The Rams

[Fritz]

Here's a description of the '57 uniforms from a site that is about the history of the Packers' unis:

"Uniform overhaul: dark bluish-green jersey with three gold bands on sleeves and gold numbers; gold helmets and pants; green and gold striped socks (white helmets were also worn)(PBN) In 1957, Packers began consistently wearing white on road, for television.(GBP08)"

No red stripe mentioned. But it might be cool to see this uni once:

[mraynrand]

I guess the Rams just aren't interesting to talk about

[KYPack]

I guess the Rams just aren't interesting to talk about

Yer right, they ain't.

St Lou is becoming the place where brilliant young co-ordinators go to die. Lenahan, Spagnoulo, now McDaniels. Once young geniuses, now tattered wrecks. There is only onwe deal that worries me. The Rams have always had a tradition of coming into our place with bad teams and pulling an upset. I hope that doesn't go down

[Fritz]

This is so. I can see the Packer offense being out of sync on Sunday, and Jackson getting enough yards to give the Packers fits.

[rbaloha1]

This is so. I can see the Packer offense being out of sync on Sunday, and Jackson getting enough yards to give the Packers fits.

Packers may start slow but eventually massacre the Rams. SJ gets yards but not tds. Absolutely no worries.

[CaliforniaCheez]

I wish they did some arty stuff to make the helmet look like on of those 20's style leather jobs.

Stencil on a few lines of ants on the helmet to look like stitching.

Using shading to attempt to give the 3 dimensional look of layered leather is difficult.

[hoosier]

After trading this thread I began to wonder what iti is like to be a Rams fan these days. It can't be much fun, right? I decided to look at a Rams forum, and was surprised to see that most of the fans posting there seem to have a pretty good sense of humor. Maybe that's not all that surprising--Saints fans in the 70s had a fine appreciation for the absurd too. One of the best threads was advocating that Spangnolo abandon all conventional wisdom and go for it on fourth down (regardless of down and distance and field position), onside kick on every opportunity, and bring the kitchen sink (that's probably not a good idea against Rodgers). They used the example an idiosyncratic HS coach in Arkansas to make their point:

Down 29-0 before touching the ball

If you think Bill Belichick bucks convention with his play-calling, meet Kevin Kelley, head football coach of Pulaski Academy in Little Rock, Ark. Actually, perhaps you've met him already.

Kelley has become a cult figure among both football coaches and the sports analytics community for his disregard -- contempt even -- for traditional football wisdom. He's been featured in Sports Illustrated. He figured prominently in Scorecasting. He's been a regular at coaching clinics and at the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

For one, Kelley doesn't believe in punting. His Bruins teams go for it on fourth down, even in the most extreme situations. His playbook is filled with tricks and gimmicks. He often forbids his players to return punts, reckoning that the odds of a fumble outstrip the incremental yards that can be gained from a return. After his team scores, it almost always attempts an onside kick. There are 12 varieties in the playbook -- including one in which the ball is placed flat on the ground -- and Kelley figures that the chance of recovery outweighs the risk of allowing the opposition to start a drive near midfield.

The funny thing about Kelley: He's not a mad scientist or an iconoclast, zigging where everyone else is zagging, for the hell of it. Rather, he's a relentlessly rational sort whose methods have backing in data.

The decision not to punt? According to Kelley's statistics, when a team punts from near its end zone, the opponent will take possession inside the 40-yard line and will then score a touchdown 77 percent of the time. If it recovers on downs inside the 10, it will score a touchdown 92 percent of the time. "So [forsaking] a punt, you give your offense a chance to stay on the field," he said. "And if you miss, the odds of the other team scoring only increase 15 percent. It's like someone said, '[Punting] is what you do on fourth down,' and everyone did it without asking why."

Still, even for Pulaski fans who have come to expect the unexpected, Kelley outdid himself last Friday night. The Bruins visited the Cabot Panthers, one of the best teams in Arkansas and a school with roughly five times the student body of Pulaski. More than 8,000 fans packed the bleachers. One of the state's network affiliates televised the game. Another held its evening news from the sidelines.

With Kelley calling plays, Pulaski scored on its first drive. Naturally, the Bruins then attempted an onside kick, which they recovered. Soon, they scored another touchdown. They repeated the drill -- onside kick, recovery, touchdown -- again. And then again. With 8:35 left in the 12-minute first quarter, Cabot trailed Pulaski 29-0 and had yet to run a play from scrimmage.

As Pulaski prepared to attempt its fourth onside kick, Cabot called timeout. ("Not too often you see timeout called as the receiving team lines up for a first-quarter kickoff," Kelley said.) Finally, Cabot recovered the kick and began its first offensive set of downs. Cue: more unconventional calls from Kelley. On defense, Pulaski put all 11 players in the box, leaving every receiver uncovered. The strategy worked, too, as the quarterback misfired under the pressure (and, surely, the unprecedented experience) of facing an 11-man rush.

After the 29-0 outburst, the game was remarkably close. Pulaski ended up winning by 30 points, 64-34, racking up 664 yards in total offense and getting eight touchdowns from quarterback Fredi Knighten (the Bruins also recovered a total of five onside kicks). Pulaski moved to No. 3 in the state AP poll and retained its No. 1 ranking in Arkansas Class 4A, a good bet to win a third state title in the last eight years. The Bruins also climbed from 99th to 75th in the Rivals Top 100 national rankings, not bad for a school with just 350 students. It makes for a strong endorsement of its coach's methods.

"Honestly, the more football I see, the more I'm convinced we're right," Kelley said. "That game the other night, they were just stunned. Emotionally, it takes so much out of you when the other team goes for it successfully or recovers an onside kick -- or three of them in a row."

[Fritz]

Like "moneyball" for football. Sort of.

[pbmax]

That story brings a tear to my eye. Even if some of his strategies aren't lock solid mathematical advantages, there is an advantage to a smaller or less skilled team doing the unconventional. After all, conventional methods are what rendered the opponent better than you.

[KYPack]

That story brings a tear to my eye. Even if some of his strategies aren't lock solid mathematical advantages, there is an advantage to a smaller or less skilled team doing the unconventional. After all, conventional methods are what rendered the opponent better than you.

I love this story, too. Many moons ago, I coached a youth team for a couple falls. A couple games into my YFB coaching career, I discovered several facts. 11 and 12 year old kids can't kick a football worth shit. Also, it's a rarity to have a kid that can long snap at all. Out punts were all adventures. Adventures that ended badly. After my second game (another loss) I announced at practice that we weren't going to punt any more. At all. I had never gotten a very positive reaction to anything I had announced at practice. The move to abandon punting was met with resounding cheers from the troops.

So, we did it. It didn't always work, of course. But going for it worked a helluva a lot better than punting did. Your basic 12 year old can punt the ball about 20 yards, 25 if he's lucky. And that happens maybe 1 out of 5 times. So one out of 5 times, you push your opponent backwards maybe 10 yards. The other 4-5 plays are all disasters. Not punting eliminates the disasters. So we eliminated disaster and played stout D. We even won a few games we definitely would have lost if we tried to punt. The other teams caught on and started doing it, too.

By the end of the second year, only a couple teams in the league punted at all. The fathers all hated it, but screw 'em, ya know?