JT: Progress is relative for Rams

Progress is relative for Rams

By Jim Thomas

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football/professional/progress-is-relative-for-rams/article_141482e5-ca0b-55d5-a98f-20cf617e9dba.html

Rams general manager Les Snead is no mathematician, but he’s well aware of the fact that 6-10 is not a winning formula.

Especially three years into a regime formed by the hiring of coach Jeff Fisher in January 2012 and the addition of Snead a month later.

“I don’t think anybody in the building is satisfied at all in the final math,” Snead said last week at his annual season-ending media session. “Sitting in the office with Jeff and Kevin (Demoff) when we had gotten the news on Sam (Bradford), we actually believed as a group that we could beat the odds.”

Obviously, it’s tougher to win with a backup quarterback. There’s a reason, after all, why they’re backups. Even so, Snead and the Rams’ braintrust felt they could finish above .500 after Bradford’s season-ending knee injury Aug. 23 in Cleveland.

“And I think that was a real belief; it wasn’t a hope,” Snead said.

Oh well. With what turned out to be a combination of Shaun Hill and Austin Davis replacing Bradford at quarterback, the team finished 6-10. Yes, the Rams flirted with .500, reaching 6-7 with two of their final three contests at home.

They fell flat by losing all three — including two (Arizona, Seattle) without scoring a touchdown.

“Nobody’s satisfied about that,” Snead said. “That was a disappointing thing for us.”

Snead conceded he’d lost sleep over some of those 10 losses, replaying them in his mind over and over.

“The whole Dallas thing, didn’t close that thing out,” he said. “Great comeback against Philly. Had all the momentum in the world, didn’t close. The interception on the goal line (in San Diego). That one, that’s a flashback.”

As in a bad flashback. Snead also mentioned the 12-6 Thursday night home loss Dec. 11 to Arizona, and easily could’ve named two or three more.

“All those things could’ve gone the other way,” Snead said. “So you’re gonna lose sleep over that. Makes you angry. It’s good to be angry, because it means there’s something to be angry about. It’s not despair.”

Snead liked the way the team fought out of a 2-5 hole to start the season to reach that 6-7 “high water” mark.

“I think what we did is move the needle to respectability,” he said. “Defensive points allowed, we were fifth overall. And you take the last half of the season, we were second only to Seattle.

“So I think there’s more than hope, and that’s the progress that was made. There’s some real ingredients there that enabled you to beat the Super Bowl champion (Seattle), to beat the Super Bowl runner-up (Denver).”

Whether 6-10 qualifies as either respectable or progress is debatable. The challenge, once again, is getting beyond “respectable.”

“People are getting tired of that,” Snead conceded. “I think this team wants to finally get over the hump. You can just feel it. They’re itching to (do so).”

That task obviously would be much easier if the Rams were settled at the quarterback position. Bradford is coming off knee surgery for the second consecutive season and the Rams want to negotiate down his scheduled $13 million base salary for next season.

“The goal for him is to get healthy,” Snead said. “Because I think if he can stay healthy, he’s gonna be a good quarterback. He’ll be 28 sometime next year. Heck, good quarterbacks usually play till they’re 35. So he’s got a lot of good football left.”

To be precise, it’s more a matter of staying healthy for a full 16 games.

“You’ve got to ‘insure’ that position because we have played probably (25) straight games without our starting QB,” Snead said. “It does have an effect on your play.”

Snead said the Rams will explore every avenue, “whether it’s another veteran, whether it’s a draft pick, or both.”

Backups Hill (unrestricted) and Davis (restricted) are scheduled for free agency. Snead said both showed this past season that they can be capable No. 2 quarterbacks. But there’s no guarantee either will return given their free agency status.

Compounding matters is the fact that the replacement pool for either starter or backup isn’t deep no matter where you look. It’s not considered a strong draft at the position, and there’s not much in terms of prospective free agents either.

Snead said the 2014 draft was deeper than this year’s draft will be, so the Rams may already regret not taking one in ‘14.

“I never do hindsight,” Snead said.

The Rams had 11 draft picks a year ago, including five in the first four rounds. But they waited until the sixth round before selecting SMU quarterback Garrett Gilbert at No. 214 overall.

The thinking, Snead said, was that the best way to help Bradford in the draft was to improve the supporting cast around him, be it offensive linemen, running backs, or even help on defense.

“You knew there were gonna be some QBs going early,” Snead explained. “And we decided, the best thing for the St. Louis Rams instead of taking a QB in the first round was to add another (position) player. Aaron Donald helped the defense — all of that.

“We always said, starting where we picked in the next rounds, if there’s a QB there that we really, really were jacked about, let’s do it.”

That didn’t happen until the sixth round.

“You knew at that point, you were taking a guy to develop,” Snead said. “So as an example, with Garrett kinda being that last guy, you liked his arm strength, you liked his mobility.

“But anytime you take a kid from a spread offense, it’s a development process. The bad thing for Garrett is all of a sudden we went from having a healthy starting QB to where we’re in — if you want to call it — intensive care.”

With no Bradford, and no Hill for a few weeks after the season opener, Gilbert found himself on the practice squad as the team added Case Keenum, who had regular-season experience in Houston. Gilbert was subsequently released and later picked up by New England where he can sit and learn behind Tom Brady.

“Versus, ‘OK, we need somebody to play tomorrow,’” Snead said. “That kind of hurt the Garrett experiment.”

While that experiment is over, the quarterback search continues anew at Rams Park.