The defense played well enough to win this game. Philadelphia scored touchdowns off of a blocked punt and a sack-fumble, and then had to travel just 24 yards after a Zac Stacy fumble in the third quarter. The Eagles had to move the ball 24 yards to score 21 of their points. Otherwise, the Rams’ defense allowed a touchdown pass, two field goals and a total of 328 yards to an offense that had averaged 367.5 yards and 21.5 points per game. It doesn’t look like it, but Gregg Williams’ defense was just fine against the Eagles.

Lies by statistics.

A great defense isn’t measured by statistics. It is measured by making plays that matter and produce winning conditions.

The Eagles’ last drive went to 3 and 4. Fisher called the 1st TO. The D Front gave up, what, 19 yards on a simply run up the middle. That is not winning football.

And consider the consequences. Get that stop and PHIL kicks from near the goal line and we have 2 TOs and about 3:00 plus the 2:00 TO to run a drive. That’s a comfortable opportunity for a hot offense.

Instead, we ended up inside our own 5 with 1 TO and less than 2:00. Now, the offense damn near pulled it off anyway, and if Pettis had caught the ball would have had a shot. But the drive was rushed and frenetic and had a long, long way to go.

Yes, the D got stops on a lot of PHIL rushes in the game. But it couldn’t make the big play. It couldn’t get off the field when it mattered. Even on a simple, predictable rushing play.

Similarly, last week, they looked great for about 23:00. Then they went into the tank. They NEVER made a play that could flip the game back in the team’s favor.

Great defenses don’t give up that 3rd down on a dive or 21 point leads. Good defenses don’t do it.

To this point, we have YET to see this defense assert itself competitively. It hasn’t happened yet. And stuffing some runs against a Philly team playing with a big lead but not when it counted is not a matter of playing well enough to win.

I actually agree that the offense is a silver lining. More than that, perhaps.

But it’s not going to be enough to get us to a winning season this year.

As for Davis, we may face a tricky situation. I figure we’ll win 5-7 games this year. I figure Davis will play a lot and look pretty good. In that scenario, the team will have tough decisions to make.

A pretty good QB can win 6-9 games a year, but that doesn’t get you over the hump in a tough division.

So consider their challenge in this scenario. They’d have–perhaps–Sam coming back, a near-elite QB who can’t be trusted to remain healthy. A pretty good young QB who probably has a lowish ceiling. And a draft pick too late for the premier QB prospects.

That’s a challenging scenario. It is really hard to chart a course with those variables.

Of course, it is just possible that Davis could demonstrate better than pretty good skills. If he emerged over 15 games as a QB you can build a competitive team on, then we would be really lucky for the 3rd time after Warner and Bulger. But, I don’t really see that happening. Hope I’m wrong.

Winnbrad wrote:

The Rams are better now than they have been in years.

I guess this is about language and about perception. What does one mean by saying a team “is better”? What is one seeing when one says it? How do meanings and perceptions differ for someone like me who deeply disagrees?

I think it’s clear that we have better “talent.” We have a number of guys on both sides of the ball who can make plays and sometimes do. More so than we have had in a long time.

But, see, for me, that doesn’t mean a helluva lot in itself. Lots of teams put talent packages out there that make some plays. Lots of teams that do that lose a lot of games.

The question in the league is not about talent level. It’s about winning games. You don’t win games, and talent packages mean nothing.

And, frankly, some teams that know how to win have lower talent levels. When it comes to competitiveness in winning games, I would personally rate our ’12 team over the current team. That team played as tough as it could. It gritted out very difficult wins against tough teams.

Right now, we have a team that is competitively inept. Despite its talent, it is losing games badly. It was not competitive against MN. It barely eked out a win against a lousy TB team. And after a dream 1st 25 minutes, it completely collapsed and pissed a game away to a very limited DAL team. That is competitive weakness. In comparison with your read, mine is that this team is “worse” than the teams from the last 2 years. It is competitively weaker.

