Training camp headlines 8/7

The Rams and Titans appear to have two joint practices scheduled again today. The 8:30 session will be for special teams, 3:30 will be a regular practice. No practices tomorrow.

* Steven Jackson holdout, day 14. Jackson's total potential fine cracks the $200,000 mark with his absence today. So whenever he does show up, don't expect a happy hour anything like this.

There's a report out there which I haven't seen substantiated that Jackson and agent Eugene Parker are demanding he get the league's highest RB salary, and that he's willing to hold out into the regular season and beyond.

If that report is true, Jackson and Parker are bigger douchebags than I ever thought.

* We were having a football scrimmage when a hockey game broke out!
Speaking of d-bags, hearty congratulations from RamView to Titans DE Kyle Vanden Bosch, easy winner of yesterday's Cheap-Shotting Piece of Crap Award. Let's see, reports say he drove Travis Minor to the ground late, slugged Roy Schuening in the back of the head, cheap-shotted Dane Looker and scrapped with Adam Goldberg, setting the tone for cheap-shots from the rest of the Titan defense, including a Titan DT clotheslining a Ram WR from behind, Keith Bulluck ripping off Reche Caldwell's helmet during a fight and Torry Holt getting blasted over the middle and getting his headgear knocked off... scrimmage ends right there if I'm head coach. I'm not risking a Hall-of-Fame wide receiver because Jeff Fisher is a neanderthal fuck who can't/won't control his players. Doesn't sound like a damn thing has changed in Fisher's brain since 2000. There's intensity, and there's cheap-shotting, and the Titans didn't cross that line yesterday; they were already on the other side of the line before practice started. Albert Haynesworth even complained that the Titans were focusing too much on winning fights and not enough on actually playing.

To their credit, the Rams didn't back down, or complain about the Titans' cheap-shot antics anywhere near as much as I am here. Reche Caldwell answered the Titans with an apparent cheap-shot of his own, which started his fight. Goldberg got in the fight with Vanden Bosch standing up for Schuening. Go Goldberg. Even Mark LeVoir was getting into it. And by Nick Wagoner's account,
the Rams looked quite good in the scrimmage on offense and defense, and everybody had settled way down by the afternoon sessions.

There's no such thing as winning a scrimmage, but I'd score it that way for the Rams anyway.


* The fall of Berlin.
Brock Berlin, on the other hand, got picked off twice yesterday, and apparently looked so bad that at least two of the St. Louis writers covering practice, including Berlin Fan Club President Wagoner, thought Bruce Gradkowski would replace him for the afternoon practice. No report of what happened there, though.


* Preseason Challenge.
Technology willing, the 2008 Preseason Challenge will ramp it up tonight with, yes, a double-header: Saints at Big Dead on ESPN and Chiefs at Bears on NFL Network.

A Thursday night preseason doubleheader? Hey, there's no other way to do this but to be hard-core.