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Hate the news about Steve McNair. Don't like it one bit. Don't want to comment, though.
In other news, the Colts have wrapped up their pre-camp stuffis and we won't see a lot of team activities until camp starts up on August 3rd. That doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about 'em. I realize I am not much of a blogger, and I don't have time to post often, but I'm a tryin.
Keep your eyes peeled on Arin it Out. He may have an interesting bit coming up on the Colts in a week or so.
Stampede Blue is by far the best of the Colts blogs in terms of coverage, and I visit about twice a week. One of their recurring articles is called "Finding the Winning Factors", which I believe may be a take on the most influential football book on the modern NFL, Finding the Winning Edge by Bill Walsh. Anyway, in this series they examine a king hell load of statistics to evaluate efficiency and success trends in the NFL. Ironically enough, the Colts are at or near the top in most of the quantitative stats. Perhaps the most interesting is this post, which examines Drive Success Rate. I encourage you to examine the statistics for yourself. I am generally nto much for numbers as they provide no context and can be easily skewed, but I would advise you to look at the # of successful Colts drives versus the number of total drives and then compare them to other good QBs. You willl have to note how good Manning really is.
Drive Success Rate looks like this:
(First Downs + Pass TDs + Rush TDs) / (First Downs + Drives)
If you look at the math, and the vast discrepancies between historically successful teams and historically bad teams, which is something I talk about a lot. (You know, good franchises are good a lot, bad franchises are bad a lot and good every once in a while.) What I like about this is that it shows how good teams win, they either complete drives (offensive teams) or they stop drives (defensive teams). Of course, that sounds stupid to say out loud, but what I mean is that teams can find success by focuisng a part of their game one direction or the other and going with it.
Consider this, the overall strategy, not just the game plan, that the Colts use is to have a very good offense rely on playmakers at certain parts of the defense to make just enough plays to give them an edge. (Freeney sacks a guy on second down and forces a third an long, Mathis forces a guy to throw it away on third and six, Sanders pops a guy in the whole to stuff him on third and three.) If the Colts make these kinds of plays with enough impact to stall one or two drives a game, the numbers bear out that the Colts offense will be able to provide the win (on average). Baltimore's strategy is very much the opposite. Choke the other team to death and force a field position game. (If the offense can score 10 points we have a shot!) The Colts accumulate wins with successful drives, Baltimore accumulates wins by forcing unsuccessful drives. The statistics provided in this examination on SB shows the relative success of their strategies. I don't really have a lot of blogs specific to teams on the blog roll, but Stampede Blue is damn near earning a spot.
For your Independence Day interest. Paul Revere and the colonists did NOT shout, "The British are coming!"
in April of 1775. Why? Because everyone was British then. The
colonists themselves were British. Revere said, "The regulars are
coming out," and he said it quietly because he did not want to let
anybody know what the Hell he was doing. The redcoats were advancing
to seize powder stores in Concord and arrest Hancock, Adams, and the
lot. Regardless, it is important to understand that, for the sake of
accuracy, all parties were under the same institutional control, that
being the state of the United Kingdom. The difference between civil
war and revolution is a semantic one, the same as Obi-Wan's "point of
view". Today, when our special forces go into a country and train men how to fight in ad hoc outfits, it is generally called unconventional warfare. When we are in a different country and someone uses it on us, we call it terrorism. As popular as it is to believe, that is not new. When the Vietnamese used these tactics on American troops stationed in South Vietnamese cities, we called it terrorism then, too. Oddly, when we met their forces in the field, their tactics were considered guerrilla warfare. I am not entirely certain who gets to make that distinction. I am a fairly well trained historian, a great deal of that focusing on the history of armed conflict, and as near as I can tell, who decides is based on which side you are on. That, I am consistently startled to discover, is good enough for a lot of people.
People operate under the comforting idea that freedom, once obtained, is a static device that holds infinitum. That is certainly not the case. Freedom is an abstract concept. The volume of liberty you have exists on a sliding scale that based on what liberties and privileges you enjoy and how much you are allowed to enjoy them. As the scope and strength of government increases or decreases, that volume does the same. There is no place in the Constitution that offers a "right to privacy". That right exists because people whose opinion legitimizes government behavior have decided that the right is intrinsic or inherent. It has not always been that way and it may not always stay that way. In the grand scheme of things, the right to privacy is new and if it disappeared tomorrow it would appear as a glitch on the radar.
Time is running short to stomach apathy. It is not good enough to say you are for "that" because you call yourself "this" and the guys that are selling "that" call themselves "this" as well. You can't just pull the lever and go home with a clean conscience. No no, friends. You have to take it a step further. The television is busted, and the fount of its ideas are ten words long and not nearly substantial enough to make a decision. You have to read. Read the news as objectively as possible and then for a subjective you. Read different news, read old news, read tea leaves and the ketchup stains on the wall. Read Read Read.
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Paul Revere and the colonists did NOT shout, "The British are coming!"
in April of 1775. Why? Because everyone was British then. The
colonists themselves were British. Revere said, "The regulars are
coming out," and he said it quietly because he did not want to let
anybody know what the Hell he was doing. The redcoats were advancing
to seize powder stores in Concord and arrest Hancock, Adams, and the
lot. Regardless, it is important to understand that, for the sake of
accuracy, all parties were under the same institutional control, that
being the state of the United Kingdom. The difference between civil
war and revolution is a semantic one, the same as Obi-Wan's "point of
view".
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2008 Cubs Preview
Cindy Sheehan got herself into trouble when she referred to Iraqi "insurgents" as "freedom fighters." No one (and by "no one," I mean "people who get the majority of their information from Fox News") seemed to care that if someone were invading our country, we might fight back, too, and would expect to be respected and not labelled "insurgents" or "terrorists."
This whole FoxNews/MSNBC is the reason we need to increase literacy. I don't want to be insensitive, particularly given what is on the top of the page, but I think people need to draw lines. Know what you will take and know what you won't. When push comes to shove, be capable of shoving back. It is the American concept I can think of. Not only that, but practice shoving back so that if you have to, you are really good at it. I am not the best shover in the world, but out to 300 yards I can shove effectively with just my eyeballs, God save you if I have glass. Not only that, but the local constabulary knows that I can shove and shove well because I practice shoving with some of them. So, when push comes to shove, and some suit with a $400 haircut tells those guys to bring me in they will have a moment of crisis. I realize I am just some dumb hillbilly, and I don't know nuthin about nuthin. Still, I know what I got I got honest, I ain't no Senator's sin. During the Revolution, a dumb hillbilly like me could shove a lobster's pumpkin at 250 yards with just his eyeballs.
I have to ask myself who would have the physical and mental capability to put two in the chest and two in the head of a behemoth like McNair and then put one in the girl. I'm having a difficult time thinking that she plugged him four times and then off'd herself.
Same here Cobra. That is a very professional type of thing. The two and two is common practice in execution style murders.
Ugly business. There is a lot of ugliness around that. A lot of it begs answers for questions that, at face value, are unseemly. Ugly business.
Ya, the more that is revealed the uglier this situation is going to get I feel.
On the positive side of things...PG85 and I are trying to get some details worked out, so I hope to be able to get that all done within the next couple of weeks!
Forgot to add...if you have any questions for him, shoot me over an email and I'll be sure to ask!