"Armando Salguero Twitter: For those asking Martin-Long comparison so far this season: Martin 2 sacks, 6 hurries allowed. Long 2 sacks, 11 hurries allowed." Nothing to see here, drivin along drivin along..not saying Martin is the better player, just watching what's going on.. Anyone have their PFF scores?
A friend of mine is a huge STL fan so I watch them alongside my game at the bar we go to a lot. I can tell you from the eyeball test and listening to him gripe. Long is not doing well for them. He gets beat a lot. I joke with him that Long left Miami and went to STL because of the uniform colors. Grass stains from being planted on his butt every play don't show up on blue pants like they do on white ones. For some reason he does not find my joke as funny as I do???
Jake Long loved Miami so much, he sacrificed himself so that we may succeed. Also sabotaged Jeff Fisher for us in the process.
Last I seen of Long he was on his back letting his QB be sacked by D Ware on 3rd and 8 for a fourth and (Long.)
Long playing only fair and Reggie Bush injured. The moves made are lining up well...........now. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.
I was just about to ask that,,someone mentioned he got benched but hadnt heard any confirmation about it.
A buddy of mine who is a huge Rams fan told me this. He was at the game and saw Long running onto the field with the offense and Fischer called him back. Long wasnt too happy I heard.
Im not going to gloat...things can turn around quickly. Ill just smile at being 3-0. Thats what I care about.
I really believe that is why he didn't sign with Miami. He knew he wasn't worth the money and felt he received enough from us.
http://realramsfans.com/viewtopic.php?t=77430 Lulz. Maybe we should have told them that Jake is not good against speed rushers?
ATM, we are ahead due to the contract $$$ Long received in Stl. Raw stats do not tell the whole story, Ware has beaten great LT's and poor LT's in his time in the league, making the real question. The Quality of the Pass Rusher they faced
I havent watched a snap of St Louis, so I cant say how well he's played so far, and OL stats only can you so much. However, even if its a wash between he and Martin, since Martin is playing for a fraction of the price and is likely to get better, while Long is only going to age and get worse, then Martin, for 2013, was the right choice. Or at least giving Long what he wanted was the wrong choice. Good non-sign. If Martin bombs (and I dont think that he is), we're out very little. If Long does, then it really hurts the team's cap.
I'd hesitate to call Ireland's decision to let Jake Long walk a win because we don't know what Miami offered. If he offered the same thing as the Rams and didn't get him, that's not really a good move. I don't know where people are getting this from. In his prime he had no problem at all against speed rushers. Every once and a while he'd have a problem with a speed rusher who could transfer to power particularly well, he'd get off balance heading off an outside rush and be vulnerable to an inside move or a bull rush, but even that was rare. He wasn't being beat wide.
Hmmmm and not one blurb from Rotoworld since before the season started, not even after his benching. Curious.
Jake Long was never more than an above average LT being propped up by Dan Henning's max protect system. It's not a coincidence and not injury related why when Henning was no longer the coordinator, Jake Long declined drastically. Seriously, go on NFL replay and watch a Dolphin game from 2009 and then watch one from 2011 or 2012. Keep notice of the amount of times Jake Long is 1v1 vs the opposing teams RDE. The numbers are probably cut in half for the 2009 game.
I realize he's no longer on the team and there's going to be some element of bitterness, but that's really overboard. Long wasn't babysat, not even really at the beginning of his career even. He was on an island. Dan Henning did go overboard with protection packages at times, but that was largely evidenced by too many guys running BOB protections, waiting for blitzers who never came and releasing into too-late underneath routes. The guy was legitimately a dominant left tackle, and injuries have made him overcompensate on a kick-slide that always leaned a little over-aggressive. It's if anything an example of how thin the line between dominant and JAG can be. We're about a step away from doing this in the team yearbooks:
Just to review (I'd conveniently forgot most of this as well)... Jake Long's contract with the Rams was four years, $34m with $16m guaranteed and if he's on the roster for 2014, another $4m guaranteed. (per Albert Breer) But the Dolphins and Rams were not the only teams trying to sign Long. According to ESPN"s Ed Werder, there was a 3rd team that actually offered more than the Dolphins. Now, we don't know how much Miami offered, we may never know. But, it's possible given his injury history that the term of the contract we offered was not four years, three years, or even two years. Think Grimes and Keller... and their injury history. Only one year deals for each of them. It's quite possible that we only offered a one year deal to Jake. Now, if that was $8.5m, is that the same as what the Rams offered? On an annual basis, yes... but not in guaranteed money. It would be quite understandable for Jake to take the longer term deal with the coach he preferred (and system).
