Recruiting Forum Football Talk IV

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So what does @Ulysees E. McGill think of the Rings of Power trailer?
It is pure Woke agenda filled garbage. It is not Tolkeins Middle Earth so it is nothing to me, it is rainbow freak world wet dream fan fiction.

You asked..🤷‍♂️

Edit: I will watch it and give it a chance to prove ne wrong just like I did with The Wheel of Time woke agenda filled fan fiction garbage show
 
I'm on book 2 of wheel of time.
I'm about 3/4ths of the way through Knife Of Dreams on my first series reread. Even though I already knew it, the foreshadowing and hundreds if not thousands of seemingly unimportant small details that are buried throughout the story blows my mind...I love this story even more now than I did before.



I just wish they hadn't turned the TV show into a putrid abomination.
 
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WoT was my all time favorite until a few years ago. I went back to reread it and either my taste had changed or I had read so much better since then and it didn't hold up anymore. The middle slog especially was brutal, never let a family member be your editor. That series should have been 3 books shorter at least.

Still, one of the seminal fantasy works of all time. Book 3 or 4, whichever one Rand walks through the rings, was one of my all time reading moments. Right up there with Enders Game when you find out it's real. Mind was totally blown.
100% different opinion than you after reread. I love this story more than ever, and I actually appreciate the middle expansion now after disliking it on first read.
 
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You talking the Age of Madness trilogy? It's set 20 years after the first trilogy. I enjoyed those. It made me want to go back and read the first trilogy again to remember those how those characters got there. I will say I listened to some of it too and that narrator did a great job. You read his stand alone novels? They're good as well.
The narrator is by far the very best in the business. I loved the first trilogy, liked the standalone, hated age of madness. He's gotten so ham fisted in his preachiness that he's neglected to tell an actually good story. The characters were always his strong suit, but I didn't care about any of them except maybe Sivine. And it's turned into a soap opera, no actual arc or destination for the story. I seem to be in the minority though, most people I've asked didn't hate the madness trilogy like I did.
 
They act human for most of the series. Which is why I liked it so much. Most humans would be stupid in their situations
That is exactly what I was going to say. Jordan nailed basic human nature imo. It is so frustrating and infuriating because so many problems are not caused by the pure evil of the Dark, but are caused by very flawed human selfishness, self centeredness/special interest, pride and arrogance...and very often pure stupidity (people like Weiroman Saniago who are specifically noted as stupid in the text)

A lot of the "stupidity" he is talking about is the lack of self awareness of sooo many characters on the series...which Jordan is obviously pointing out all the time.
 
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My dog is still pretty young, eats every weird thing in the house. Yesterday, he pooped and my wife’s severed hair scrunchy was dangling out of his anus, with my son’s Luke Skywalker Lego torso embedded in the fecal material, of course I had to pull out the hair band, was like 4 inches up in there 🤮.

Get a puppy, they say.
No one said to pull it out with your teeth....
 


Getting down to the nitty gritty for the Lebron vs MJ guys in here

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Can Jabari Small be the best running back in the SEC this year?

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The premise is that Jabari Small is a dark horse candidate for RB1 in the SEC this year due to how “effective and incendiary” Tennessee’s offense has been under Josh Heupel. Jabari Small is said to benefit from the pace and aggressive playcalling of our offense.

Stats can always be used for tell differing stories. The quality of the opponent has a lot to do with stats among other things so comparisons and rankings most times are never really apples to apples. jmo.

Having said that, I recently read an evaluation of SEC running backs for this year which didn’t really account for strength of schedule and was based primarily on last season’s performance.
It was said that Jabari Small had an OKAY case for being the best running back in the SEC this year. The options were STRONG, OKAY, POOR, and WEAK.

Last year Jabari ranked #5 in the conference for average yards before contact and #4 for percent of his total yards being before contact. I think this is a credit to both the scheme and the offensive line. Football outsiders ranked our offensive line 9th best in the nation last year and 3rd best on standard downs, downs where we remained on schedule. We were not too good running the ball when we got behind schedule (defined as passing downs), ranking #87.

Jabari’s average yards after contact ranked #14 in the conference and his broken tackle percentage ranked #16 out of all ball carriers (RBs & QBs).

He was 4th best in avoiding negative yardage plays. Gumption runs are instances when the ball carrier is hit behind the line of scrimmage and is still able to gain at least one yard on the play. While Jabari seldom got hit behind the line when he did he couldn’t do a lot about it; He ranked #20 in the conference for gumption percentage.

He was 2nd best in the conference for 1D+TD percentage of his plays. He ranked #5 in the conference for TD percentage. His first down percentage ranked 6th best in the conference. His success rate was 3rd best in the conference.

