and safeties all night, we should have destroyed their secondary. It was such an intermediate game plan. Blah! Let's get over it. We'll open things up again against LA. Good lessons learned in Seattle.
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Seattle was a terrible place to be on Sunday. The full moon was weird and their fans were terrible. I'm still trying to shake it off
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Eagles CBs are not fully compettive...you can play off a bit with fair QBs....but a running QB who can throw made Mills and Darby look mediocre...at best.......which is what they are and always have been. Unless they really get to Goff he may tear them up with the receivers the Rams have...and Vaitai may get Wentz killed if he plays like the turnstile he was in Seattle. Eagles lose third game of the season
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Darby is an amazing cover corner and Mills isn't far behind. You do realize that we ask our corners to do A LOT, right? Speed isn't an issue, but play recognition was tough against Seattle. We were literally just a step behind on making a few big plays and pass break-ups. I witnessed the game from the first row and still left impressed with our defense. Seattle just knew exactly how and where to attack us, plus benfitted from Wilson's magic.
I'm not worried about Darby and Mills, but would like to see our man Malcolm Jenkins step up his game... he got beat for a TD and should have made a play on the ball. I love our secondary, but Seattle got the best of them (we're still talking about only giving up 24 points here, lol!).
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https://www.bleedinggreennation.com...ight-end-sidney-jones-robert-woods-barwin-nfl
Eagles injury update ahead of Rams game
by Brandon Lee Gowton
Here’s a quick update on the Philadelphia Eagles’ injury situation ahead of their Week 14 game against the Los Angeles Rams. Note that the Eagles’ first official injury report won’t come out until tomorrow on Wednesday, December 6.
PHILADELPHIA EAGLES INJURIES
Zach Ertz
Doug Pederson announced Ertz is in the concussion protocol. The tight end got concussed during the third quarter of the Eagles’ loss to the Seahawks. Ertz is staying with the team in Los Angeles this week as opposed to flying back home to Philadelphia. Ertz will have to pass through the NFL’s mandatory concussion protocol before he can return to action. The Eagles will surely hope to have their leading receiver as the team prepares to face a tough Rams team.
Joe Walker
There’s been no real update on Walker, who missed practice entirely last week and didn’t play on Sunday night. We’ll see where he’s at this week. Najee Goode mostly filled in during Walker’s absence. Dannell Ellerbe only played one defensive snap at linebacker.
Sidney Jones
Jones is still on the NFI list so he won’t practice this week. Pederson said: “He’s still rehabbing and doing his thing.” Keep in mind the Eagles have a 21-day window where Jones can practice before having to either be 1) put on the 53-man roster or 2) shut down for the season. That window starts when Jones starts to practice. It remains to be seen if that’ll happen at all this season. It could be a possibility later this month.
LOS ANGELES RAMS
The Rams are dealing with some injuries as well.
Robert Woods
Los Angeles might be without their leading wide receiver against the Eagles. Woods has missed two games so far due to a shoulder injury. Late last week, Rams head coach Sean McVay said Week 15 might be a “more realistic target” than a Week 14 return. He also added: “A couple weeks from now is probably what’s the most realistic approach. But you never know with Robert.” So we’ll have to see how Woods handles practice this week.
Connor Barwin
Barwin is expected to miss this week’s game against his former team. McVay said he will “more than likely be out.” That’s a bummer. The former Eagles pass rusher ranks tied for second on the Rams in sacks this season.
Alec Ogletree
Rams starting middle linebacker and defensive captain Alec Ogletree hurt his elbow in Week 13. He expects to play against Philadelphia, though.
-----------
if Ertz doesn't play
Burton and Celek are both vets who can be greatly underestimated. While they may not be as good, they can be certainly reliable.
-----------
Is Ertz a bigger loss than Woods is for the Rams?
Both teams spread the ball around. Tough call.
------------
Why is it a 'bummer' that Barwin won't play against us?
I liked Barwin, he’s without a doubt a great guy, but personally I’m not in the least bit bummed out that our opponent’s leading pass rusher is out for a game
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The true test for this team is this week
It will answer a lot of questions about the teams character as to weather if we are ready to be qualify as one of the top 5 teams in the league for years to come.
If last week’s win was indeed due to complacency the team will for sure be determined to prove it to themselves that their focus is back.
On the contrary if last week’s loss was due to the gravity of the stage they were playing, they must have learnt something in terms of how to cope up with this pressure. Hopefully they understood that this will be a recurring thing. Because quite frankly, this young team hadn’t quite played such a high profile game hitherto.
