Big Blue Huddle

Quote from: Jclayton92 on May 31, 2024, 08:15:50 PMhttps://www.pff.com/news/nfl-linebacker-rankings-top-32-2024-nfl-season

10. BOBBY OKEREKE, NEW YORK GIANTS
A career-high 78.9 PFF grade highlighted the best season of Okereke's career, his first with the Giants. The 2019 third-round draft pick ranked ninth at the position with an 82.5 PFF coverage grade, and he was one of the surest tacklers in the league, missing just 7.7% of his attempts

I think his presence on this team was more beneficial to the rest of our players than some of the LB'ers with higher PFF grades. His hard-nose playing style is "catching" (like a virus) to the younger players around him. And I agree...the best signing of Schoen's career at the helm. That could change if Burns lives up to his hype though

I don't expect this team to make it to the playoffs this year (considering our division), but they should be fun to watch. Hopefully, they use this year to get a lot of field time for our younger players. Development, development, development!

Thanks for that that Rich. The one line that sticks out is "USS New Jersey fired three times more 16-inch ammunition in her first tour in Korea than she had in World War II". I did not know that. Not sure my father knew that. Regardless, that had a lot to do with my dad's loss of hearing (which he blamed on the 16" guns), especially in his twilight years when his hearing was almost entirely gone

When I toured the ship with my son and my father, my dad pulled the chain barriers out of the way and took us down in the "off limits" turrets of the 16-inch cannons. He had done that before and was given permission to do so because in their words, "this was your ship - go ahead", told to my dad. Cramped quarters and amazing operation with elevators bringing shells up and powder bags. Not much different than the days of pirate ships where the gunpowder (black powder) and cannonballs were loaded separately. It took 6 bags (660 lbs) of black powder to shoot one shell. Quite amazing that they could shoot a 2400 lb shell (the weight of a car) more than twenty miles away with amazing accuracy



loading pre-bagged gun powder

I watched "Atlas" on Netflix last night because I couldn't find anything else worth watching. I figured I'd give it a few minutes to decide whether-or-not to stick with it. Not a fan of J-Lo, but gave it a whirl anyway. I ended up watching the whole thing, and it was much better than expected, and I actually think J-Lo did a great job acting, despite her pending divorce from Afleck

Movie summary:

Reminded me an awful lot of a new version and different take off of "The Terminator", where AI and machines take over the world, with a splash of "Star Trek" (space travel and odd planets) thrown in. If you like thrillers, killing, savagery, and saving the world once again, you'll probably like this movie. It was one of the few movies that I didn't wish I could get the last two hours of my life back afterward. Definitely worth watching

Quote from: Trench on June 01, 2024, 08:38:39 AMJolly - God bless your dad and all those who served and made "The Greatest Generation"....I cannot than you enough for sharing these pics. I'd love to hear any of his stories he passed along.

It would take a book to tell all his stories. He was on the battleship only during the Korean War. He lied his age when he was 16 in order to "get in the war before it was over" during WWII. His two older brothers were already in. His closest brother, Glenn, was in the 10th Mountain Division and was killed during the Battle of Po Valley in the Apennines Mountains of Italy. He was killed by mortar fire on the same day and next to the mountain where Sen. Bob Dole was wounded. Glenn's story: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/136681952/glenn-lee-chrysler

My Dad's other brother, Bob, was a Sgt (2nd Platoon, Company D, 134th Infantry Regiment, of the 35th Infantry Division), and partook in the Normandy Invasion and marched all the way from France to Germany before getting shot in the leg while marching through the streets of Geldern, Germany. While the rest of his unit took cover, he stood his ground and manned a machine gun, pinning down the shooters until his unit was able to come in from behind and take them out. He refused to go for medical help and marched (limped) all the way to Berlin. He died several years ago with the bullet still in his leg. You could paper a wall with all the citations and honors he was given. He marched back across Europe (still wounded) and boarded the Queen Mary for his trip home



The Queen Mary returning US troops back home to America...not exactly a comfortable pleasure voyage home



