Wagoner: offense, defense open offseason from opposing angles

Rams’ offense, defense open offseason from opposing angles

By Nick Wagoner

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/17874/rams-open-offseason-program-from-opposing-angles

EARTH CITY, Mo. — The St. Louis Rams kicked off their offseason program this week with nearly perfect attendance and an eye toward a breakthrough 2015 season.

Of course, there have been similar hopes an expectations for the past 11 years with nothing in the way of a payoff. But this year’s team enters the offseason program with an interesting separation between offense and defense.

On offense, the Rams are going through an offseason of change. They have a new offensive coordinator in Frank Cignetti, new quarterbacks coach in Chris Weinke and almost entirely redecorated the quarterback room by trading Sam Bradford and landing Nick Foles and Case Keenum. Though they retained tight end Lance Kendricks and receiver Kenny Britt on new contracts, they have an offensive line that will almost certainly feature new starters at three positions.

The defense, meanwhile, is the picture of stability. For the first time since Ken Flajole (2009-2011), the Rams bring back a defensive coordinator (Gregg Williams), for a second consecutive year. All of his coaching staff remained in place after assistant defensive line coach Clyde Simmons nearly departed for another job. More important, the Rams bring back nearly every defensive player from their two-deep of a year ago, with defensive tackle Kendall Langford the only notable departure.

So while the defense looks ready to soar and will spend most of the offseason fine-tuning and adding new wrinkles as well as integrating newcomers Akeem Ayers and Nick Fairley, the offense will be searching for the right formula to be productive enough to help the Rams get over the hump.

Tight end Jared Cook, one of the offense’s returning pieces, had nothing but positive things to say about Cignetti, pointing out that though Cignetti is the new coordinator, he isn’t new to the Rams.

“We’re really excited about Cig,” Cook said. “We all love Cig. He’s a great guy, so we’re excited about the opportunities he’s gonna bring on the offense, the different style of offense that he’s gonna be able to (put in).”

When asked for an idea of some of the wrinkles Cignetti can bring, Cook laughed and chose not to reveal what some of those might be. He did, however, offer a glimpse at how far along the process is and what’s staying in the playbook and what isn’t.

“Eighty percent of the stuff is already in,” Cook said. “The coaches have been working diligently, working hard to get the stuff in. So now this week and through OTAs, it’s our time to learn.”

Learning will also be a big part of the defensive meetings, but most of that learning will be centered on finding out what Williams has cooked up in his laboratory. According to linebacker James Laurinaitis, there might not be a coordinator in the league who spends more time watching film and devising creative and exotic defensive schemes than Williams.

That’s a task made more palatable by the fact that Williams and the defense bring back all 11 starters from last season, plus almost all of the backups. His only mission so far (before the draft) is to find unique ways to deploy Ayers and Fairley.

“We all have a better feel for each other,” Laurinaitis said. “It’ll be nice to have the same language, the same expectations, for two years in a row.”

In fact, the expectations for the defense might be even greater than they have been in the past. With that continuity, the defense just needs to find a way to start faster and become more consistent from week to week. As the offense looks to find traction, that means the onus is on the defense to set the tone. Again.

“We have a lot of young players that’ll be in their third (or fourth) year,” Laurinaitis said. “It’s not a young team anymore. It might be young still by age, but there’s a lot of experience out there, a lot of guys that have played a lot of minutes. And so the expectations are going to be extremely high, and I think we have a lot of guys holding each other accountable more.”