The KC loss was nothing compared to Seattle loss. It was largely considered as a moral win by media and fans alike. And the circumstances surrounding that loss was very different. There was never any pressure given how low the expectations were at that point.
Skill doesn’t play as important a role in this week’s win as Character does. Skill will open the first door for you and it may open the second door, but it won’t open the door that matters. That’s what gets me excited for this week. We are about to see how this team responds to upsetting results.
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To me it doesn’t matter where we rank actually. We were pretty much #1 (2 or 3 depending on a few writers) for a while now and while I think the Eagles earned it, it also placed that skeptic bullseye on us for critics and opposing fans to doubt and question. Let them go that shuffling all they want. The biggest goal is getting to, and winning the Superbowl.
If you do that..then all these rankings right now,don’t mean squat,and they won’t even be talking about it once it’s over. The Eagles are 10-2 , and are a pretty good football team. We had the NFL’s attention most of the year and deservingly so. We lost..it happens.
It’s just when you are that good,and riding on a huge win streak the inevitable is bound to happen. They just need to regroup and continue on this great season so far. It’s been ones heck of a ride so far…and it’s not over yet.
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the Eagles got to work on that time of ball control going again the Rams can’t score if Eagles keep the ball, the run game has to work and that opens up the pass game and keeps the defense hungry for success!
Login to view embedded media View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW1dbiD_zDk
************************************************************************
Login to view embedded media View: https://twitter.com/Eagles/status/938044213303721984
http://www.philadelphiaeagles.com/n...ce-Field/925f7fa0-e73c-405f-bafc-b9ee83347bff
Pederson: Eagles Must Improve On Practice Field
By Dave Spadaro
COSTA MESA, CA – After an overnight flight and quick unpacking from Seattle to California for a week-long stay in a hotel with training facilities at Angel Stadium of Anaheim, head coach Doug Pederson dug out from the loss to the Seahawks and trained his focus on the 9-4 Los Angeles Rams.
(Giving your team a win before the actual game is played, Dave? The Rams are 9-3 and will be 10-3 soon).
And he did so with a couple of messages in mind.
First, he wants the Eagles to have a great week of practice prior to Sunday’s game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum against the Rams. It hadn’t been that way the last couple of weeks and Pederson thought the lack of crispness in practice caught up to the Eagles in a sloppier-than-usual win over Chicago and in Sunday’s loss at Seattle.
“I feel strong about, you win games during the week and sometimes things come up and as a coach you’re always maybe a little more nervous than you should be (about) the way we practice. What you saw previously to the last couple of weeks – you didn’t see the penalties, you didn’t see the turnovers, you didn’t see the negative things that have been going on. And that’s a direct correlation to how we’ve practiced during the week. We’ve got to get that erased this week.”
The Eagles, of course, are in a unique setting away from Philadelphia, so it’s important that the coaches have their preparations and teaching points very sharp, and that the players get on the practice field and get to work.
The players were off on Monday after an early-morning arrival at the temporary team hotel.
“The challenge is that we try to eliminate distractions. It’s hard, when you’ve got back-to-back like this, West Coast trips, to be able to fly back home and practice and then come back home this way at the end of the week, so try to keep the week as normal as possible for the guys, for the coaches,” Pederson said.
“We’ve got a great setup here at the hotel. Coaches have offices and workspace to get the work done. The players have everything they need right here, from treatment, rehab, doctors, medical facilities, all of that.
“When we set this trip, there was an advance team that put all of this together for us and they’ve done a great job. I’m just looking forward to the week.”
In the course of nine consecutive victories to tie a franchise record, the Eagles were incredibly impressive. But they were also sloppy at times and they were able to get away with four fumbles and 11 penalties in a 28-point win over Chicago because, let’s be honest, the Eagles are just a much better football team.
You can’t play sloppy football, as the Eagles did in Seattle with a pair of turnovers and eight penalties, and beat good teams.
“Winning can kind of cover up, or mask, some things, some deficiencies, a little chink in your armor if there is any,” Pederson said. “Coaches and players fall into the same boat sometimes. We need games where we get hit in the mouth and we have to fight, battle and scratch. Yesterday’s game was one of those games.
“When I start seeing the same mistakes in ballgames that I see during the week, we just gotta get back to just focusing in on all of our jobs and owning that.”
As the Eagles prepare this week, they’ll hope that tight end Zach Ertz works his way back to the field after suffering a concussion in Sunday’s loss. He’s in the protocol program and is day to day. Otherwise, the Eagles are in good shape from the game.
Now they have to get better from a performance standpoint to beat Los Angeles on Sunday. The Eagles, at 10-2, are tied with Minnesota for the best record in the NFC and have a magic number of one to clinch a playoff berth.
