I don’t have a huge dramatic emotional reaction to the move, but I think it may be sapping my enthusiasm for the team more than I expected. I haven’t lived in STL for almost 12 years, but I’m a native and I lived there and had season tickets from 95 until a 2 or 3 years after I moved away.

There’s a lot that goes into my waning enthusiasm. Part of my attachment to the Rams involves enjoying them with my dad. We had season tickets together and still watch every game “together” on the phone. With the team gone, I doubt that he’ll stay enthusiastic or shell out to watch them on DirecTV.

There’s the way Kroenke handled things. I know that NFL owners are generally douchebags, but Kroenke just seems gratuitously so. I used to be a big Raiders fan, but the way they treated Marcus Allen on the way out just soured me on them. There was no “screw the Raiders!” moment, but that was definitely when I started sliding into not caring about them. The same may be happening with the Rams.

Then there’s the futility. Twenty years of rooting for this team and they’ve sucked for 17 of them. Even the 3 years that they were good seemed kinda like a fluke. I don’t see many signs of that changing either.

IF there’s a draw for sticking with this team, it’s all the great people I’ve gotten used to reading online and interacting with, especially the folks on this forum. I’ve learned a hell of a lot about the game and come to appreciate it much more deeply because of you guys.

I don’t know where I’ll be come July. I may renew my Sunday Ticket and be watching every week or I may start following the Bengals (that would have been a lot easier before next week).

zn wrote:

When entire units are wiped out, particularly the OL, no one in the league…no one…has the depth to make up for that. Not to make up for multiple simultaneous injuries. That was the case with the Rams in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2014.

Really, look around league history and point out all the teams that thrived on offense after losing multiple OL starters at the same time.

I agree with you about those other years and did at the time, but to my memory there were some competent guys who came off the bench in those years. This year? Not so much from what I can see. Hypothetically, if the only OL injuries this year had been Saffold and one other week 1 starter (take your pick), do you think that the quality of OL play would have been significantly better than it is now? It’s a sincere question. I’ll admit that I haven’t been paying as close of attention as I usually do, but it looked to me like it fell apart pretty quickly when injuries started (and it wasn’t very good before they started).

zn wrote:

PA Ram wrote:

I think wv is mostly concerned about the “passing” offense though. A lot of the big plays are actually running plays.

The mistake I see everyone making is they are taking one bad result and magnifying it, and losing sight of the fact that this is a young new offense, with the least experienced OL any of us have ever seen or heard of.

I don’t think that’s it. There have been questions about the passing game for a long time. I think that you can explain why this offense is a bit better than 2009 or 2011 into words: Todd Gurley.

I don’t see much ’cause for optimism in the passing game. Foles is tough and shows flashes, but I doubt that he’ll ever show better than average vision or ability to read defenses. Britt and Cook are great athletes with massive consistency problems.

I still think that Bailey has a lot of potential, but – for whatever reason – they aren’t getting him involved in the game. Quick is MIA. I still hold out hope that Tavon can become a very dangerous true wide receiver, but we haven’t seen it yet.

They are young, and I do think they will get better. I don’t, however, see a promising young passing offense that just doesn’t have its act together yet. I see a worst in the league passing offense that, if all goes really well, has the potential to mature into a 20th in the league passing offense. Maybe that’s enough with Gurley and this defense, but it’s hard to imagine how they ever rise to even middle of the pack with a roster that looks anything like the current one.

• This reply was modified 9 years ago by TrenchRam.

I hate to be second guessing after such a huge win, but did anyone else think that the Rams should have gone for 2 after the final touchdown? It seemed to me like a no-brainer. If they had missed, it wouldn’t have made much difference in what Arizona needed. If they had made it, the Cardinals would have been driving to tie instead of win with a field goal at the end. The announcers never mentioned the possibility of going for 2, so maybe I’m crazy, but it’s what I would have done.

wv wrote:

Well, why do you think they can’t run the ball? Any ideas?
Why cant they execute long drives using a balanced offensive attack?

w
v

That one’s pretty easy. The OL can’t move anyone off the LOS. Suprisingly, they’re not bad in pass protection, but nobody is winning their individual battles when they run.

GRob is really starting to look like Jason Smith, The Sequel.

I think that the win bodes very well for the rest of the season. Hopefully the D is as good as it looked. I doubt that the O is as good as it looked. There’s a new QB and a new coordinator. Think about how often mediocre backups look like stars in their first start or two before there is film other teams can use to prepare.

