Hopes and Dreams

i really have no expectations for this season or at least many positive ones.  and i think 0.500 might actually be optimistic.  especially if kupp is out an extended period of time.  and while i feel better about the oline than i did at the beginning of preseason, i still have a lower opinion of that unit than most people here i suspect.

and i agree with you about the defense.  this defense will be bad.

i’m still gonna watch though and hope to see some signs that the team can improve both during this season and for the future.

It’s my view that the Rams didn’t have to be this bad, potentially. They put themselves into Cap Hell, and had to cut vets, some of whom were still in their rookie contracts. They got less athletic, far less stable, and if their rationale was to just get ready for 2024, I don’t see this as the wise first step.

Saw this today, and it bothers me, if true:

Jets tried trading for Matthew Stafford before acquiring Aaron Rodgers

A little confusing as to whether any terms were discussed, but it sounds like the Rams stopped the inquiries before they could even get to that point. To me, that’s just flat out nutz. Stafford is very good when healthy, but he’s also taken an enormous pounding over his career, and he’s an old 35. If I’m the Rams, I at least give the Jets a full hearing. See what they’d be willing to give up, and how much of his contract they’d be willing to take on. What could be the harm? They could just say No if the terms are lousy. But to shut things down even before that?

Anyway, I’m not sanguine about this season. Someone else on the board said their way of coping was to focus on individual accomplishments in down times. That makes sense. Most of us are long-time diehards, and we’ve seen our share of down years. That’s probably how most of us cope. But aside from AD, not sure we’ve got a lot of that happening in 2023. Perhaps Jones makes the Pro Bowl? And I think Young will flash from the edge. Avila will probably be overlooked by all-star voters, but he should have a good year. I’m guessing he makes a few Pro Bowls soon enough. The punter? He’ll be one of the hardest working players in the league, and he seems like a goodin’.

Not the year to try Youtube’s NFL ticket, most likely.

Hope you and yours are well, Zooey.

I understand what the Rams did. They avoided a future cap hell. They didn’t have a cap hell in 2023–they could have done the thing they always do where they keep a few high priced vets by restructuring. They consciously decided not to do that, and instead to go through what Rodrigue calls “a partial rebuild.”

So now in 2024 they have all their picks and big cap space. If they had done the normal restructurings in 2023, they would have been close to cap hell in 2024 and certainly 2025,  along with their stars and top players closer to their last seasons while needing to go through a partial rebuild. That’s the bad combo they avoided. They put the 23 team in the shop to avoid having it just fall apart in a year or 2.

In terms of starting rookies, they really won’t be doing that in 23. At most we will see 2-3 rookies starting (Avilla certainly, and maybe a linebacker and maybe a nickel back). Most of the new starters on defense are anywhere from 2nd to 4th year guys. The new starters, while not rookies, are however still question marks. But that’s mixed in with vets like Fuller, Johnson, Jones, and Donald.

Without Kupp, the offense has less potential, but it did make gains. The OL is not only freshened up, it is bulked up (a much bigger line than we’re used to and actually one of the biggest OLs in the NFL). If Jackson comes through, they found a solid starting LOT for the price of nothing, which is a major coup. The OL’s also deeper and operating under a new philosophy that mixes power with zone, and a new OL coach who is already getting very strong buzz (and I mean buzz unlike any new position coach I have seen for years).

The WRs without Kupp depend on operating as a group with individuals stepping up, including Atwell and Jefferson. Neither was very good in 2022 but the WR group could have some juice in them if those 2 do improve. They might even be decent, though without Kupp they probably can’t be much better than that. We’ve seen years under Spags and Fisher where they had nothing at receiver. This isn’t really like that.

What they have now that they’ve never had before is real potential at TE. Higbee can be good as we’ve seen, Hopkins took the roof off his development, and Allen is one of the top rookies on the team (he caught every target thrown at him in the pre-season).

So it’s not going to look like the 2021 offense once it got going in the 2nd half of the season.

Withoug Kupp they can’t be the 10 win team I was predicting but they can be competitve.

Following them this year will be kinda like following a rebuild team, but unlike a rebuild team they have at least Stafford and Donald. It just so happens that the position on offense you want to secure to have a chance in the future is qb, while the one position on defense you want to secure to know you have a future chance is DT (a dominant DT ups everyone else’s game on the entire D, because if nothing else he attracts numbers in a way no other position on D does or can. It’s like the old saying–some defenders can change the game on Sunday, Donald changes an opponent’s game on Monday).

Okay so how do you watch a team that is rebuilding? You look for signs of future good and take the wins you can get. (We’ve been there.) The difference is? This team at the end will have more experience for its 2nd through 4th year players, plus cap space and draft picks, PLUS it already has Stafford and Donald. Plus a still developing coach who went to 2 superbowls in 5 years.

So I’m going to watch 23 as if it were a rebuild, BUT a rebuild with a potentially much stronger outcome than you normally expect. Rebuilds are 2-3 years. This is just trading 23 for 24. But again in 23 I will watch it as if it were a rebuild.

This year–to make an analogy–feels more like I’m in a cast, as opposed to being bedridden for a long spell.

Zooey wrote:

Zooey wrote:

I can’t see this team putting up 30 points.

Although, it wouldn’t surprise me if they scored 30 against the Seahawks.

Good one

After preseason I thought that the Rams looked like a 3 -5 win team. Even with today’s win I’m not ready to change that prediction. The Rams still have a tough schedule.  The Niners look like a runaway train.