It's a shame Long suffered from these injuries. Are people forgetting just how much *** he kicked when he was healthy? Dude was easily one of the best LTs in the league.
First of all, I've been saying this same thing since he 2011, when he was still on the team. It's documented in my post history for proof. It has nothing to do with bitterness. I'm not saying Dan Henning intentionally babysat Jake Long per se. I'm saying that was his style, and maybe it had more to do with Henne. But the fact of the matter is that Jake Long and the rest of the OL had a ton of help. (I think statistics showed we left the most blockers in to block in the league by a large margin) Like I said, go watch a game from 2009 and compare it to one in 2011 or 2012. He was asked to do a lot more and subsequently more hurries and sacks were the result. I'll elect not to use injuries/age/breaking down as the excuse for a 26 year old guy. Especially when none of them were major injuries like a major ACL tear. I never called him JAG. I called him above average. Not dominant As for your pictures.....I didn't get it EDIT: I even had a post on here that had videos of Jake Long getting help that I picked from a random game in 2009. He maybe went 1v1 with the RDE once in the entire first half against the patriots. This was when he was still a Dolphin. People elected to neglect that post and still just use injuries and breaking down as the excuse for his decline in play.
The Rams have the 2nd most pass attempts in the league with 142 while the Dolphins rank 18th with 107. If we assume that Long and Martin have played for all those attempts that means Long's sack rate is better than Martin's. Though Long is giving up a hurry 7.7% of the time while Martin is giving one up 5.6% of the time. You'd also have to factor in things like quality of opponent, QB skill, scheme, and play calling to get a good comparison. I didn't want to give Long a lot of money given his injury concerns and what seemed like a drop in quality from his outstanding first several years. But I'm not sold Martin is the answer. Frankly, if the oline and Tanny keep playing like they have I don't think Tanny will last the whole year.
Jake Long was a very good LT while he was here. At one point you could have argued (and I in fact did make such an argument) that he was at was on par with Joe Thomas. And at that time he probably was. The last 3 years, hate to say it but from 10 to 11 there was a slight decline, from 11 to 12 there was another decline and now in 13 theres more of a decline so far. Sure, Sam Bradford isnt complaining cause its better then the nonsense hes had at various points (save for the 1 healthy season from Saffold) but like many (including myself) argued this offseason, Left Tackles dont score touchdowns. Theyre important but replaceable.
Jake was a stud he played half a season with one arm for us and it probably cost him permanent strength loss and his knee has been troublesome every offseason since sparano gate. He started off looking like a possible HOFer but the decline was as fast as it was obvious... I find it a little sad.
While there is no certainty about the Long contract offer, I truly believe Miami didn't make a "competitive offer". With the cap flexibility Miami has, Jake Long would of been a Miami Dolphin if the team wanted to retain him. Everything about the situation says that Jake wanted to stay in Miami and the feeling was mutual only to a degree. No doubt Ireland and Philbin saw the problems we all saw last year and legitimately questioned his ability to play to the level of the contract Jake Long wanted. So far, they/we have been right. Jake isn't what he was for one reason or another and there's no reason to believe he's going to return to dominance. I feel comfortable giving Ireland and Philbin brownie points on this one.
First, I don't think they 'let' Long walk. I think he had predetermined that he was not coming back. Reports were that the offer from STL wasn't that far from what we had last offered him. For whatever reason it was (only he knows), he had decided to move probably thinking that a new start would do him well. As to speed rushers, that was one of his weaknesses coming out of college, however, it's not like he was poor against them either... His strong suit was always power run game stuff, did here when he was first drafted, but with the change of staffs and scheme, he really didn't fit, athletically, what Sherman/Philbin are looking for in OL. Now, is Martin equal or better, that's debatable. The OL in general is not very good, so he could be just average and look better (see Samson Satelle and his tenure here). The only OL that has been consistent in all three games is Pouncey. The rest have struggled at times, although at this point, you could say that Martin has not been the main problem...
Ireland screwed up by passing on Matt Ryan and picking Long. He gets no credit in my book for "allowing" him to leave.