People, read what Mike says about the rushing TD we yielded.

Then, if you can, re-watch the play.

Tell me that play is on the players! Hell, the SEA coaching staff will be laughing their assess off in the film room.

THIS IS WHY I HATE WHAT WILLIAMS IS DOING!

I am less convinced about the criticisms of Schotty. Simply because I don’t know that Schotty has a lot of options. His OL sux. And his QB is incapable of consistently and accurately hitting reads.

I am sick of those jet sweep gimmicks which have produced 2-3 good plays in a season including dozens of attempts. But, still, I dunno what any OC would do with this OL.

But Williams has got to go.

He won’t. And that’s enough to sour me on next year already.

Mackeyser wrote:

My only admonition would be that others are free to feel, think and believe as they see fit without feeling attacked as having illusions or masturbating.

…

This is a great topic and will be talked about all off-season I’m sure. Let’s keep it fun since it’s gonna be s long off-season.

Well said, my friend.

I wondered about that line and wished I’d found a better way of expressing what I meant. I actually was thinking more of myself than of anyone else. As a fan, I imagine all sorts of things about the Rams. And the point is that it remains a mental construct–theory, fantasy, whatever–until it’s real on the field. I am as guilty as anyone else. I really expected something this year.

So, my intention was not to attack anyone. But, intention is one thing; action is another. And I apologize to any and all for any offense my expression might have caused. Mea culpa.

Now having said that …

I have been frustrated this year by the way the dialogue has shaped itself in our community. There has in my view been a lot of what I consider to have been unrealistic optimism and avoidance of the reality of what was happening. To the very end of the season, the board has tended to–again, IMO–avoid confronting deeply engrained patterns and trends that have not meaningfully changed in years.

I think we saw in preseason the clear evidence of a talented but unsound team that was going to mess up badly. Those trends continued throughout the year, until the last game. We gave up 1 TD to SEA’s defense yesterday, and that was a run against a ridiculously out of position D front. The very thing we were seeing in pre-season.

But, as far as I have been able to tell, the consensus of the board has been that things are better, that we’re a couple of breaks away from being contenders. And I think there’s a ton of evidence that this is far from being true. We are a long, long way from being where AZ, for example, is.

Well, one person certainly can’t dictate a consensus and I know I won’t be able to do that.

I just hope that, as we move forward, we take up in a serious way …

1. the difference between talent and competitive discipline

2. the responsibility of the coaching staff, especially Fisher and Williams

This is a community with almost 2 decades of more or less reality-based loyalty to the Rams. I hope we recover our grip on the persistent reality of the team’s inability to compete.

And I’ll do my best to minimize my tendency to beat dead horses.

wv wrote:

——————————————
Laram

– The Giants began the game running simple dive plays right at Aaron Donald.

They tried to establish the run by muscling him up and running right at him.

The Giants had over 130yds rushing, most of it on dive plays.

Like dz and I were discussing last week, its a copycat league so expect to see more of that.

– Why was Barron in two high safety on the OBJ 80yd TD?

99% of the time the Rams have used Barron in the box, but Williams decides to get cute.

So what do the Giants do to counter? They run a combo route to cause confusion and create a mismatch. If you re-watch the play watch the routes and what Tru and Joyner do. The route caused the confusion and left Barron alone in deep coverage.

Greg Williams outsmarted himself on that alignment, and a smart OC took advantage.

– Simple stunts beat this o-line like a drum on both sides of the line. They ran a game on the right side that both Barks and DJ f-uped.
Of course we saw what happened to GRob, AGAIN!

Like I’ve said before, that’s coaching!!

– Everything of course leads back to Jeff Fisher but there is a systemic issue with this team.

He’s right, you know.

zn wrote:

In terms of what YOU GUYS TRUST, that’s one thing. In terms of making an objective management decision, to me, it seems obvious that you keep Bradford in the mix.

I gotta say, I’m getting tired of being lectured about being emotional rather than objective.

And, you know, your posts do not show evidence of your having read what I wrote.

I have not said that Sam can’t be in the mix. I have specifically said that he can be … IF we can afford him. And I am not talking about money.

Injuries matter. Some players get injured and are bad bets for what you are calling “objective management decisions.”

Our roster is full of guys who prove this principle. Long was a bad bet with regard to injuries. Wells was. Saffold was turned away by OAK and it can be argued that they were right. He’s lost time and been substandard when playing, apparently because of his shoulder.

And Sam has been a bad bet for injuries since we drafted him. He was injured significantly in college and has been repeatedly injured in Ram helmets. You can argue this, that, and the other, but people who said 5 years ago that he would be injury prone HAVE BEEN RIGHT!