Now, notice the tense of my sentences. I am trying as I have been for some time to describe what IS. I am not saying that the team can’t find a competitive edge. Given a higher talent level, it COULD conceivably become a “better” team than we have had in a while.

But what are the odds of that? I note your comment:

Winnbrad wrote:

A few less penalties, and turnovers, and this team is in the playoffs.

Not only do I disagree with that read, but I think it is a dangerous kind of thinking. I mean, obviously what we think and say on this board has no effect on games. We’re just fans.

What does matter is how the team thinks. And what bothers me is an absence of evidence that the team is getting it. In how they play and in what they say after games, I see a team that sees itself as being “better” without grasping what it takes to be competitive and to win games. I think this is especially true on the defensive unit. They play without discipline, and talk afterward without demonstrating any real awareness of how unacceptable their play is. Some of it is, of course, coaching. And I can’t stand the happy talk that comes from coaches after these wrenching losses. But players play, and I see or hear no evidence of a defensive unit that takes genuine pride in or responsibility for stopping opposing offenses. This is a unit that was talked up leading into the season as the reason the Rams would knock on the playoff door. But it has not taken up the responsibility that goes with that assessment. On the field or afterward.

By contrast, the offense came into the season with very low expectations, especially after Sam went down. That unit is building its level of competitiveness. It is outperforming expectations and beginning to hold its own in the challenge of winning games.

But, I am not sure that any of us thinks that the offense, even with an emerging M Quick and A Davis, really is “good enough” to carry the bulk of the responsibility for winning games. The offense has raised its profile, and it probably shows promise for being becoming the best attack we’ve had in years. But I think we know it has a ways to go to get there. Hope I’m wrong.

But the defense? Man, with all due respect are you really sensing that “a few less penalties” are all that is holding the defense back from being playoff-worthy? Really? I find it hard to believe that a seasoned football fan would actually make that assessment of our defense. It’s certainly not my read.

As the talent has risen I have seen a steady competitive decline. The ’12 defense was tough. The ’13 unit started off horribly, then toughened up some in some marginally significant games, but then faded again as the opportunity to get above .500 and into the playoffs flashed, then dissolved.

This year? Obviously, I’ve been harping on this since the pre-season. Despite its “talent,” this unit has turned in quarter after quarter of soft, uncompetitive, weak football. It played 2 weak, soft games, lucking out against one of the worst attacks in the league. And then what happened?

Against DAL, it played 25 minutes of superb football. How shall we see that? The attractive reading is to say, “Hey, the light bulb is switching on” and we almost won the game despite mistakes. With this sort of reading, one can think that, with a couple breaks on flags, we coulda, woulda, shoulda …

That is not my reading. Mine is much direr. Yes, we showed for not 2 quarters that we have the “talent,” the “potential” to be a really good defense. But what happened then?

Consider those 2 running plays that turned the tide. The 2 plays are bad enough in themselves, one after the other. But consider as well how completely the defense collapsed after that. Consider how quickly the DAL offense got control of the game, how little resistance the Ram unit showed the rest of the way. That isn’t just about a couple of flags. It’s about a non-competitive unit.

Somebody on another thread took some exception to my referring to the Ram D a “disgusting, gutless, ill disciplined, rabble.” But, see, that’s what I think they demonstrably are … at least currently. It is precisely BECAUSE they have talent and potential that I read their failures as being gutless and uncompetitive. It’s why I think we are “worse” than we were in ’12 and probably last year. It isn’t enough to make a play now and then or even to show well for a quarter or two. If you lie down and die most of the time, rarely managing to get decisive or critical stops, then you are not playing winning football.

Again. I have no idea if or when our defense will get its act together and start playing tough football. Maybe the 1st half against DAL is the first sign of good things to come. Maybe there is still time even this year to learn to play winning football while the games are still meaningful. I hope so.