----------
more than improving on the practice field, you need to call a more
aggressive game, march that ball down the field early in the game and score.
You have been amazing thus far, Doug...but this was not your best called game
-----------
It's true, we should have taken vertical shots deep early and often, but we failed to stretch the field. And we REALLY could have! I was watching their corners and safeties all night, we should have destroyed their secondary. It was such an intermediate game plan. Blah! Let's get over it. We'll open things up again against LA. Good lessons learned in Seattle.
----------
Seattle was a terrible place to be on Sunday. The full moon was weird and their fans were terrible. I'm still trying to shake it off
-----------
Eagles CBs are not fully compettive...you can play off a bit with fair QBs....but a running QB who can throw made Mills and Darby look mediocre...at best.......which is what they are and always have been. Unless they really get to Goff he may tear them up with the receivers the Rams have...and Vaitai may get Wentz killed if he plays like the turnstile he was in Seattle. Eagles lose third game of the season
----------
Darby is an amazing cover corner and Mills isn't far behind. You do realize that we ask our corners to do A LOT, right? Speed isn't an issue, but play recognition was tough against Seattle. We were literally just a step behind on making a few big plays and pass break-ups. I witnessed the game from the first row and still left impressed with our defense. Seattle just knew exactly how and where to attack us, plus benfitted from Wilson's magic.
I'm not worried about Darby and Mills, but would like to see our man Malcolm Jenkins step up his game... he got beat for a TD and should have made a play on the ball. I love our secondary, but Seattle got the best of them (we're still talking about only giving up 24 points here, lol!).
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https://www.bleedinggreennation.com...ight-end-sidney-jones-robert-woods-barwin-nfl
Eagles injury update ahead of Rams game
by Brandon Lee Gowton
Here’s a quick update on the Philadelphia Eagles’ injury situation ahead of their Week 14 game against the Los Angeles Rams. Note that the Eagles’ first official injury report won’t come out until tomorrow on Wednesday, December 6.
PHILADELPHIA EAGLES INJURIES
Zach Ertz
Doug Pederson announced Ertz is in the concussion protocol. The tight end got concussed during the third quarter of the Eagles’ loss to the Seahawks. Ertz is staying with the team in Los Angeles this week as opposed to flying back home to Philadelphia. Ertz will have to pass through the NFL’s mandatory concussion protocol before he can return to action. The Eagles will surely hope to have their leading receiver as the team prepares to face a tough Rams team.
Joe Walker
There’s been no real update on Walker, who missed practice entirely last week and didn’t play on Sunday night. We’ll see where he’s at this week. Najee Goode mostly filled in during Walker’s absence. Dannell Ellerbe only played one defensive snap at linebacker.
Sidney Jones
Jones is still on the NFI list so he won’t practice this week. Pederson said: “He’s still rehabbing and doing his thing.” Keep in mind the Eagles have a 21-day window where Jones can practice before having to either be 1) put on the 53-man roster or 2) shut down for the season. That window starts when Jones starts to practice. It remains to be seen if that’ll happen at all this season. It could be a possibility later this month.
LOS ANGELES RAMS
The Rams are dealing with some injuries as well.
Robert Woods
Los Angeles might be without their leading wide receiver against the Eagles. Woods has missed two games so far due to a shoulder injury. Late last week, Rams head coach Sean McVay said Week 15 might be a “more realistic target” than a Week 14 return. He also added: “A couple weeks from now is probably what’s the most realistic approach. But you never know with Robert.” So we’ll have to see how Woods handles practice this week.
Connor Barwin
Barwin is expected to miss this week’s game against his former team. McVay said he will “more than likely be out.” That’s a bummer. The former Eagles pass rusher ranks tied for second on the Rams in sacks this season.
Alec Ogletree
Rams starting middle linebacker and defensive captain Alec Ogletree hurt his elbow in Week 13. He expects to play against Philadelphia, though.
-----------
if Ertz doesn't play
Burton and Celek are both vets who can be greatly underestimated. While they may not be as good, they can be certainly reliable.
-----------
Is Ertz a bigger loss than Woods is for the Rams?
Both teams spread the ball around. Tough call.
------------
Why is it a 'bummer' that Barwin won't play against us?
I liked Barwin, he’s without a doubt a great guy, but personally I’m not in the least bit bummed out that our opponent’s leading pass rusher is out for a game
----------
The true test for this team is this week
It will answer a lot of questions about the teams character as to weather if we are ready to be qualify as one of the top 5 teams in the league for years to come.
