gimmekeef wrote on Jul 19^th, 2013 at 12:29pm:

rumour is your boy Matt Ryan is gonna sign a 5 year 120mil contract.

Yep,Matty ice got some serious bling.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000220873/article/matt-ryan-agrees-to-103m-...

Awesome homer journalism from the Washington Times:

Redskins have realistic Super Bowl expectations after playoff run

By Rich Campbell

RICHMOND — Mike Shanahan mentioned the Super Bowl last week during his first media session of training camp. So did Robert Griffin III and Barry Cofield. Pierre Garcon did, too.

It’s not ‘Super Bowl or Bust’ for these Washington Redskins — certainly not after they needed seven consecutive victories last season to overcome a 3-6 start and make the playoffs, and not while they’re serving an $18 million salary cap penalty. But they are looking to heights greater than their NFC East division title.

So, for the first time in years, the Redskins feel the weight of internal and external expectations as they move toward their season opener on Monday night, Sep. 9 against the Philadelphia Eagles. Managing them is a welcome challenge, one that will help determine their success.

“The biggest concern you have is being content and kind of having that expectation,” Cofield said. “You should expect to win. You should expect to take the field and feel like you’re prepared and that you’re the better team. Our goal every year is to win the Super Bowl, so we’re not content.”

After Shanahan helped set the parameters for the final stages of Griffin’s right knee rehabilitation last week, the Redskins zoomed their focus out.

The start of training camp is a time to consider the big picture, to set goals and map the path to them. Every team talks about the Super Bowl this time of year, but for the Redskins, it finally is not an abstract concept.

The momentum of their first division championship in 13 years boosted that process. Not only did they gain playoff experience last year, but 21 of 22 starters return. The offensive and defensive schemes have been in place for more than four calendar years

But it’s not as though the Redskins sustained dominance in winning 10 games a season ago. So, what are they, really?

Are they a mediocre team that just got hot at the end of the year? Was their poor first half the result of a long injury list that starts relatively clean this year? Or did their rookie quarterback evolve in an offense that is now good enough to win at the rate at which it concluded last season?

“One of the ways to prove you’re not just a one-hit wonder is you do it again the next year,” tight end Logan Paulsen said. “I think we have this season to prove what we really are and what we think we are, but it will take a full year to show that.”

Paulsen believes that requires mastery of details, something coaches can emphasize during this training camp because of the team’s continuity. Players will focus on such finer points as knowing proper alignments, splits and snap counts.

“We’ve all been here for a while, so it’s just kind of cleaning everything up and having that super comfort level where you can play fast and be free and execute the offense at a really high level,” Paulsen said.

There also are mental components to building on last year’s playoff berth. Confidence is one factor. Another is maintaining the desire to continue improving.

Shanahan saw both in April when the Redskins began their offseason program. He demands participation in those voluntary meetings and practices, and for the second straight year, everyone did to some extent.

“When you give the type of effort in the offseason and you have success, you believe you’ve earned that success,” Shanahan said. “That’s what I believe our players believe, that they’ve earned the right to succeed. Once you do succeed and you see the after effects, you want it even more. So hopefully we take it day by day and keep on improving.”

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/28/redskins-have-realistic-super-bo...

HTTR!

munichhilton wrote on Jul 28^th, 2013 at 7:47pm:

Love the fact that Percy Harvin is already hurt and out for the year. Suck it Seahawks.

sweetcharmedlife wrote on Jul 19^th, 2013 at 9:34am:


It's Hard to argue with that Formation!
Good luck
Let the games Begin!
Oh By The Way The Skins got their QB back!

Wow,they actually found a way to make the Pro Bowl suck worse.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000224052/article/2014-pro-bowl-features-ne...

sweetcharmedlife wrote on Jul 31^st, 2013 at 2:18pm:

This will be bigger than Wildwood, tater.

Art Donovan, Baltimore Colts legend, dies at 88

By Elliot Harrison
Analyst, NFL.com and NFL Network
"Fatso."

That's what everyone called him. And for those of you sitting with an iPad on your lap or scrolling down on your cellphone, finding out who Fatso was -- former Baltimore Colts defensive tackle Art Donovan -- makes for time well spent.

One of the funniest professional athletes you'll ever meet, Donovan could hold court as well as any player ever seen (or heard) in a post game locker room. Donovan passed away at the age of 89 Sunday night, the Baltimore Ravens announced.