My Uncle Glenn and Uncle Bob


During WWII, my dad was stationed in the Pacific arena as a member of the SeaBees on the Island of New Caledonia. After Japan capitulated, my father was stationed in a port near Nagasaki for a year. He used to drive officers to the smoldering ruins of Nagasaki to tour the damage. We used to joke with our dad that the reason all his sons were bald was because of his walking around the radioactive ruins of the city. One of the things I'm proudest of for my father, was that after he was discharged, he went back to high school and graduated at 20 yrs old. A lot of my friends had fathers who quit school to join the war, but I only know of one who returned to finish his education - my dad. After high school, he went to Cornell to earn a certification in milk analysis. He then went to farms around NYS to train farmers how to test and graph various components of milk. While doing that, the Korean War broke out, and he immediately signed back up, this time as a Petty Officer/Boatswain Mate on the USS New Jersey. While the ship was being refitted in the Brooklyn shipyard, my father would travel home by train to Binghamton on weekends, and that is when he met my mother. They married in November 1950 just before he took off for the next year in Korea. Interestingly, the ship's mast and structure had to be removed for the ship to go under the Brooklyn Bridge. The parts were shipped to Virginia Beach to reattach before heading to Korea, which took a couple of weeks. Then a stop at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba for supplies, then through the Panama Canal, and off to war. The ship was so large, there were only inches of clearance on its sides as it went through the locks. So once they reached the Pacific, the sailors had to hang off the sides with ropes to repaint that sides of the ship

Anyway, there's way too many stories in my family to do it justice on this site. On my mother's side, she only had one member of the family in the war - the only male of fighting age - her cousin. My grandmother and mother (a teenager at the time) used to make homemade candy and cookies and send them to him. They wrote letters back and forth for the duration. His name was "Kenny" and he was a member of the paratroop battalion known as "Easy Company". He was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. His story can be found in https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56063971/kenneth-jay-webb

Our "Wall of Fame" at my parent's home

the picture on the right with the stars border was hand signed by Harry S. Truman


the small shadow box underneath the painting of the New Jersey contains a piece of the original deck of the New Jersey. My son (who was a combat medic in Iraq) purchased it when he and I toured the New Jersey with my dad

Great catch, but short of OBJ's. OBJ caught the back of the ball after it already passed him. The only catch by a Giant that rivals OBJ's (IMHO) was Pinnock's ridiculous catch last year in camp...still short of OBJ's though

Quote from: MightyGiants on May 31, 2024, 06:38:25 AMIf anyone is interested in Naval history, I highly recommend this YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/@Drachinifel

and


@Jolly Blue Giant

The USS New Jersey has its own YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/@BattleshipNewJersey

Thanks for the link. I've toured the New Jersey with my father and seen it quite a few times because it's hard to miss if you are ever in Philadelphia. If you can see the river (easy from Rt 95), you can't miss it, as it sticks out like a sore thumb. The Delaware River divides Pennsylvania and New Jersey. So the ship is on the other side of the river from the Philly side, so officially in Camden, NJ. It's just south of the Ben Franklin Bridge (north of the Walt Whitman Bridge)

The New Jersey lit up at night




When this picture was taken (property of the US Navy), my father was eleven stories high with headphones radioing down to the gunners in the turrets to indicate where the shells were landing and where to adjust


My Dad


Bull Halsey


the USS New Jersey BB62

I disagree that it is "equally" important. When a QB gets sacked, it leaves a lasting impression on him, and he gets more skittish that if he's forced to rush his throw, not to mention, he can get hurt. Maybe not enough to leave a game, but it can have a negative effect on his game if he's playing sore

Quote from: T200 on May 31, 2024, 09:19:48 AMThe "interrobang" isn't on the keyboard but...


WTF? still are!   

Quote from: Jclayton92 on May 30, 2024, 04:26:09 PMHad a promising few games in 21 or 22 but he's really a specials guy and someone that can actually tackle in the secondary. Believe he's only missed 4 tackles his whole time in the league.

