Lyons' Defense Taking Charge

It's been raining for days here in the Upper Valley and the forecast is for rain all week. This is a usually small waterfall on the winding road up our mountain.

Update: Missed this one the first time around. Here's a link to a lengthy Hartford Courant story on new Columbia football coach Norries Wilson. Sounds impressive.

Lyons Gets it Going
Former Dartmouth coach John Lyons is having some fun these days as defensive coordinator of NFL Europe's Cologne Centurions. Here's how a writer started his preview for yesterday's game: "With Cologne’s defense playing at arguably the highest level in NFL Europe ..." Turns out, the writer was spot on. The Centurions went on to a 25-7 victory over the Berlin Thunder, eliciting these quotes from Lyons in a story on nfleurope.com:

“We certainly have been getting a great deal of pressure from our defensive line, and part of that has to do with our secondary forcing (opposing) quarterbacks to pull the ball back down sometimes. If we continue to both pressure the quarterback and cover well in the secondary, we will be tough to beat. ...

“Things have been going well for our defense these last two weeks, and we need to continue to build on that. The guys need to keep playing the same way they have been, because we are playing really hard and with a lot of confidence defensively.”

Hmm. "We will be tough to beat." JL didn't throw many quotes like that my way, even in 1996 when the Big Green went 10-0.

After trying to stop Jamaal Branch as head coach at Dartmouth, Lyons was cheering him on as he ran for 124 yards with the Centurions.

The Los Angeles Avengers wrapped up their Arena League season yesterday with a win over Las Vegas. Brian Mann again had to watch Sonny Cumbie start and play well at quarterback once again. Brian did catch a pass for two yards. ;-). Digging through the stats, I've found that Brian's 14 total tackles on special teams rank ninth on the squad in overall tackles, which seems pretty remarkable for a quarterback.