If last week’s win was indeed due to complacency the team will for sure be determined to prove it to themselves that their focus is back.
On the contrary if last week’s loss was due to the gravity of the stage they were playing, they must have learnt something in terms of how to cope up with this pressure. Hopefully they understood that this will be a recurring thing. Because quite frankly, this young team hadn’t quite played such a high profile game hitherto.
The KC loss was nothing compared to Seattle loss. It was largely considered as a moral win by media and fans alike. And the circumstances surrounding that loss was very different. There was never any pressure given how low the expectations were at that point.
Skill doesn’t play as important a role in this week’s win as Character does. Skill will open the first door for you and it may open the second door, but it won’t open the door that matters. That’s what gets me excited for this week. We are about to see how this team responds to upsetting results.
----------
To me it doesn’t matter where we rank actually. We were pretty much #1 (2 or 3 depending on a few writers) for a while now and while I think the Eagles earned it, it also placed that skeptic bullseye on us for critics and opposing fans to doubt and question. Let them go that shuffling all they want. The biggest goal is getting to, and winning the Superbowl.
If you do that..then all these rankings right now,don’t mean squat,and they won’t even be talking about it once it’s over. The Eagles are 10-2 , and are a pretty good football team. We had the NFL’s attention most of the year and deservingly so. We lost..it happens.
It’s just when you are that good,and riding on a huge win streak the inevitable is bound to happen. They just need to regroup and continue on this great season so far. It’s been ones heck of a ride so far…and it’s not over yet.
------------
the Eagles got to work on that time of ball control going again the Rams can’t score if Eagles keep the ball, the run game has to work and that opens up the pass game and keeps the defense hungry for success!
The Los Angeles Chargers: A Team Without A Home
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 14 Replies
https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2017/...gers-stubhub-center-soccer-stadium-experience
The Football Team Without a Home
The Los Angeles Chargers are playing in a tiny soccer stadium in a city that doesn’t seem to want them. There’s no way they’ll be able to fill a full-size arena, but they’re already on the books to be shared residents with the Rams in 2020. Somehow, the best solution might be to just stay where they are
BY KEVIN CLARK
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/57862337/ChargersAtStubhub_Getty_Ringer.0.jpg)
Getty Images/Ringer illustration
There was a moment in the first half of Sunday’s Browns-Chargers game when the home team gave out the new U2 album to a section of fans. (Yes, there’s a new U2 album.) The symbolism was so on-the-nose it barely seemed real. After spending years as the most popular musical act on the planet, the band became a punch line when they forced their way onto your iPhone. No one wanted them, but they gave consumers no choice. And now the team nobody asked for in the country’s most popular sport was giving out their new album.
I went to a Chargers game. This is my story.
Their games feel less like a sporting event and more like a meetup of all the people who knew the Chargers had moved to Los Angeles. Few things seem impermanent as they happen, but the Chargers playing three seasons in a 27,000-seat soccer stadium is destined for a “Today I Learned” thread on Reddit two decades from now. I will explain this trip to my grandkids, who will experience a secondary wave of confusion after getting past their initial confusion over the fact there used to be something other than esports.
An NFL team playing in a soccer stadium sounds like a gimmick, but it’s not that. George Foreman once boxed five fighters in an hour—that’s a gimmick. This is more of a misadventure, an earnest idea quickly gone south. Norman Mailer described Los Angeles as a “constellation of plastic”—meaning, everything is manufactured. That gets less true as the city as a whole grows, but in this very specific case of a football team, there’s not much of an argument.
On the day I attended and sat in the stands, 25,000 fans showed up—and a solid chunk of them, say 40 percent, was there to watch the Cleveland Browns. There were splashes of empty seats throughout the stadium. If the Chargers cannot fill a 27,000-seat stadium to the brim, how the hell will they fill the 70,000-seater they have coming in 2020?
The Chargers fans who were there were louder than you’d think, and this is not meant to besmirch them. StubHub is actually a remarkable place to see an NFL game, in the same way it’d be cool to see the Clippers play at your local YMCA. But “cool” isn’t anywhere near enough to salvage this entire experiment.
In the NFL, December is when questions get answered around the league. The regular season winds down and things become finite. Seahawks fans want to know how good their team can be despite key injuries to the secondary. Packers fans want to know when Aaron Rodgers is coming back. Bears fans are wondering why John Fox is still the coach. The Chargers are tied for first place in the AFC West, but the only thing I could think of was: What is the point of any of this?