That's good info...I'm glad they are focusing on improving STs (assuming they sign him)

Fifth-year Titans CB, Joshua Kalu (played for Bowen)

https://gmenhq.com/posts/ny-giants-reportedly-bring-former-titans-cb-potential-shane-bowen-reunion-01hz2mst3e4q?sc=be165671da3b347e2b57f31b3de62ada4335dd4eb041bc409f5188d150192a90

The R&RHOF has become a joke. Whilst leaving out highly successful rock and roll bands, they manage to induct old-school country twangers, like Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, or rappers like Eminem and pop singers like Donna Summers. They even inducted one-hit wonder Percy Sledge  Don't get me wrong, "When a Man Loves a Woman" was a classic, but it's still his ONLY hit. I'm surprised they don't have "Snoop Dog" in there  They even have a huge section dedicated to Taylor Swift (not in the HOF...yet) and she does not sing rock and roll. What's going on? I think it's time to remove the words, "Rock and Roll" from the name and call it "Music Hall of Fame" with a caveat in parentheses ("many far more popular and successful musicians are excluded")



Country music stars already have their own hall of fame, the Grand Ole Opry, and it inducts actual country stars, and fans of country music go there to pay homage to their favored genre's superstars

Willie Nelson gets in the Rock and Roll HOF by singing off key through his nose, "On the Road Again" and is forever enshrined as a "rock and roll superstar"  WTF

Who isn't good enough to ever get in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...the list seems endless:

Three Dog Night - had 21 consecutive Top 40 hits, including 3 #1 singles, 11 Top 10s, 18 straight Top 20s, 7 million-selling singles and 12 straight RIAA Certified Gold LPs. They sold more records and had more hits than R&B group, Temptations. Not knocking the Temptations, as I love them. But they aren't rock and roll. Three Dog Night and Tommy James and the shondells had more hits and sold more records in '68 and '69 than any other singer or group...including the Beatles

Tommy James and the Shondells - 23 gold records, 9 platinum albums and over 100 million records sold worldwide, in addition to their 32 Billboard hot 100 charting hits, many have been covered by artists around the world including Bruce Springsteen, Prince, REM, Joan Jett, Billy Idol, Dolly Parton, Carlos Santana and even The Boston Pops. Tommy James and the Shondells sold more than twice as many records as Three Dog Night and ruled the billboards for the last 3 years of the 60s. The Doobie Brothers got inducted and sold a third as many records and had a much shorter and less glamorous run

Monkees - With international hits, four chart-topping albums and three chart-topping songs ("Last Train to Clarksville", "I'm a Believer", and "Daydream Believer"), they sold more than 80 million records worldwide...more than the combined record sales of the Temptations and Willie Nelson (two non-rock and rollers in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)

Boston - Dominated charts from '76 - mid-80s and sold more than 75 million records worldwide, including 17 million were the band's debut album and seven million copies of the band's second studio album, Don't Look Back (1978), placing the group amongst the world's best-selling music artists. Their song "Amanda" alone sold more records than many top singers in the HOF

Pat Benatar - has 15 top 40 hits, 5 platinum albums, 2 multi-platinum albums, and four Grammys to her credit. She was nominated for induction in 2020, but the HOF said "nope, not worthy" (My bad, she was inducted last year after being snubbed before. Apparently, a lot of fans went nuts on the inside team of people who make decisions)

There are so many others more worthy of being in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so I'll just start listing them, without comment:

Paul Revere and the Raiders
Procol Harum
Bad Company (Paul Rogers - favorite singer of multiple superstars like Freddie Mercury, and the Doors recruited him after the death of Jim Morrison, etc.)
Emerson, Lake and Palmer
Jethro Tull
Kansas
Guess Who
Grand Funk Railroad
Turtles
Styx
Deep Purple
Ozzie Osborn
Iron Maiden
Ronnie James Dio
Warren Zevon
Badfinger
Sting (Police)
Joe Walsh
INXS
Blood Sweat and Tears
Lenny Kravits
Dianna Ross
Peter Frampton

I like to try and keep my punctuation right, and don't always get it right. But I try

So I ran into a new punctuation mark that is now acceptable...but don't try to find it on your keyboard. It's the first new punctuation mark since 1671. It's called an "interrobang" and it means to ask a question, but "with emphasis"

It looks like this:

It shows that we have athleticism and speed based on a younger version of themselves after spending a month preparing for the combine. Few players can match their combine scores, as they are heavier and stronger. The real measurement should be between players' ears and the size of the heart (motivation, study habits, teachable, innate ability to read others on the fly, and personal desire to be the greatest)

Those numbers are insane. He's doing to the NT position what Lawrence Taylor did to the LB position. He's one of a kind...and he's all ours!