What I think can be SEEN in this team’s play, consistently over 7 games now, is that it has long, long way to go to start playing competitive football. A long way not necessarily in terms of time–who knows?–but qualitatively. The defensive unit in particular has a lot to learn about the kind of committed consistency that is needed to control the league’s high powered offenses. Despite their talent limits, the ’12 defense understood that and played tough. That year, I figured this is what Fisher teaches, competitive discipline. But ever since, his Ram defense has been all about talent and potential and improvement and NOT about doing the job, at least not when games or seasons are on the line.

So, my friend, we see this very differently.

I long for the day when this sorry ass team figures out that, to win games, it has to climb out of the rut play by disciplined play. At that point, we’ll all be happy.

“Despite the fact that this is a very, very difficult loss for us and the way they’re feeling right now, there’s significant improvement in this football team this week and today,” he said after his team’s come-from-ahead 34-31 loss to the Dallas Cowboys.

Bullshit. Utter bullshit.

Jeff Fisher is floundering. And he can’t admit it. This is NOT the time to talk about improvement.

There is no improvement in the defense. None. They can’t even get anything out of our DL. And that loss was utterly unacceptable. If he had any bleeding honesty he’d admit it.

And by the way, his call to go for the 1 down the SECOND TIME was a massive fail. I knew it at the time. I thought, “We won’t get this a 2nd time and if we don’t we’ll lose the game.” Yep. Passing up a chance for a chip shot FG to extend a lead and slow down the team that has all but erased a 21 point lead? Ridiculous call.

This team is going to lose a lot of games this year. Again.

Unfortunately, Fisher will weasel enough games to get to mediocrity and blow a top draft pick.

PA Ram wrote:

I’d be happy if Dallas doesn’t blow out the Rams.

I just don’t think the Rams are very good right now.

Yep.

So far, they show glimpses on offense, but not enough to count on for 20+ points.

On defense, they really have not shown much at all.

Theoretically, they have room to grow. A number of Ram quotations after the game focused on their belief that their ceiling is much higher than where they are.

But SO FAR they have SHOWN nothing better than a 7-9 team that can be dangerous at times.

I can’t see how they will contain DAL enough to give a sputtering offense a chance. I mean, time of possession could be a serious problem, even if they do play tough in the Red Zone.

Gonna be a long day, I figure.

Just listening. The Cowboys blogger is on. He diplomatically keeps saying, we’ll see if the Cowboys can run on the Rams athletic front.

They will. They’ll kill us. I’ll be astonished if we don’t give up 150+ on the ground and lose badly.

This game is a battle between 2 teams, each stuck for years in mediocrity, each looking to break out into competitiveness in tough divisions. Each team–or at least its fans–looks at this as a “winnable” game, a chance to start the season off well. Whichever team loses will feel it has taken a serious hit to its season’s aspirations.

I dunno.

We have a settled HC, but a new DC. Our best offensive player is hurt. We have a pretty good running game and potential quality in passing. We have a great DL, good LBs and a questionable secondary.

They have a new HC, a very limited QB, and a Hall-quality RB with a seasoned OL. They have a pretty good defense.

They can attack us in our weakness–run D. We can harass a limited QB, but they have some passing game studs. (Do we? Really?)

I just think it’s hard to pick because both teams are in flux and not clearly defined.

Given A Petersen, I feel it is pretty hard to be confident that we are really ready to start this season well. I figure we’ll probably lose this.

‘Course, I’m an eternal pessimist.

Here’s what I would Like to see, but don’t think will take the field:

Robby–Saffold–Wells–Joseph–Joe B

I predict Jake the Fraud will be out there. Hope he doesn’t crock another of our QBs.

BTW–we haven’t to my knowledge found an adequate backup at OC. That’s a serious worry, IMO.

Nonsense.

Everyone takes time to learn to play OL in the pros.

And Robby is on track to be a great OL.

zn wrote:

Jim Fadler @ jimiramsboy
#Rams fan any jokes about the release of Sean Hooey qualify as low hanging fruit.

Now that’s funny!