To bet the team’s year on a guy injured as often as Sam has been is to make a long shot bet.

To do this relying on him as your only starter-level QB would be an irresponsible repetition of a bet that has cost this franchise and its fans dearly.

And I have yet to see you deal with this argument.

Dak wrote:

I like Arians. I think he’s one of the best coaches in the league. But, yeah, I liked seeing him lose big quite a bit.

Arians is a superb coach. He is five times the coach that Fisher is.

God I wish he was leading us.

mfranke wrote:

RamView, December 21, 2014
From Row HH
(Report and opinions from the game.)
* Strategery: No one was more complete garbage in the Rams’ “effort” this week than Gregg Williams. Eli Manning and first-year OC Ben McAdoo made Williams look completely useless. This isn’t the first time a quick-huddle, quick-passing offense has baffled Williams more than (ANOTHER DATED REFERENCE ALERT) Rubik’s Cube baffles a chimpanzee, either. Williams coached as afraid and as stupidly as he probably has in his whole life. The Rams seemed scared to blitz Eli or even attempt to press the Giant receivers. The scheme this week was so feeble Tim Walton would have hurt himself laughing watching it. DBs were CONSTANTLY 8-10 yards off all receivers; small wonder Eli could complete 80% of his passes, or the Giants could go 8-for-17 on 3rd down, when we’re constantly giving away the damn marker. New York’s 3rd-quarter TD was all crap from Williams, all the time. Soft coverage gives up 10. A run blitz gets burned by a delay handoff for 45. Soft coverage gives up an easy TD to Randle. Williams NEVER adjusted a thing, and single-handedly turned Eli Manning into Peyton. Eli won the battle of wits against Williams, not that it was much of a contest. On at least two big plays in the first half, you can see Eli identify the blitz, and tell he’s checking to another play, but the Rams just kept blitzing out of the look Eli had already sniffed out. The blitzing Williams did accomplished very little, though if his coverage “scheme” was meant to give up almost 40 points and give the Rams no chance to win the game, he sure succeeded at that. It was as idiotic and ill-conceived a game plan as any Rams coordinator, including Larry Marmie, has ever attempted.

The shame is, Brian Schottenheimer called close to an excellent game on offense. He was creative and used team speed well with jet sweeps and reverses. He took advantage of the Giants’ overplaying tendencies on the draw to Mason that caught Pierre-Paul upfield and the 90-flip TD, where the Giant D was overshifted to the other side. The Rams didn’t even stink up the third quarter like usual, thanks to an excellently-balanced 90-yard TD drive. Execution, like Hill blowing all the deep chances, was much more the issue this week… unless you want to accuse Schottenheimer of not using his personnel the best way by relying on Hill to hit deep throws in the first place. I’m not. I think he had a good plan in place this week that was shot down by bad execution and turnovers.

Jeff Fisher’s defense was so out of control this week I’m not going to be surprised to hear someday that there was a bounty on Beckham for this game. The number of personal fouls and complete loss of focus was really disgraceful, as was the kind of lousy defensive play-calling that Fisher stepped in and changed himself this time last season. I don’t know why I thought we’d gotten rid of this nonsense after the first few weeks. Under Jeff Fisher, the Rams never will cut out the stupid penalties. Thom Brennaman spent about half the TV broadcast calling the Rams cheap-shot artists. I wish I thought he was wrong. I wish that 47 games into his time here that Jeff Fisher could field (ANOTHER DATED REFERENCE ALERT) a winning team with character we could be proud of.

— Mike
Game stats from espn.com

Thanks, Mike. You are on the money on the coaching.

It’s weird. Schotty has always caught heat. Most of it, I feel, has been unwarranted. He has done a solid job with very limited materials. I think he choosesd bad times for gimmicks and I don’t like his approach in the Red Zone. But otherwise he does a pretty good job and has subtle, effective plans.

Williams came in with this big rep. I never watched him before this year, but my considered opinion is that he is a fool. I blame 75% of our defensive troubles this year on his inability to to resist fiddling with blitzes and failing to recognize the worth of the talent he is working with. I hate his tendencies, and the only real success we have had this year has come when we played un-Williams-like schemes.

For me, the contrast between him and the AZ DC is stark. Both blitz a lot. But AZ always remains sound and sustains pressure on offenses even when their blitzes don’t get home. Williams leaves gaps all over the field.

God, give us a sound DC and watch our defense thrive!

No.

zn wrote:

Are those the same thing? Record, competitiveness?

I am disappointed by the loss too, but I don’t see it as darkly as you do.

