Reality Bites!

yeah our ROOKIE Sean Taylor is playing piss poor, how'd he get to start?? we should leave Bowen in..oh wait he's hurt..so Lott, no wait he's hurt too.....

and Marshall, Harris, Clark, Clemons, Pierce, Griffin, Salevea, Warner, Springs, Smoot... can you believe we PAY these overhyped guys??? only no.2 in the league?

my SarCasm doesn't make their effort any less real.

I start each game looking for positive outcomes. In the past three or four years, those things tend to be very rare and the negatives tend to be very common. So I get "upset" with the negative things and wonder why they have not yet been elimimated.

we get "upset" at the bad things too SC. it's called emotion. only we also get happy at the good things. cuz they ARE there.

What happened was that they got rid of just about EVERYBODY (save Wynn and Haley who hasn't played much at all) and signed ONE free agent and then got a bunch of guys who hustle and do what the coaches tell them to do. BIG IMPROVEMENT.

improvement?? c'mon SC :offtopic: ;)

I strongly believe that the reason for the big improvement on the D-line has to do with the system. Gregg Williams is one hell of a coach.

SC, if I may make an observation, I think many of your posts are well reasoned, based in fact, and not overly emotional. However, I do tend to think that you may look at the team with the "glass is half empty" mentality.

Coles is a beast. The guy plays with a dislocated finger (after popping it back in) and drops a few passes and all of the sudden he needs to be replaced? If you don't like Coles, then I think you may be setting your standards just a tad bit too high. Coles fights for EVERY yard, doesn't complain, isn't afraid to go over the middle, isn't scared to get hit, catches almost every catchable ball (that is when he isn't missing a digit), and is just a smart, tough, and classy guy.

As to Ramsey's presence not doing much of anything for our team, I think you may be a little too critical. First off, since he's started we've played Philly twice, Pittsburgh once, and the New York Giants once. Philly has the second best scoring defense in the league and is rapidly rising in all other statistical defensive categories (since Trotter is back at MLB). Ramsey played pretty well against Philly on both occasions. Why then the lack of points -- the playcalling (we went from hyper agressive Spurrier to almost unconsciously passive Gibbs). Pittsburgh is the BEST defense in the league and we hung in there with them too for awhile. We SPANKED the G-men. If you don't think Ramsey has brought something to our offense, perhaps you didn't see the 9 or so games Brunell led us in.

Anyways, that's my two cents.

When I say I'm too lazy to go look something up, that merely means I am not going to make up some BS and toss it out there as if it meant something. If I were ever waaay off on one of those guesstimates, I feel certain that half a dozen folks here would be eager get the real numbers and let me know how dumb I am. For example, earlier today I said that I THOUGHT that Ramsey had not won 10 games that he had started and that however many games he had won, he had probably lost twice as many. If I am way off on those assertions, I expect to be corrected - and not particularly politely either.
To answer your question, I believe Ramsey is 7-11 as a starter.

I could be wrong, but that's pretty close by my calculations.

Ramsey in 2002: 2-4 , thats not counting when he came off the bench against the Tennesee Titans and went nuts. And the Giants game in week 14 I included, but he may not have started that game.
Ramsey in 2003: 4-7 as a starter, that IS including the dolphins game when he played less than a quarter.
Ramsey in 2004: 1-3 as a starter.

So overall he is 7-14 as a starter. Although I would go as far as saying 8-13, taking away the loss @ Miami in 2003 and adding the win @ Tenessee in 2002, but whatever.

He didn't start that Giants game in week 14 in '02, 7-13 sounds about right, now that I think of it they flashed a graphic last night saying he was 7-12.

i like our defensive players but a lot of it is from Williams doin' a great job of not only getting these guys to make an adjustment, but also adjusting to their strengths. no one could have predicted the awesome play of our D, especially the DL. i think the fact that russell was ever even here sorta shows u can't just go signing ppl left and right.

look at the chargers. stuck with schottenheimer, and while i admit they lucked out on the whole brees situation, that right there shows that if u leave a guy in a system long enough he'll have a good shot of catching on. would rivers be 10-3? maybe... but probably not.

i'd be willing to bet that our best shot would be to minimize changes. let's look to the draft for once and try to work our way up. sure if there's a guy u definitely think will have an impact, get him. at the same time don't expect even a mild overhaul. if that does end up happening i wouldnt expect any major improvement soon.

since there were problems with both execution and game-planning (players and coaches), i sorta see the problems as hand-in-hand, naturally. it follows that both the players and the coaches owe it to each other to try and get it right. that's why i'm a..... devotee..... of continuity/

VT skins: Hard to build through a draft with your 2nd rounder already gone! Could still have it and be short a Brunell!

Illdefined:

This year's DL is a HUGE improvement over last year's DL and the reason is that they did two things in the off-season:

1. They got a different Defensive Coordinator

2. They got rid of a bunch of lazy and overpaid guys who - by the way - have not caught on anywhere else and risen to stardom.

That amounts to "blowing up the DL" and using some smarts in order to put together a new unit that is not flashy and not fancy, but it gets the job done.

By the way, it ought to be a severe indictment of EVERYONE who was invovled in any way in selecting that crew for a DL last year. And by everyone I mean anyone from Danny Boy down to the guy who puts out the towels and the soap in the shower room.


Ramseyfan:

Coles was a great acquisition back when he was not hurt. He was really good in 02 and was fine in 03. He plays hard on every play and he plays hurt. I said that I admire all that. Now, when I watch him in the final days of 04, I see someone who cannot run nearly as fast as he could in 02 and someone who does not have nearly the accdeleration coming out of a break as he did in 02. That's not because he is a bad guy or a loafer or a mediocre player; it is because he is hurt. Now the long range planning question for the Skins is this: Is he going to get better or not? That's a combination football/medical question and I admit I have no idea what the probablilities are here. Maybe he needs surgery; maybe he needs rest and therapy; maybe he needs a trip to Lourdes; maybe it will never get better. I don't know; I suggest that the coaches better damned well have a very well informed opinion on this by February 2005.

If Coles is likely to get better, then he stays for sure and is your #1 guy and all you need do for the WRs is to go build around him. If he is not likely to get better - meaning he regains his previous straight-away speed and his acceleration out of a cut - then at best he is your #2 guy and maybe he his only your #3 guy. That presents a much harder problem for the coaching and scouting staff because lead WRs don't come cheap and there ai'nt a whole lot of cap room. But they have to do the unemotional evaluation and the planning because this WR corps full of beasts and warriors and guys who catch TDs and guys who make spectacular plays grades out to be - - mediocre.

I said that Ramsey was an improvement - statistically - over Brunell and I believe that in December 2004 Ramsey is a better QB than Brunell. That ain't saying much, but if it makes you happy to hear it again, I'll be glad to say it. I would absolutely not go back to Brunell. In fact, in my musings about what to do next year, I said that you had to give serious consderation to cutting Brunell and taking the cap hit. But Ramsey isn't even average yet. Remember, average means that there would be 15 or 16 starting QBs in the NFL next week who are worse than him NOW. Don't get caught up in the "potential" business; I'm talking NOW. I've gone through the starting QBs for next week and I can't find 15 who are worse; I can find 10, but that's about it. So, as of this weekend, he is "below average" for the job he is being asked to do. Maybe he'll be much better next year or some day in the future, but right now...

Thanks to all of you who tried to figure out Ramsey's win/loss record as a starter. Your consensus is that he indeed has won less than ten games and has lost about 60% of the games he started My guess was that he had won less than 10 games and had lost about 66% of the games he had started. That's imperfect but not off by a mile...