Sunday late games

[oregonpackfan]

Congrats on the Bears win. From what I saw, even Grossman played well. It seemed like a few of his receivers, however, were dropping passes that Grossman had placed well.

The Bears running back(Jones?) appeared to have a serious ankle injury. How bad is it?

[cpk1994]

Shanahan should be fired for gross incompetence in that game. He should take Sauerbrun with him.l

Kind of amusing since many people ripped McCarthy for not kicking to Hester. Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. Either way you have to make plays. Hester did fumble one return to setup a Denver TD.

I was fine with how M3 hhandled it. But to continue to kick to Hester after he scorched them once? And on top of that Sauerbrun rolls right into the pressure trying to kick another? How dumb can the Broncos get?

[HarveyWallbangers]

Congrats on the Bears win. From what I saw, even Grossman played well. It seemed like a few of his receivers, however, were dropping passes that Grossman had placed well.

The Bears running back(Jones?) appeared to have a serious ankle injury. How bad is it?

Cedric Benson. They let their better RB (Jones) go to the Jets.

[FritzDontBlitz]

I only reply when someone else talks about my beloved BEARS ! This being your forum, I think it would be uncooth(big word, look it up) of me to just start threads about Da BEARS.

And yet you sit around trolling in order to find a thread with the word "Bears" in it? LOL

I think not. But, enjoy the win. Just dont let the fairweather Chicago media convince you guys that they have a shot. They still need serious work done to that offensive line.

It was a hilarious game to watch, I will say that much. Berrian's catch was superb. Usually the refs screw up calls like that, be glad they got it right for a change.

[Joemailman]

It will be a wild race for the last wild-card. Lions are 6-5 and have a tough schedule. Behind them are 6 teams at 5-6.

[the_idle_threat]

Why do they call it a Rugby scrum. It was a Rugby Maul like Minnesota had last week.

For those of us who know very little about Rugby, what's the difference?

Well, since you asked ...

A maul in rugby is much like a play in football where the ball carrier is stopped by the defense while still standing, and his teammates are pushing "the pile" forward against the defenders, who are pushing the pile the other way. It can be a way of walking the ball down the field in a mass of bodies, like we occasionally see in football.



In a rugby maul, the ball carrier wants to hand the ball backward to teammates, who can either advance the ball forward around the end, or lateral it out.



In rugby---just like in football---the maul (or "pile," in football parlance) usually collapses into a literal pile of bodies. In football, of course, the play is dead. In rugby, the teams keep playing, forming a "ruck" to get the ball out. Sometimes the ball is really buried, however, and can't be "rucked" out. That's one situation where they have a scrum.

A scrum looks a lot like a maul to those who don't know better---it's a bunch of guys on one side pushing against a bunch of guys on the other side.



But a crucial difference is that nobody is holding the ball in the middle. In the pic above, you can see the ball on the ground in the middle of the scrum.

In a scrum, the opposing "packs" get set up first, like linemen before a snap in football.



Then they engage the scrum (like in the first scrum pic above), and the ball is rolled into the scrum between the two teams from the side. While the ball is on the ground, players can only touch it with their feet. They push forward against the other team while pushing the ball backwards with their feet, so that the ball emerges out the back of the scrum. The last man at the back of the scrum (the 8-man) or a teammate behind the scrum (the scrum-half) can pick up the ball and either run with it or lateral to a teammate.

So in essence, the scrum is in some ways like a jump ball in basketball, where the teams are determining possession of the ball in a prescribed manner, while the maul is the kind of play they frequently call a scrum in football broadcasts.