Despite having a large fan base in San Diego which, at the very least, was aware the team played in the city, the Chargers left to chase L.A. revenues. After the initial relocation vote in 2016, local media reported that the Spanos family, which owns the team, was upset about the outcome—which allowed the Rams to move immediately, but forced the Chargers to take another year to decide.
Maybe moving with the Rams would’ve helped narrow the gap in fans, but at the moment, things do not look good. Upon the franchise moving at the beginning of the year, ESPN reported the NFL was “besides itself” about how badly the team handled the move and executives speculated that Spanos would soon want to return to San Diego, however remote that possibility was and still is. On cue, the Spanos family was reportedly shocked at the lack of fans at StubHub earlier this year.
There were plenty of warning signs: Some previous Chargers attempts to get into the Los Angeles market had floundered. The Los Angeles Times counted 24 fans at a training camp practice when the Chargers visited Carson in 2003. “We have 13 million people living in the area,” the Times joked. “But I had no idea the Chargers had that many fans here.”
Essentially, the Chargers knew what they were getting themselves into and did it anyway. This is the franchise equivalent of telling yourself you’re not going to lock your keys in your car and then immediately doing it anyway. To make matters even worse, since arriving in Los Angeles, the franchise’s television ratings have not been good, either.
There’s a lot of consternation about what the future of sports looks like and the conversation usually centers on boring changes. Will the sport be streamed on Facebook? Will the helmets look different? Will there be teams in Europe? Those things might be true, but the real future of sports is the process that led the Chargers into this debacle: irrational ideas engineered by people in boardrooms that make little sense on the surface and no sense upon execution.
Los Angeles bears little resemblance to what you see in the movies—namely because the movies often feature characters who appear in two separate parts of the city in the same week. In real life, this does not happen.
The city’s sprawl is one of the obstacles the Chargers face. Driving to Carson from most parts of Los Angeles is less like a normal drive and more like an Oregon Trail simulation: You have very little chance of getting where you need to go. But I hopped in my car and drove down anyway. With only 25,000 fans attending the game, parking wasn’t terrible.
On the walk in, I heard fans asking about where the tailgating was. (Apparently it’s in one lot, far away from the lot we parked in, and it’s both expensive to access and completely full anyway). I also observed a phenomenon I’d seen before only at Tampa Bay Rays games—groups of people in neutral jerseys, fans who were there to see football but were open about their allegiance to a different team. I saw Vikings jerseys, Patriots jerseys, and Raiders jerseys. The stadium looked like this at kickoff:
Login to view embedded media View: https://twitter.com/NateUlrichABJ/status/937426803332866048?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theringer.com%2Fnfl%2F2017%2F12%2F5%2F16737714%2Flos-angeles-chargers-stubhub-center-soccer-stadium-experience
At kickoff, Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner appeared on the Jumbotron and told on-field interviewer LaDainian Tomlinson (what the hell, right?) that it was his bachelor party. He joked that there aren’t many people who can say they celebrated their bachelor party in front of 30,000 people. Of course, Turner can’t say that, either.
My fiancée, who once referred to a game program as a “playbill,” is not much of a sports fan. But her lack of familiarity often leads to valid observations. For instance, last year she noted that she had never, in our six years of dating, seen the Orlando Magic play well. Upon walking into the stands on Sunday, she joked that the atmosphere seemed like a very big high school game. She was barely joking—Texas high school football stadiums are only marginally smaller.
The one thing you learn in the stands is that like politics, all sports is local. Despite the NFL being a national behemoth, when you’re in Green Bay, everyone is wearing hunting gear, and it screams Wisconsin. At Cardinals games in Phoenix, everyone has a great tan. But there was no identity in Carson. Since Carson is south of Los Angeles, there was some South Bay vibe—that is to say, a lot of sandals and Pennywise songs. But overall, the dominant flavor seemed to be “people who purchased tickets to an NFL game.”
There’s a strange gloom that hangs over the Chargers’ stadium because there's typically a critical mass of visiting fans. When something bad happens to the Chargers and the visitors cheer, the Chargers fans boo in retaliation. This makes the mistakes seem so much worse. When kicker Travis Coons knocked a field goal off the upright to miss in the first half, Browns fans rejoiced and Chargers fans booed, but it sounded simply like Chargers fans were booing Coons mercilessly.
On Sunday, Browns fans proved to be more entertaining and organic than the Chargers fans. They at least had a sense of humor. One guy in my section had—I kid you not—a Timofey Mozgov Browns jersey.
With Browns fans doing a lot of the stand-filling, one shudders to think what will happen when the Chargers play a team from a city that doesn’t have a lot of transplants in L.A. That question will not be answered this year. The remainder of the home schedule features Washington and Oakland, and both of those fan bases can fill the building.