I’m not trying to take anything away from them. They looked great against a great D, and I’m truly excited about this season for the first time. Still, I expect to see this O struggle, especially early.

8-8. With a rookie OL and Fisher’s pattern of being unable to have teams ready for the season, we see a slow start and a lot the wins late when they’re already out of the playoffs.

I love Fisher’s style of football and he’s done a lot of impressive things. I really do expect the defense to do amazing things this year as long as the CB play holds up. Drafting has been solid if not spectacular. He has his players’ respect and – for the most part – has kept them from collapsing through some pretty bad stretches.

I worry about the slow starts, and I don’t think it’s being soft. He just keeps going into the season with disastrous plans: the spread offense, relying on Richardson and Pead to run the ball, last year’s abysmal start on defense and the iffy OL depth. The wideout play was actually pretty good last year, especially before Quick got hurt, but it still seems to me like part of the trend of taking big chances. While that gamble paid off, it was still a pretty big gamble to go into camp with the options that they had.

The lack of discipline really concerns me, too. I feel like it’s a Fisher thing. Personal fouls, constant mental errors, and players out of position just seem like symptoms of teams that lack discipline. I love smash mouth football. I love seeing an OL and a great back just break down a D. I love seeing defenses win games even more. You’ll never hear me complain about a hard fought 7-3 game involving 2 great defensive teams. The thing about that approach, though, is that you can’t make big mistakes and win consistently. Fisher teams seem to make a lot of big mistakes.

Finally, It seems to me that Fisher’s staff are poor tacticians. They so consistently play strong first halves only to get beat up in the second half. I don’t know Xs and Os well enough to have an informed opinion on this, and I only watch the games live these days so it’s especially hard to tell. They just seem to be outcoached in a lot of second halves.

I have hope for this year, but I have worries too. This could be an 10-6 team, but it could be a 6-10 team too. If we don’t see something much better than what we’ve seen so far, he should go.

One of my biggest questions about the OL this year is Barnes. I’m not a tape guy or anything, but what I remember about his play is 2013 is that – while he struggled – he looked significantly better than either Wells or Joseph did this year. Why didn’t we seem him replacing one of them? If he can’t play better than those 2 played this year, I can’t imagine why they would keep him, even as a backup, unless he had injury issues of his own.

That last piece from Fisher is really encouraging. If they can replace Wells and get another quality guard (on top of retaining Barksdale) to bolster the run game, I think the Rams can absolutely be a playoff team with Hill.

That said, watching some of those wobbly balls floating down the field last week I couldn’t help but think wistfully of what a healthy Bradford would be doing under the same circumstances. With the skill position players they have now, 2 new OL, and a true franchise QB this could actually be a very good offense. I never thought that I’d say that coming into the season.

Sometimes you see a hard fought close game where both teams show such heart and make so many heroic plays at key times that it really seems a shame that either one has to lose. Then there are those games where both teams are so inept, sloppy, and self-destructive that it seems wrong to declare either team a winner. This was the latter. Both teams were painful to watch. The officials were worse.

I’ve been pretty down on this coaching staff, but I’m fine with how long they gave Davis. When he became the starter, he showed that he could play a lot better than they gave him credit for. He seemed to correct a lot of mistakes fairly quickly, so giving him some time to see if he could get better at recognizing the blitz and finding the hot read seems like it was worth a shot to me. If that really was his problem, we should see the O become productive again with a veteran in there.

My attitude towards the team this year feels more like the Linehan years than 2011. I was already incredibly frustrated with the coaching and poor player execution before this latest rash of injuries. Even when they were sort of competitive, this team didn’t make themselves easy to root for. If the games now become exercises in futility, it will be tough to watch.

rfl wrote:

This is a lost year because Fisher’s staff failed to prepare the team for the start of the season and allowed its best asset to collapse into ill discipline and ineptitude. The team is failing right now and has allowed itself to slide into a close to impossible situation. All with the best talent the team has had in decades.

But there is no earthly reason why we are not 4-2 right now, if not better.

In my view, this year’s failure is, in itself, unnecessary.

That’s on Fisher.

That sums up my thoughts on Fisher and this season. I won’t say that I’ve completely given up on him. The improvements in the offense – especially given the QB situation – are impressive, but watching it pissed away because the supposed strength of the team has collapsed is incredibly frustrating. It’s pretty much impossible to believe that such a spectacular collapse could be the result of individual players regressing due to problems of their own. I don’t pretend to understand all of the ins and outs, but by far the most parsimonious explanation for the performance of the D this season is utter failure by the coaching staff.

Encouraging news.