Rubes

Stroud, without question. The defense as a whole played awesome almost entirely because of Stroud.

I've been kind of wondering this... Seattle has a pretty mean pass rush, led by left DE Patrick Kerney, who was second in the NFL last year in sacks with 14.5. But he will be lined up across from Kirk Chambers. Langston Walker will be playing across from Seattle's right DE, rookie Lawrence Jackson. Wouldn't it make more sense to play Walker, the more experienced tackle, at his more comfortable position of RT, against their best DE -- particularly since he'll be moving back to that position again either next week or the week after? Is Chambers so bad on the left side that he would be more of a liability against a rookie DE than against the league's second-leading sacker? I have a feeling that, if Chambers struggles against Kerney, we might see them move Walker back to his natural RT spot and see if Chambers can handle the rookie. Am I way off base here?

I get the sense that their defense is tailor-made to stop our offense. A defensive line that can stop the run and bring a lot of pressure, and linebackers that are extremely fast and fly around the field taking away the short routes. If we can somehow establish the run and stop their pass rush, we could be okay. But if we don't run well and Edwards doesn't have much time, we're screwed.

You'll come around.

Who cares, with that avatar...

I recall hearing that he was participating fully in practice this week. I'm guessing Poz's leg would have to be dangling by strands of shredded muscle for him to miss this week's game.

I'm with you, brother...

Crap.

Are you kidding me? Don't dis Leon Seals, baby.

No kidding. We've got our own problems, but that's just ridiculous. We had better take this one.

I know, I was only teasing.

If by "later" you mean next season, then yes, sooner rather than later. I think he'll probably miss the first month.

Meh, call me when it's a full marathon. Just kidding, bud, nice work! Always warms the heart to hear stories like that.

Bell has really not looked very good tonight at all.

So...anyone still on the Bell bandwagon at this point? I think Hamdan might not make it out of here.

Poor Wright...from Chris Brown's blog today: Oh well!

From Tim Graham's blog (thanks, Tim!): From the linked article in the Palm Beach Post: Pure speculation, of course, and I'm sure there's no way the guy gets cut. But still. Thought it was interesting in light of how many of us (myself included) were clamoring for the guy.

That seems to me to be one of the most level-headed and logical arguments about this situation that I've seen so far.

Ah, yes. Nothing more exciting than to hope your team this year will be roughly equivalent to a fart.

Spank.

There's a lot here to digest, and I also wanted to thank Tim for coming around to open a discussion like this. I'm no newspaper insider, so I don't have the same kind of insights as Lori, for instance, but I'd just like to point out that #5 above is something I think bears repeating. I often give a hard time to the writers from realfootball365.com -- for many reasons, of course, number one being their writing is just God awful. But there's obviously more to it than that: if you look at it, it really is nothing more than just some guy's blog. Why? Because the writers have no access to the team. They just sit at their computers and conjure up whatever opinions come into their tiny heads and try to pass it off as "journalism". They don't talk to the coaches or the players, they don't travel to see the teams play, they have absolutely no more insight into the people involved than any of us knuckleheads do. That's one of the true values of local journalists, especially as those journalists grow into their jobs and develop close relationships with the local owners, players, and coaches. And it's one of the things that is gradually going to disappear as more and more media companies eschew the local perspective for a more generic, national one. Thanks again, Tim.

Ah, I must have missed that one. Of course, the only way a contest like that would really be fun is if it was to see which one of them could get all of the others to jump off a cliff with him.

Damn, there's nine other docs on here? Crap, I'd better get me a new byline.