Next year, though, the team will host the Bengals, Ravens, Cardinals, and a top AFC South finisher such as the Jaguars or Titans. An empty football stadium isn’t unusual around the NFL, but an empty 27,000-seat soccer stadium would be new territory.
We’re less than a full season in, but it’s already really hard to see a successful future for the Chargers in Los Angeles. In fact, it’s even harder to picture them existing in a football-only stadium. So maybe the only way the Chargers can make this work is to be counterintuitive: never leave the StubHub Center. Become the accessible, small-stadium team, play there for a decade, and establish that identity.
There’s something charming about playing an NFL game in front of a Ring of Honor sign dedicated to Cobi Jones. They can’t do that, of course; they’ve already agreed to share the Rams’ stadium in Inglewood that’s coming in three years.
Their long-term destiny, then, seems to be like that of German soccer club 1860 Munich, who shared a 75,000-seat ground with the more popular Bayern Munich and whose disparity in popularity in the same stadium was glaring. They finally moved out this season, and their new stadium seats 12,500.
On Sunday, I kept thinking about a conversation I’d had a few years ago when reporting a story about how the in-home experience in the NFL had outflanked the in-stadium one. Essentially, there’s no reason to go to games anymore with RedZone, Sunday Ticket, Twitter, and a string of other on-demand amenities found within a few steps of your couch. An NFL executive told me the league still needed seats filled because nowadays stadiums are glorified TV studios—filled seats look good on television, and television and revenue is what matters.
The future of sports is bad ideas. The time humans spend watching TV is falling and with it comes a decline in the amount of people consuming sports, which still rely on traditional TV. No league relies more on traditional network TV than the NFL.
It’s going to get harder for the NFL to double its revenue in the next decade, which is its goal. That means more experimentation, more chasing revenue. More situations like this: The Chargers are in Los Angeles and they’ve saddled the city with unwanted football and U2 albums.
The Football Team Without a Home
The Los Angeles Chargers are playing in a tiny soccer stadium in a city that doesn’t seem to want them. There’s no way they’ll be able to fill a full-size arena, but they’re already on the books to be shared residents with the Rams in 2020. Somehow, the best solution might be to just stay where they are
BY KEVIN CLARK
Getty Images/Ringer illustration
There was a moment in the first half of Sunday’s Browns-Chargers game when the home team gave out the new U2 album to a section of fans. (Yes, there’s a new U2 album.) The symbolism was so on-the-nose it barely seemed real. After spending years as the most popular musical act on the planet, the band became a punch line when they forced their way onto your iPhone. No one wanted them, but they gave consumers no choice. And now the team nobody asked for in the country’s most popular sport was giving out their new album.
I went to a Chargers game. This is my story.
Their games feel less like a sporting event and more like a meetup of all the people who knew the Chargers had moved to Los Angeles. Few things seem impermanent as they happen, but the Chargers playing three seasons in a 27,000-seat soccer stadium is destined for a “Today I Learned” thread on Reddit two decades from now. I will explain this trip to my grandkids, who will experience a secondary wave of confusion after getting past their initial confusion over the fact there used to be something other than esports.
An NFL team playing in a soccer stadium sounds like a gimmick, but it’s not that. George Foreman once boxed five fighters in an hour—that’s a gimmick. This is more of a misadventure, an earnest idea quickly gone south. Norman Mailer described Los Angeles as a “constellation of plastic”—meaning, everything is manufactured. That gets less true as the city as a whole grows, but in this very specific case of a football team, there’s not much of an argument.
On the day I attended and sat in the stands, 25,000 fans showed up—and a solid chunk of them, say 40 percent, was there to watch the Cleveland Browns. There were splashes of empty seats throughout the stadium. If the Chargers cannot fill a 27,000-seat stadium to the brim, how the hell will they fill the 70,000-seater they have coming in 2020?
The Chargers fans who were there were louder than you’d think, and this is not meant to besmirch them. StubHub is actually a remarkable place to see an NFL game, in the same way it’d be cool to see the Clippers play at your local YMCA. But “cool” isn’t anywhere near enough to salvage this entire experiment.
In the NFL, December is when questions get answered around the league. The regular season winds down and things become finite. Seahawks fans want to know how good their team can be despite key injuries to the secondary. Packers fans want to know when Aaron Rodgers is coming back. Bears fans are wondering why John Fox is still the coach. The Chargers are tied for first place in the AFC West, but the only thing I could think of was: What is the point of any of this?
