the repeat topic: OL

Zooey wrote:

I don’t see Fisher starting a rookie at center.

That’s a real consideration, yeah. We don’t know yet for sure but that’s a thought.

And he’s less likely to start 2 rookies.

And, does he want to have a rookie LOG next to Robinson?

And, how long do they want to keep RS from playing ROG, his best position?

So, lots of things to consider.

rfl wrote:

Well, apart from the question of whether any Ram OL in the last decade has been any good (probably not) the issue of injuries has to be faced. It isn’t just a factor that can be dismissed as an aberration.

As I’ve said before, THIS TEAM HAS REPEATEDLY BET ON GUYS WITH INJURY HISTORIES! Those bets have gone bad again and again. Jones is a classic example. They drafted him hurt, he’s still hurt, and the BEST we can say is that we don’t know if he can play. THEY DRAFTED THAT PACKAGE! They own the injury.

And you can’t just set injuries aside as if they don’t count” “Well, in the 6 games our OL was healthy, we were able to …” It doesn’t work that way.

This team has not played with a good OL through a year in at least a decade.

Why one would think it would be easy to suddenly do it this next year I can’t imagine.

Injuries matter. And poor talent pools matter. And we’ve had both for a long time.

I guess we have very different ideas of what an “easy fix” would be.

They did sign guys with injury histories, but that is not the same as saying they repeatedly bet on it.

There was no reason to suppose Long would have other injuries. The question he raised when he was signed was whether he was still the same player. To say someone could have anticipated a knee? Well no one did. No one at the poster level or the national level said Long would get different injuries…the question was whether he was the same player after the arm surgeries.

Wells had no history of injuries before the Rams and his long list of injuries with the Rams (plus the infection) are just bizarre.

A lis franc fracture in the foot is not supposed to cause you to wonder about a Jones’s back.

Saffold is a bet, that’s true.

But then also there is no way on earth any team can anticipate having 4 injured centers the same year. That’s just weird.

And yes if you want a full and complete assessment of an OL, whether it has crossed the threshold into multiple injuries to the point where it is no longer effective raises very specific questions, but they don’t include questions about the coaches and the strategy. That’s just luck. Yet if they perform well when relatively healthy THAT is the clue you need to determine if these guys can fix it. Because the default setting is good…that is always a positive sign.

I know why I think they can fix it in a year. Because they are on the right track, as evidenced by how they play in the stretches where they were relatively healthy (and I never just say “healthy.”) And because I have looked at how other teams did it. In 2013 both the Baltimore and Giants lines were wrecks. It was so bad in Baltimore they were trading away starters during the season. Both lines got fixed in one off-season…both lines are now rightfully considered good. Why was it fixed in one off-season? Because in both cases they didn’t have to go find a left OT. In both cases they had players to build around. And in both cases they found ways to repair OC and OG without straining resources.

We’ve seen it with the Rams. In 98, the OL was

Pace Miller Flannery Wiegert Gandy

And it was not considered a particularly good one.

In 99 it was

Pace Nutten Gruttadauria Timmerman Miller

and it was considered much better. That;s without using 98 or 99 draft picks higher than the 5th round on OL. (They drafted 2 guards in those 2 years but they were both non-entities: Roundtree and Spikes.)

Anyway.

None of this is set in stone, it’s just how I see this one.

.

wv wrote:

Even though they screwed up with some of
the earlier personnel decisions.

Even that’s open to debate.

I don’t see them as having screwed up with decisions, plural.

I don;t think the results are good for 2014, but then, I always stress that the Rams OL history includes massive doses of bad luck.

Who injures 4 centers in one year?

And I promise you, the issue with Long when they signed him was whether he could still play at a high level. No one said “he will have other injuries.” The fear was that the arms weren’t fixed, not that he would start working on injuring the legs.

In terms of fixing it, they clearly are. So I agree with you there.

And as I said, to me, the stand-out thing is that the PB/JF axis has a combined 40 years of fielding good OLs. Odds favor them doing it again.

wv wrote:

For me, Long counts as a personnel mistake.

Yeah it’s open to debate, so you rightly stress he does for you (count as a mistake).

But see how all these subjective judgements lead to other things?

Some decide Long is a mistake. Therefore the coaching has erred putting a line together. That evokes for some issues of doubt.

Some don’t see him as a mistake. In fact, in spite of the obvious shortcomings as a pure athletic pass-blocking LOT, when he was in gear, he was a very good play action/run blocking LOT. There is no mistake, from the point of view, in signing a player who then gets hit by a freak knee injury. (I don’t buy the idea that if your arms had surgery that means you are a walking injury time-bomb waiting to happen. To me that’s just superstition. Nothing in arm surgery rationally equals “and there will be other injuries, not to the arms.”)

So there was no coaching mistake, and the whole doubts thing when it comes to coaches and personnel decisions is just not there.

None of this is hardcore “reveal level” evidence, it’s all just mutually exclusive value judgements. Interpretation. Opinions.

So no one is in a position to say “why do you ignore the truth.” (As much as I would like to do it that way … ). It’s suppositions and inferences either way.

So, you’re dead wrong…but I have to qualify that with “in my opinion.” Which is unfair, but that’s life.