Breakout player–Offense?

The Rams Addiction lads also discussed picks for break out players on O. Your thoughts?
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My pick for a breakout player on Offense is Sam. I offer a bit of an argument.

First, although we have some quality guys on O, few seem to have the ceiling to become special players. For example, I lovce Stacy, and he can be a 1,200 yard back if healthy. But I don’t see him as becoming elite. Kendricks is a gem, but he’s not close to the All Pro game. Etc.

Tavon could do it. But, Tavon can’t do it alone.

To me, the one guy on our offense who has A) LOOKED at times as if he could be special and B) PROJECTS as a likely breakout player is Sam. And here’s the thing.

I think many of us see hope that our offense will break out this year. But, that’s not really because we have the offensive equivalents of Quinn, Brockers, Donald, ‘Tree, and perhaps TJM coming through. It’s because we hope for a synergy to emerge!

I mean, that’s what a play-action passing game is! It depends on a relationship between running and passing that stresses defenses. To work, many people have to contribute, and they don’t have to be stars to do so.

The Addiction guys discussed this tangentially. They kept talking about concepts like play action, about a range of receivers scoring 4-5 TDs each, etc. The underlying assumption in their discussion was that all the pieces would work together.

But they did not directly discuss the key to all that–the lynch-pin for the synergy. That has got to be Sam. Sam is the guy who has to get productivity out of Givens deep, Britt in the middle and Bailey on the perimeter, Cook up the seams, and Tavon downfield–all things they discussed. But if all those guys are productive together–which they seemed to feel was possible and perhaps likely–what that means is that Sam would be having a killer year. Sam offers the difference between a nice running game last year and a nice running game combined with a nice play action passing game yielding something special.

When I look at our offense, I see no one player or dimension that stands out. The running game is good, but we don’t have Adrian Peterson. Our TEs have some real virtues, but none will make the top 100 players. Our OL is much stronger and has some depth, but there is currently no reason to expect it to be elite. (I would love to be wrong about this.) The WRs have some pieces, but no studs. Even Tavon is dependent for top productivity on the rest of the O pulling defenses out of shape to open up space.

Nope–the only hope we have of a Top 10 offense is that Sam catalyzes a bunch of nice but not elite parts and creates a killer synergy. If he can do that, we’ll have a special offense and team, and he will have broken out … leaving the criticisms in his wake.

Of course, some would argue that he is not the guy to do that. And they might be right. Sam might NOT break out.

In that case, I think it would be fairly safe to assume that no one on offense would truly break out. We’d have a nice, mid-table offense that was limited and subject to being shut down by elite defenses … 3 of them in the NFCW.

So, for me, this question breaks down simply. I hope for Sam to break out and think he has a pretty good chance of doing so. And I think he’s our only shot on offense.

• This topic was modified 10 years, 4 months ago by rfl.