Despite having a large fan base in San Diego which, at the very least, was aware the team played in the city, the Chargers left to chase L.A. revenues. After the initial relocation vote in 2016, local media reported that the Spanos family, which owns the team, was upset about the outcome—which allowed the Rams to move immediately, but forced the Chargers to take another year to decide.
Maybe moving with the Rams would’ve helped narrow the gap in fans, but at the moment, things do not look good. Upon the franchise moving at the beginning of the year, ESPN reported the NFL was “besides itself” about how badly the team handled the move and executives speculated that Spanos would soon want to return to San Diego, however remote that possibility was and still is. On cue, the Spanos family was reportedly shocked at the lack of fans at StubHub earlier this year.
There were plenty of warning signs: Some previous Chargers attempts to get into the Los Angeles market had floundered. The Los Angeles Times counted 24 fans at a training camp practice when the Chargers visited Carson in 2003. “We have 13 million people living in the area,” the Times joked. “But I had no idea the Chargers had that many fans here.”
Essentially, the Chargers knew what they were getting themselves into and did it anyway. This is the franchise equivalent of telling yourself you’re not going to lock your keys in your car and then immediately doing it anyway. To make matters even worse, since arriving in Los Angeles, the franchise’s television ratings have not been good, either.
There’s a lot of consternation about what the future of sports looks like and the conversation usually centers on boring changes. Will the sport be streamed on Facebook? Will the helmets look different? Will there be teams in Europe? Those things might be true, but the real future of sports is the process that led the Chargers into this debacle: irrational ideas engineered by people in boardrooms that make little sense on the surface and no sense upon execution.
Los Angeles bears little resemblance to what you see in the movies—namely because the movies often feature characters who appear in two separate parts of the city in the same week. In real life, this does not happen.
The city’s sprawl is one of the obstacles the Chargers face. Driving to Carson from most parts of Los Angeles is less like a normal drive and more like an Oregon Trail simulation: You have very little chance of getting where you need to go. But I hopped in my car and drove down anyway. With only 25,000 fans attending the game, parking wasn’t terrible.
On the walk in, I heard fans asking about where the tailgating was. (Apparently it’s in one lot, far away from the lot we parked in, and it’s both expensive to access and completely full anyway). I also observed a phenomenon I’d seen before only at Tampa Bay Rays games—groups of people in neutral jerseys, fans who were there to see football but were open about their allegiance to a different team. I saw Vikings jerseys, Patriots jerseys, and Raiders jerseys. The stadium looked like this at kickoff:
Login to view embedded media View: https://twitter.com/NateUlrichABJ/status/937426803332866048?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theringer.com%2Fnfl%2F2017%2F12%2F5%2F16737714%2Flos-angeles-chargers-stubhub-center-soccer-stadium-experience
At kickoff, Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner appeared on the Jumbotron and told on-field interviewer LaDainian Tomlinson (what the hell, right?) that it was his bachelor party. He joked that there aren’t many people who can say they celebrated their bachelor party in front of 30,000 people. Of course, Turner can’t say that, either.
My fiancée, who once referred to a game program as a “playbill,” is not much of a sports fan. But her lack of familiarity often leads to valid observations. For instance, last year she noted that she had never, in our six years of dating, seen the Orlando Magic play well. Upon walking into the stands on Sunday, she joked that the atmosphere seemed like a very big high school game. She was barely joking—Texas high school football stadiums are only marginally smaller.
The one thing you learn in the stands is that like politics, all sports is local. Despite the NFL being a national behemoth, when you’re in Green Bay, everyone is wearing hunting gear, and it screams Wisconsin. At Cardinals games in Phoenix, everyone has a great tan. But there was no identity in Carson. Since Carson is south of Los Angeles, there was some South Bay vibe—that is to say, a lot of sandals and Pennywise songs. But overall, the dominant flavor seemed to be “people who purchased tickets to an NFL game.”
There’s a strange gloom that hangs over the Chargers’ stadium because there's typically a critical mass of visiting fans. When something bad happens to the Chargers and the visitors cheer, the Chargers fans boo in retaliation. This makes the mistakes seem so much worse. When kicker Travis Coons knocked a field goal off the upright to miss in the first half, Browns fans rejoiced and Chargers fans booed, but it sounded simply like Chargers fans were booing Coons mercilessly.
On Sunday, Browns fans proved to be more entertaining and organic than the Chargers fans. They at least had a sense of humor. One guy in my section had—I kid you not—a Timofey Mozgov Browns jersey.
With Browns fans doing a lot of the stand-filling, one shudders to think what will happen when the Chargers play a team from a city that doesn’t have a lot of transplants in L.A. That question will not be answered this year. The remainder of the home schedule features Washington and Oakland, and both of those fan bases can fill the building.
