[HUbison]

Originally Posted by GC

HUGE point in the middle of the article that a lot of guys on this board are missing. The rams dropped from 16th to 17th in TOTAL defense last year.

GC, I think everyone remembers how well they played in the last third of the season. They actually did a pretty good job against the niners, the Eagles 2nd string, and even in the Carolina and Cards losses. And you're right, coaching is not the contribution that execution is. In fact, I think Jimmy Kennedy was a much bigger factor in the late successes of the Rams D than Marmie was. What bothers me is that while yardage D went from 16th to 17th, scoring D went from 17th to 25th. We allowed about 5 points more per game, which shouldn't be a problem when the D is generating TOs. We lived off of them in 2003, and yes they did keep our Weak D hidden, but they weren't there in 2004 and our dirty little secrets came out of hiding. I hope that a year of familiarity and movement up the learning curve will take care of that discrepancy. However, to view a Marmie led D with anything other than guarded optimism is, at best, wild speculation. This is simply because he's never had a defense better than what we saw in 2004. At this point (assuming Arch is at, as his says, 6000%) the 2005 personnel look to be world's better than the 2004 squad. Add that to an extra year of learning Marmie's D and they may be okay. Hopefully now that Marmie has led a D finishing higher than 22nd, maybe they can build on that and finish higher than 17th this year. But it's all uncharted territory for Marmie.