AKC

I'm testing traffic on a new site and I'd really appreciate anyone bringing the site up today and moving a few pages into it. Any feedback is also appreciated via PM or to kurtgraves@dslextreme.com. Site Link

It really didn't jump out at me as a primary key to the game- the Bears are #21 rushing leaguewide as a team and don't even average 100 yards a game. The season for them has relied pretty heavily on Mr. Grossman's arm, and I can't think of a "youthful" QB who didn't have a major letdown game early in his first starting season. After giving fits to much more established QBs than he, I have to guess the key to us lies somewhere in bursting the little bubble the media are blowing wind into for Grossman.

What offers us the best scenario to win Sunday among those considered?

IIRC even at full extension Mr. Armstrong could only cover about 3.5 feet of ground before falling to pieces.

Update: The fire's moved to within 4 miles of the house- nothing but a ridgeline and trees between us. I'm trying to get a set of keys to firefighters who are looking for places to sleep in town.

Evac order just raised to mandatory 15 minutes ago- the house across the street has a wall of thick smoke coming over the roofline- for all of you who had the chance to party at 15100 Acacia Way in Pine Mountain, you better start designing your rooms in the new house. Not to mention my favorite 4 Wheel drive truck of all time is sitting right next to the house- Bummer.

You Canucks might be of sounder minds than I thought- you always douse a fire with Tequila because using Mescal can lead to SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES!!!!!

Referencing The Dean's Room as "the shot bar in the basement" might be grounds for some form of liver punishment. Quarters?

Thanks to all of you for the concern- Funny you say that because the week bfore last I got 70% completed on the new walk-in wine cellar, just a 500 bottle cellar but perfect for up there. Our friend staying there is a white wine drinker but I told her to grab a few of the best bordeaux's I've got there in a Vinotemp to give to a neighbor who will have at least a slight appreciation for them. We bought a house that was built in the late 1980's and it was hardly what I'd call well-built. We've added a lot to it, but in reality the insurance would do more than bring that back.

No worries there- I'm in Santa Monica right now. We have a friend staying up there and she's just loaded everything in her truck that we can't replace. The bummer is for all our friends who live there full time.

It's about 7 miles from our mountain house right now, with a big ridge to cross to get to us. Not to be sensationalist at all but if this thing goes over the San Emigdio Mountains and gets all the way into Pine Mountain tonight, the video footage would be pretty spectacular. We're up betwen 5000 and 8900 feet, densely forested with 4 pine species and mountain oak, some trees as big as 140-150 feet high. No precipitation for maybe 5 or 6 weeks and there's probably very little water underground. Dry trees, a fire they can't get control of and just enough wind to keep this thing moving. Luckily the insurance company- for the second year in a row- allowed us to bump our homeowners policy this morning.

I assume Flutie was wearing some fitted, high quality glass cutter's glove when he played for us. Anyone recall if a brand for those was ever mentioned?

Well, he did underrun another ball earlier, but he may have felt he was defensing an underthrown ball. And while he was blocking with less enthusiasm than he did in NE, he still was getting decent body position abd helping the run game. Overall I'm convinced buy some personal stories I've heard about him that he is mentally focused so I don't worry about a lesser performance from him on one Sunday. It's funny seeing the coaching challenge between him and McCargo- on the one hand you have the first round pick who they want to play low enough to get off OLinemen, on the other side a guy who hasn't lost a game of limbo in his life.

I'm really focusing on the LOS. My observations re: KT would be limited to the fact that he was a good value draft pick who does not appear to be fully recovering from his knee injury. Very few guys in that position have long careers. It'd be my guess that the offense will only add a new wrinkle ot two a game. I absolutely believe that the use of TEs, and specifically Everett, will come up sooner rather than later against a team who overplays our 2TE set. We were actually having better success against Miami when we were running out of 2 back and 4 WR sets, so I'd think in a week, maybe even this coming week, with a poor run defense like the Jets it might be a passing complement they would like to exploit. They want Losman throwing easy to complete short passes, but not necessarily low risk. Fairchild obviously is a proponent of the slant, and there's no reason the target can't be Kevin Everett.

I believe it was simply that Miami's D moved their DBs up to play us for running as our game plan finally became clear to them- and we just didn't change the game plan when they were stuffing the box.