The percentage of Jabari’s runs which gained 0-3 yards was 1st in the conference. This is not a ranking that you really want to win. The percentage of his runs that gained 3-7 yards ranked #14 and the percentage that gained 7-10 ranked #20.

A major strength for Jabari is his Explosive Run Rate. 22% of his rushing attempts topped 10 yards which is 2nd best among all returning RBs in the conference, including incoming transfers. Jabari is described as “a chunk run waiting to happen”. Jabari’s explosive run rate beat the SEC average in every statistical situation. The analyst suggests that Jabari benefits from the pace, versatility, and the downfield passing components of our offense which opens up holes in the defense for him to exploit.

Last year Jabari’s durability was an issue. He ranked #14 in the conference is USE percentage.

It seems to me that if Jabari Small wants to make a STRONG case for being the best RB in the SEC this year he needs to improve his durability and figure out how to do a better job breaking tackles. Not only would being better able to break tackles boost that metric but it would boost most other metrics, especially yards after contact and his median yards per attempt. jmo.

Coach Mack said in the spring that Jabari had in addition to learning more about our offense and studying NFL running backs and how they run the ball this offseason he also added significant body armor and focused a lot on increasing his physicality.

By all available metrics Jabari Small is considered a good SEC running back in comparison to his peers and is named on a number of preseason All-SEC teams and watch lists for this year. If Jabari can improve his durability and can get into the top quadrant of the SEC in broken tackle percentage I think he can go from good to elite, especially in Heupel’s offense. jmo.
 
My dog is still pretty young, eats every weird thing in the house. Yesterday, he pooped and my wife’s severed hair scrunchy was dangling out of his anus, with my son’s Luke Skywalker Lego torso embedded in the fecal material, of course I had to pull out the hair band, was like 4 inches up in there 🤮.

Get a puppy, they say.
I did not need to wake up this morning and read this

Wash the scrunchy and give bck to the wife unawares?

Git sum
 
I've heard book 6 is the main drag. I've also heard a complaint that the characters are really stupid. So far they kind of are but they are also kids at this point.

None of the books are bad but you do get a period of a few books where the specific story lines for certain characters are either repetitious or drag a bit. Nynaeve being b**chy, Elaine making reckless decisions repeatedly, Mat constantly being frustrated by the women in his life and Perrin being a man on a mission.

Rand's sections are almost never bad but he kinda goes missing for a couple of books and there are some chapters from the POV of characters that really aren't that important or don't go anywhere. That said, I just re-read the series again last November/December and was reminded again of how great it is and how much I love it.

My tastes may lean toward darker or more adult fantasy now but that doesn't change the strengths of the WoT. The world building, having multiple amazing characters with varied abilities and having lots of absolutely epic moments are top notch for the genre.....and having an entire book basically being a giant battle spanning half the known world is amazingly impressive and trumps pretty much any other book series climax I can think of.

Who cares if it's not perfect? It will always be one of the best and most ambitious series in fantasy history.
 
Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive series. You're welcome.

Agreed. Current favorite read....hoping book 5 is great and doesn't kill off too many characters. It's supposed to be an ending to the first half of the series arc....could either be great or a huge letdown. With all that Sanderson has planned, books 6-10 are going to take a while for us to get.

Sanderson has taken world building to the next level of universe building with the Cosmere, yet every planetary system and its stories are self contained with minimal crossover. I absolutely can't wait for his Silverlight book(s) that focus on Hoid and how Adonalsium came to be separated into the Shards that are responsible for the various magic systems on each planet. I don't love all of Sanderson's books but Mistborn is great and Stormlight might end up being my all-time favorite series if it has a few more entries on the level of the first 3 books, especially Oathbringer. The Novellas are great too.
 
Ok Ladies and Gentlemen, I know a lot of you are book fans and I bought a Kindle Paperwhite during Prime Days but I need a book to read. I am a big fan of Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, RR Martin, Lovecraft etc. (I love Horror, Sci-Fi, Dark Fantasy and Fantasy) but I will read anything that's good even Lit Fic (basically I read just about any genre except romance as I find those cheesy as hell). So hit me up with your suggestions.

For slow burn, Lovecraftian horror check out The Fisherman by John Langan.

https://www.amazon.com/Fisherman-John-Langan/dp/1939905214/
 
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@utvols88 @Rishvol @Ulysees E. McGill

Let's try this again. I read so many books a year that I would go broke if I bought them all. I do buy hard copy and online versions of new books I want and authors I want to support but don't have the extra money to buy every older series I find....two pre-teens who are a better use of that money. So I use this website for books I want to read but don't want to buy....kinda like an online library.

Online Read Free Novel - Read Light Novel,onlinereadfreenovel.com
 
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