Well, I’ll tell you what. I’d like to see an argument to try to disprove the claim that our record this year reflects our competitiveness.

Generally, you are what your record says you are. Rare exceptions, yes. But we are what we saw today. That’s who we are. The good days are far more anomalous than today was.

wv wrote:

My own grade, overall, for the whole
organization during the Fisher years iz..
… B-minus.

The big free agent signings have not
been real impressive so far.
Cook, Finnegan, J.Long…

Not crazy about the Oline in general
the last three years.

w
v

I propose separating 2 things:

Talent acquisition–we have definitely improved the talent level. That’s primarily a GM’s job, and Snead does pretty well. I’d give him at least a B.

Team competitiveness–I see no evidence of any genuine improvement in the team as a competitive unit. None. In fact, this year we will actually REGRESS in our record, and it will be richly deserved.

This is the coach’s responsibility. And in my view, Fisher has earned no better than a D. I actually think he’s sliding into the F range.

AZ 143 – StL 69

That is, yards rushing.

That was the difference in the game.

And no, I don’t blame the players. I blame Williams’ flaky deployments. They were hurting us in pre-season and are still hurting us in game 14.

We aren’t good enough on the OL. It’s that simple.

And Hill showed that he is not a genuine starting QB. Missed a lot of throws today.

That 3-3 to Bailey? Lousy throw. Yeah, Bailey might have had it. But a lousy throw.

Oh, and we reverted to our old ways defending the run. We weren’t sound up front.

Which brings us back to coaching. We got outcoached tonight. Badly.

Arians got more out of lousy QBs than we got out of a good backup. He frustrated our pass rush all night long and gained enough yards to keep winning the field position battle, the key in a defensive duel like that.

But the real revelation was Williams v that AZ guy. Both blitzed all night long. The difference is that our blitz opened up lanes and avenues that AZ could exploit. AZ blitzed and yet the D front was always intact along the LOS. No lanes and avenues.

That’s the thing with Williams. His blitzes can be effective. But they also result in many an unsound deployment.

Consider this wrinkle of playing our LBs down and AD and Brockers as LBs. What does that accomplish? Nothing. DTs playing upright are not going to defend the run or get extra pressure pass ruching. And LBs with hands in the dirt ain’t gonna get much after the surprise wears off.

We do need a better OL and a better QB.

But the real story of this year is the lousy coaching performance. And you saw it tonight. Arians gets one helluva lot of mileage out of what he is working with, even with multiple injuries. Fish and Williams have managed to fritter away their advantage with a highly talented defense and Schotty has done little to raise the ceiling of our offense.

Yes, we are better than we were.

But we have a long way to go, and it isn’t primarily, IMO, a matter of talent.

This coaching staff has squandered our talents. And after tonight, I am left dubious that anything will change next year.

I have never had any trouble with the idea of the Rams having Bradford in their plans. I’ve never doubted him as a player, and I would be thrilled if his body held up through the year. If it did, I would predict Pro Bowl and maybe 11 wins.

But I repeat what I’ve said before. You can’t COUNT ON HIM as a starter. What do I mean by that?

Last year, we made 2 decisions:

A) Entrust the starting gig to Sam.

B) Support him with a top shelf backup.

Both, I think, were good decisions. I was all in on Sam and Hill has shown he’s about as good a #2 as you’re going to find.

This year, however, I submit that both decisions would be irresponsible.

A) Sam cannot be ENTRUSTED with the starting gig. His knees cannot be trusted to hold up. The chances are extremely good that he will go down again, probably early, and we’ll be missing a starting quality QB again.

B) A top shelf BACKUP would not be enough. I mean, maybe it’s all that’s available. But the overall development of the team demands a legit, starting quality QB. Hill has been pretty good this year, but he wasn’t good enough to hold off a hot Davis or win the biggest game of the year (SD). In my opinion, riding the hope that Sam will hold up and a limited, backup level guy like Hill would be irresponsible to fans and team.

So, I come back to the real challenge. Keep Sam? OK. I have little problem with that in itself, though you simply have to EXPECT that he goes down.

But whether or not Sam is here, we need an option that gives you starting quality QBing when Sam goes down. If we fail to find that other option, then our off season will be a major disappointment and will not support the team’s ascendancy to genuine competitor.

Now don’t ask me who. Draft pick? Vet FA? I dunno. As I say, maybe such a guy just isn’t available.

But my message to Snead would be simple. Leave no stone unturned looking for a genuinely promising rookie and/or a mid-table, legit starting QB. Relying on Sam and Hill again for next year would be inviting a truly crushing, 4th year disappointment.