This isn't solely the story of a cutup. Donovan was a veteran of the Pacific Theatre in World War II. He also was a disruptive force in the middle of pro football's best team of the late 1950s.

How disruptive was Donovan? Enough to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame in only his second year of eligibility. That was in 1968, the Hall's sixth class ever, meaning that there was a backlog of players from the '20s, '30s and '40s waiting to get in. We're talking first ballot material here.

Yet, all of that is immaterial, considering Donovan's legacy and overall impact on the game. Despite being named first team All-Pro several times, he never took pro football too seriously -- unless it was kicking the butt of the guy in front of him, which he could do.

Rather than being all piss-and-vinegar, Donovan really was more wit-and-vinegar, bringing the middle days of pro football to a different audience by the force of his personality, and with a touch of humility. Like after his Colts beat the New York Giants in the 1958 NFL Championship Game, aka "The Greatest Game Ever Played," a contest that has been celebrated and romanticized for decades by NFL Films and every possible media outlet that covers pro football.

"I'll tell you how great that game was," Donovan said while on a conference call with reporters recalling the famous game forty years later. "I'll tell you how important it was. I was born and raised on 202nd Street off the Concourse. (After the game) I was there in in front of Mr. Goldberg's candy store where I hung out since the time I was 6 years old. He comes out and he looks at me and he says, 'Artie, you big bum, are you out of work again?' He didn't even know I played football."

Yea, he played some football. Fatso was an original Baltimore Colt in 1950, an NFL adoptee from the defunct All American Football Conference that also provided the league with the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers. Donovan played for the now defunct New York Yankees in 1951. The next year he and Marchetti were two of the few decent players on the NFL's first foray in Dallas: the Dallas Texans. They lasted just a year.

So, three years, three defunct teams, and Donovan's teams won a grand total of three games.

"You talk about building character," Donovan quipped.

Donovan's good humor wasn't a singular trait of the man. That is to say, this was one determined football player. Determined enough to make the Colts winners when the franchise was re-started in 1953.

Donovan made five straight Pro Bowls heading into the 1958 season, the year the Colts took off. Paired with Hall of Fame defensive end Gino Marchetti, as well as 300-pound Eugene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb at the other tackle spot, the Colts could match up with anybody. Throw in a young trio of Hall of Famers on offense in Johnny Unitas, Lenny Moore and Raymond Berry, and this special Colts team would go on to win it all in '58 and '59.

Like Unitas and Berry, Donovan was an All-Pro performer every year not on athletic ability and strength training -- "the only weight I ever lifted was a can of beer," Donovan once said -- but on desire.

In fact, the entire Colts organization from Unitas, Berry and Donovan on down had that blue-collar mentality, which trickled not only through the club but the community, creating a love affair between city and team. Under enigmatic owner Jim Irsay, the franchise eventually would relocate to Indianapolis, yet Baltimore was such a football town that the success and support of the Ravens hardly is surprising. Some of that credit has to be given to Donovan, whose colorful personality only made pro football more popular, particularly in Maryland.

Berry currently is in Canton, Ohio celebrating the 40th anniversary of his enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. When asked about Donovan, he instantly recounted not those legendary teams, or even the fact that Donovan was a Hall of Famer, like himself.

"I asked Donovan about the War," Berry said. "He said to me, 'Raymond, I got shot in the ass on Iwo Jima.' "

That's who Art Donovan was. Be it during his appearances on the "Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson or in his book "Fatso", or in commercials, Donovan would recant his myriad of NFL experiences in a lighthearted way that made you feel he was on the level and not like he was an arrogant professional athlete who was way up here while you were way down there.

It was a gift.

sweetcharmedlife wrote on Jul 31^st, 2013 at 2:18pm:


Bring back the XFL.

First game of the season for the Home Team.

well played.

Why Your Team Sucks 2013: Atlanta Falcons
Drew Magary


Some people are fans of the Atlanta Falcons. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Atlanta Falcons. This 2013 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group.


Your team: Atlanta Falcons

Your 2012 record: 13-3. No one makes a 13-3 record look thoroughly underwhelming quite like the Falcons.