Next year, though, the team will host the Bengals, Ravens, Cardinals, and a top AFC South finisher such as the Jaguars or Titans. An empty football stadium isn’t unusual around the NFL, but an empty 27,000-seat soccer stadium would be new territory.
We’re less than a full season in, but it’s already really hard to see a successful future for the Chargers in Los Angeles. In fact, it’s even harder to picture them existing in a football-only stadium. So maybe the only way the Chargers can make this work is to be counterintuitive: never leave the StubHub Center. Become the accessible, small-stadium team, play there for a decade, and establish that identity.
There’s something charming about playing an NFL game in front of a Ring of Honor sign dedicated to Cobi Jones. They can’t do that, of course; they’ve already agreed to share the Rams’ stadium in Inglewood that’s coming in three years.
Their long-term destiny, then, seems to be like that of German soccer club 1860 Munich, who shared a 75,000-seat ground with the more popular Bayern Munich and whose disparity in popularity in the same stadium was glaring. They finally moved out this season, and their new stadium seats 12,500.
On Sunday, I kept thinking about a conversation I’d had a few years ago when reporting a story about how the in-home experience in the NFL had outflanked the in-stadium one. Essentially, there’s no reason to go to games anymore with RedZone, Sunday Ticket, Twitter, and a string of other on-demand amenities found within a few steps of your couch. An NFL executive told me the league still needed seats filled because nowadays stadiums are glorified TV studios—filled seats look good on television, and television and revenue is what matters.
The future of sports is bad ideas. The time humans spend watching TV is falling and with it comes a decline in the amount of people consuming sports, which still rely on traditional TV. No league relies more on traditional network TV than the NFL.
It’s going to get harder for the NFL to double its revenue in the next decade, which is its goal. That means more experimentation, more chasing revenue. More situations like this: The Chargers are in Los Angeles and they’ve saddled the city with unwanted football and U2 albums.
McVay might prepare Rams for silent snap counts because L.A. fans are outnumbered
- By Faceplant
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 47 Replies
Come on LA, Support your young, exciting team!!!
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/...snap-counts-because-l-a-fans-are-outnumbered/
McVay might prepare Rams for silent snap counts because L.A. fans are outnumbered
When the Eagles played the Chargers in Los Angeles, they said it was like playing a home game
Sean McVay knows better than to pretend that Los Angeles has been drawing big NFL crowds in 2017.
It's why the Rams coach, as noted by the Orange County Register's Rich Hammond, may very be planning to implement silent snap counts for the team's Week 13 showdown with the Philadelphia Eagles.
In prepping his NFC West-leading Rams for the 10-2 Eagles, McVay is at least partially ignoring the fact that his club will technically be at home in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum:
Rich Hammond
✔@Rich_Hammond
McVay said he would consider practicing with silent count this week, after seeing how many Eagles fans were at StubHub for the Chargers game earlier this season.
8:15 PM - Dec 4, 2017
The Chargers, of course, have repeatedly made headlines this season thanks to their sparse crowds at the intimate StubHub complex. Eagles left tackle Jason Peters even went as far as suggesting the Chargers are playing all 16 of their regular season games "on the road" after Philadelphia fans seemed to dominate the audience for the Birds' early-season showdown with L.A.
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/...snap-counts-because-l-a-fans-are-outnumbered/
McVay might prepare Rams for silent snap counts because L.A. fans are outnumbered
When the Eagles played the Chargers in Los Angeles, they said it was like playing a home game
- by Cody Benjamin
- 12h ago • 1 min read
Sean McVay knows better than to pretend that Los Angeles has been drawing big NFL crowds in 2017.
It's why the Rams coach, as noted by the Orange County Register's Rich Hammond, may very be planning to implement silent snap counts for the team's Week 13 showdown with the Philadelphia Eagles.
In prepping his NFC West-leading Rams for the 10-2 Eagles, McVay is at least partially ignoring the fact that his club will technically be at home in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum:
Rich Hammond✔@Rich_Hammond
McVay said he would consider practicing with silent count this week, after seeing how many Eagles fans were at StubHub for the Chargers game earlier this season.
8:15 PM - Dec 4, 2017
The Chargers, of course, have repeatedly made headlines this season thanks to their sparse crowds at the intimate StubHub complex. Eagles left tackle Jason Peters even went as far as suggesting the Chargers are playing all 16 of their regular season games "on the road" after Philadelphia fans seemed to dominate the audience for the Birds' early-season showdown with L.A.