It’s great to see the personnel flexibility of the Jauron staff after having two very rigid coaching regimes who relied IMO far, far too much on individual players versus the overall team concept. Seeing Miami face 3 new DLinemen on just their second offensive series shows just how much we truly will rely on fresh faces on the Defensive side of the ball. Also using 3 DE’s in pass packages makes too much sense- it’s good to see some logic to the process versus rigid discipline to something worked out some musty coach’s office. It also appeared that Villarial got spelled for a series in the 3rd by Duke Preston simply to rest CV. A lot of the success McGahee is having on the ground is the willingness of our receivers to hit someone downfield. With the exception of Peerless Price everyone else seems to be onboard, and not to take anything away from the good work Josh Reed is doing but surprisingly the most aggressive blocker may just be Roscoe Parrish. Jason Peters is impressive with his development. In our second series he takes his DT assignment up the field on a McGahee run that with a little help from the balance of the team gets McGahee 5 yards- but Peters isn’t done. He releases off the DT and gets upfield to eliminate a LB and the result is a McGahee gain of 11. While Peters didn’t do it alone, he was the primary reason McGahee picked up the extra yards. It was fun watching Robert Royal, while mismatched as any TE is against Jason Taylor, continually showing off a nasty attitude against JT. Royal was tasked a surprising number of times with handling JT by himself. The one play where JT makes a play past him, Taylor is very lucky he didn’t draw a 15 yarder for yanking Gandy's facemask on his way by. Kevin Everett is also plenty of field reps without being very involved in the passing game. Based upon his resume and some flashes in pre-season, we won’t have to wait until the end of this season to see him have a VERY big game offensively. His blocking skills are sufficient for the situations he’s being put in- he’s not being asked to handle a Jason Taylor and mostly he’s handling upfield blocks in the running game, but he is definitely contributing to our offense in the unbalanced 2 TE line set that we’re suing with regularity. A little patience and with the right defensive overload you can bet some quick TE passes will come out of that set. McCargo right now is learning a tough lesson at the NFL level- his higher center of gravity makes it impossible to play the same way he did in college, where he could simply lean and use his arms to create space. NFL Linemen are too big and athletic to get away with that. He’s learning that he has to use his weight and leverage to get a pop on the other side, and his upside if he can learn this effectively will be substantial. He should easily become a bigger threat than Kyle Williams in the long term- Williams has the advantage now because he is built for and can play low, and that translates into immediate impact along the DLine. On the long term though the taller athlete offers the greater promise as a pass rushing threat, something this defense is built to reward. Speaking of Kyle Williams, with about 10 minutes left in the 2nd quarter he stunts all the way down the line around Tripplett and Kelsay. He’s chipped by the RB who pulls his helmet right off but he continues full speed up to big Vernon Carey, a guy outweighing him by maybe 60 pounds, and gets right into Carey’s face. Out west here we call those Quijones. He also follows it up with a good awareness leap on a passing play when he realizes he won’t get to the passer in time. There’s clearly been an emphasis on this in this Defense, and it’s paid off both games so far. Schobel is hands down the best linemen we have at reacting to the QB’s set and throw, but every single one of our linemen are looking on almost every passing down to interfere with passing lanes using their hands. This is also true of the extra guys we’re bringing- I never noticed the emphasis on this in the Tampa 2 but clearly our coaching staff has made “going up” a priority for our pass rushers. One area of concern so far this year has been our short yardage/goal line run D. The one number who’d always be in my goal line package is 95 simply because of his ability to play low. He’s at the NT spot for the 3rd and 1 stuff we get on the Fish as the 3rd quarter ends. McGahee may not look on film as quick as he’s actually playing. On the play I mentioned above with Taylor grabbing Royal’s face mask, the run stuff actually only happens because Royal is blocking for McGahee and he assumes McGahee is already off his shoulder. Problem is Anthony Thomas is now in the game and he’s lead-footed in comparison. The change of pace between the backs is a big plus for us, but I’m thinking Thomas shouldn’t be called for running plays off the tackles with any frequency. It’s one of those times when, contrary to the team concept on defense, we’ve got to consider who is in the backfield behind #7. Reyes has kind of an awkward running style but what he does well is line up and catch his target well in space, not a typical skill for big interior OLinemen. Our defensive philosophy for the season seems to be: We’ll give some big plays on the ground, but we’ll make you pay the hard way if you try to challenge us in the air. To beat us you have to consistently get first downs out of your running game.

It'll be a very interesting ride. We're going to give up too many of the Maroney runs this season but we'll also be making a lot of QBs VERY uncomfortable. And the AFC East looks like a very wide-open race. A win next week would go far in establishing us as credible threat to taking our division.

Doesn't that mean that Willis said out loud what dozens and dozens of other players have had the good sense to clamp up on? For my money I thought McGahee looked like he might have a very big year, and except for the handicap we have at FB he has the support to pull it off (a better run blocking line, a much better change-up back to give him a blow). NE has (IMO wisely) used the draft to build maybe the league's best run stopping rotation in their D interior. I won't judge WM on his final stats againt the Pat's D. Next week might be more telling, with the far longer in the tooth Keith Traylor hoping to find 4 quarters in the tank. I also couldn't care that he's obviously a moron, because for the most part that usually doesn't affect play at his position. I do have a problem with the fact that he DID allow his idiocy to affect the biggest play of the game yesterday; while I didn't like the 4th down play call, his lack of awareness may truly be the reason we didn't make it. He did a slight foot shuffle on the way to the line on that play and with him assuming it was a 3rd down and looking for the bigger play he may very well have sacrificed the short yardage gain and the game in the overall.

And didn't even credit the Big Man? Sounds dangerous to me ;-)

I guess my best stuff was a little racy for the reporter, but they did allow this regarding SoCal Sports Bar behavior: "Bills, Bears, Green Bay, Cleveland and Pittsburgh fans usually are ordering a beer or Bloody Mary as soon as the bar offers it, in most cases about 9:15-9:30 a.m.," Graves said. "On the other hand, Miami, New England, Jets or most other Eastern start fans get heavy into the neutered coffees or sodas until the game is well under way."

Soon enough we'll get to the same game, I want to launch this Bill's Bar the first half of the 2006 season.

I've also left a message for Aaron Merz's family, although they're up north 90 minutes. If you can think of any other families in the area we should reach out to them-

My understading is they've lived in Los Angeles since Terrance was born.

Apparently our new OLineman is on top of the world having been issued his old #79. I pointed out that the number had been kind to a previous Bill's lineman ;-) His Parents and Godparents are joining our group of Bill's fans for the opener in Santa Monica at 3110 Santa Monica Blvd (Busbys). They'll be among other Bill's player's family members watching the game with us. PM me for more info-

I see no reason at this point to doubt Marv's plan. He feels that Pennington, Merz and Butler's upsides are better than those of the the guys drafted by the former regime. Considering the success the former regime had with starting OLinemen, we might want to assume Marv has a better idea of how to go about things?