Your coach: Mike Smith, who is a good coach 95% of the time. He can assemble a very good staff. He can nurture a young passer like Matt Ryan and help turn him into a top-tier quarterback. He can concoct defensive schemes that help cover up glaring deficiencies in the secondary. He can bestow upon the Falcons an atmosphere of professionalism and levelheadedness that every NFL team aspires to but few actually achieve. He can do all that, and then PISS IT AWAY in one single, breathtaking moment of frantic idiocy. "Well, we were trying to execute an ill-advised squib kick when we executed an even more ill-advised onside kick instead!" When it matters most, Mike Smith suddenly morphs into Barry Switzer. It's astonishing. He must study game tape of Andy Reid or something.

Your quarterback: Matt Ryan, who just pocketed $59 million in guaranteed money. Hoooooly shit. If I had $59 million in guaranteed money, I would spread it out in cash on my bedroom floor and then masturbate on it.

Your one fantasy player everyone will hate: Jacquizz Rodgers, who has awesome taste in shirts but is the kind of annoying fantasy player who gets talked up before the start of the season ("He's the next Jamaal Charles!") before getting stuck in a timeshare. This season, Quizz will be splitting the rock with Steven Jackson just enough to render both men useless for fantasy purposes. HOORAY!

Why your team sucks: Falling behind 17-0 against this team means you have them exactly where you want them. Between Smith's glaring clock management errors, the listless crowd at the Georgia Dome (some of whom STILL haven't gotten over Mike Vick being cut), and a horrific pass defense (which lost its best pass rusher and two best corners in the offseason!), this is a team custom-made for blowing big leads in important games.

And you know what? That's fine by me. Anything that keeps the Falcons away from the Super Bowl is a good thing. This is an exciting team with a excellent QB and a kickass receiving corps, and yet I'm completely and utterly repelled by them. They're like the Spurs if the Spurs played football and were relocated to a city with 10 times more traffic and 20 times more stupid people. Atlanta is a toxic mix of Southern bro culture, indifferent sports fans, sous-chefs with pork cut diagram tattoos, meth-addled rednecks, overworked Tyler Perry production assistants, and overrated, shitty, minor league hip-hop. I know that sports talk radio is a cesspool of bad ideas, but I promise you that Atlanta sports talk radio somehow manages to bring the discourse even lower.

I have an inexplicable distaste for the Falcons, to the point that I'm happy to see any other team but them in important primetime and/or playoff games. Thankfully, the only big move they made this offseason was to bring in Osi Umenyiora to get hurt for 12 games. And now that Ryan has Joe Flacco money, the team will never be able to afford a decent supporting cast.

Not that this matters at all to Arthur Blank. Blank just got $200 million in public funds to tear down the Georgia Dome (only 21 years old and in perfectly good condition) to build a luxury stadium that looks like a pile of Magformers my kid dropped on the floor. Because Falcons fans just weren't QUIET enough before! Let's pacify them a little more with bigger TV screens and soundproof lounges! What the fuck does Arthur Blank need $200 million to build a new stadium for? He owns Home Depot. How about you drive your ass down to one of your shitty stores like the rest of us and wait nine years for a helper to cut lumber for you on the table saw, Arthur? You 1930s movie villain-looking motherfucker. I bet Blank spends his free time tying damsels to railroad tracks.

Why your team doesn't suck: Again, the Falcons have a good coach and a very good quarterback. They obviously don't suck in full. It's just that they suck a little bit more than the other good teams in the NFC. But hey, at least I'll get to watch Julio Jones get 200+ receiving yards every other week.

The six worst Falcons ever:

1. Bobby Petrino. This is a franchise with a long history of terrible coaching—Norm Van Brocklin, Dan Henning, Marion Campbell (they hired him twice!), June Jones, Norb (NORB!!) Hecker, Jim Hanifan, Little Jimmy Mora, etc. You have to work really hard to stand out as a terrible coach in that crowd. So I salute Ozark Evel Knievel for being a loser, a liar, and a complete shitbag. Such a rare triple threat.

2. Aundray Bruce

3. Michael Vick. I don't know if Vick really belongs on this list. But when you get yourself cut for dog genocide, it kind of forces my hand.

4. Bruce Pickens

5. Jammi German. Still the weirdest name ever. Sounds like a package of terrible candy.

6. Chris Miller. God, they tried so hard for so long to make Chris Miller happen. Imagine if Blaine Gabbert stayed with the Jaguars for five more years. That's Chris Miller's career. So much time wasted.


http://deadspin.com/why-your-team-sucks-2013-atlanta-falcons-1000311373

Some Guy wrote on Aug 6^th, 2013 at 10:30am:


Things not rosy in Flowery Branch?