Peter King on the Rams

[ScottD413]

Our line is terrible, no doubt. But I think Mr. King is forgetting the 1989 Dallas Cowboys line. Aikman almost didn't make it out of his rookie year alive. Of course, SI loves the Cowboys and could never say a bad word about them

[Nick]

I completely dis-agree, the Ravens are missing just as many starters and they still stay competitive. They dont have Mcnair,3 starting o-lineman,and Heap and his backup Wilcox. I dont buy it, I can handle losing games because of injury but it's how bad we are losing now that is scary. If the Ravens can stay competitive with Kyle Boller at the healm why cant we? Coaching, anyone, anyone?

Those are fair points, but the Ravens still have a dominant defense which is what they are built around, so they don't need much on offense. The Rams are the opposite. If the Ravens had times where 7 starters were out on defense, that comparison would be valid. As far as being competitive, they just got punked by Buffalo.

That pretty much sums up what my response was going to be. The Ravens' strength as a team has been their defense as opposed to their offense, so losing offensive players doesn't take away from their strength and the main part of their team that allows them to be competitive. That's not the case for us, since in the past we've been competitive because of our offense, which is broken down now.

[bigtiger737]

tell ya what guy's , here is an o-line for our next game , and we would win . BARRON - T , McCOLLUM - G , ROMBERG C , INCOGNITO -RG , TIMMERMAN -RG , FRYE - RG/SUB , ARRON WALKER - TE . and as you can see , the whole right side of the line is GAURDS and a TE . and then just run JACKSON and LEONARD 65 times up the middle and sweep right all fricken day, NO interceptions , NO sacks , NO tipped balls or dropped passes , AND NO TERRELL . at 0-7 , you guy;s should be pretty much up for anything that isn't linehan's idea . but i think that you guy's would be too chicken to try it .

Is timmerman back on our team????

[RamOfDenmark]

Injuries have definitely played a big part in this miserable season, but injuries alone do not explain how awful we've been.

Barron, McCollum, Romberg, Incognito, Brown and Terrell. Out of these players all but Brown have started for us in previous seasons and done well, we miss Pace and we miss him a lot. But the guys we have are not that much worse than what we had going into the season - Pace is missing, they've shuffled around a lot, but other than that who are we missing? Setterstrom? In my opinion the dropoff from Setterstrom to McCollum or Terrell is not huge. Adam Goldberg isn't a Pro Bowl player either, I'd say other than Brown he's worse than the other players on this line, missing him should not stall us completely either. We've tried having a revolving door at RT for years, and remember that year where guys on the O-line kept going down and we had to bring back poor Tom Nutten out of retirement (until he was lost to injury again)? We've had a battered O-line before, but we sure scored a heck of a lot more points than we do now anyway.

Don't forget that we've been blown out in almost all games this year, while losing players along the way. But it's not as if we suddenly went from great to awful, we've been awful all along (I was totally let down by the performance in the very 1st game, and things haven't gotten better since), with or without all the players missing with injuries. The only 2 games we have really had a shot at winning all the way through 4 quarters is against the Whiners & Cards, and they're awful teams too so that shouldn't count for much.

Am I the only one who's surprised and disappointed how bad we are even given the injuries? We should be able to score more points than 3 or 6 etc. Yes, even with this squad.

[RealRam]

The word for today is ... dysfunctional.

dysfunction

Variant(s): also dis·func·tion \(ˌ)dis-ˈfəŋ(k)-shən\
Function: noun
Date: circa 1916
1: impaired or abnormal functioning <physical dysfunction>
2: abnormal or unhealthy interpersonal behavior or interaction within a group <family dysfunction>

—dys·func·tion·al\-shnəl, -shə-nəl\ adjective


The Rams OL. Think of it as the five fingers of one hand. One after the other has either been cut off and hastily replaced by a questionable prosthesis or, has been broken repeatedly, patched up, and sent back into action, that is ... finger wrestling!!!

Ouch. :x


I wonder what Jackie Slater would say about the current condition of the Rams OL.


PS: we all know that these actual patch ups and casts have literally been on the fingers, hands, legs, teeth, etc. of many a tough football player -- Jack Youngblood, Larry Wilson (played with two broken hands, in a cast), et al --but the difference here is that our OL has been decimated (how many times have we heard that this season) and unable to play as a unit due to lack of stability and continuity, as Mike mentioned earlier.

[rammiser]

Injuries have definitely played a big part in this miserable season, but injuries alone do not explain how awful we've been.

Barron, McCollum, Romberg, Incognito, Brown and Terrell. Out of these players all but Brown have started for us in previous seasons and done well, we miss Pace and we miss him a lot. But the guys we have are not that much worse than what we had going into the season - Pace is missing, they've shuffled around a lot, but other than that who are we missing? Setterstrom? In my opinion the dropoff from Setterstrom to McCollum or Terrell is not huge. Adam Goldberg isn't a Pro Bowl player either, I'd say other than Brown he's worse than the other players on this line, missing him should not stall us completely either. We've tried having a revolving door at RT for years, and remember that year where guys on the O-line kept going down and we had to bring back poor Tom Nutten out of retirement (until he was lost to injury again)? We've had a battered O-line before, but we sure scored a heck of a lot more points than we do now anyway.

Don't forget that we've been blown out in almost all games this year, while losing players along the way. But it's not as if we suddenly went from great to awful, we've been awful all along (I was totally let down by the performance in the very 1st game, and things haven't gotten better since), with or without all the players missing with injuries. The only 2 games we have really had a shot at winning all the way through 4 quarters is against the Whiners & Cards, and they're awful teams too so that shouldn't count for much.

Am I the only one who's surprised and disappointed how bad we are even given the injuries? We should be able to score more points than 3 or 6 etc. Yes, even with this squad.

See this is the point I was trying to make. I'm not discounting the injuries I realize they make it very tough. What I'm saying is we arent even slightly competitive in most games. Also like the Ravens defense our defense has performed great considering the awful positions they are put in time after time by our offense. I know we have injuries but we cant score more than 3 or 6 points on the road against anybody? I'm really more disgruntled with the aweful play calling. The injuries are there no doubt but we should still be able to score. I do realize Holt dropped a td and Bruce tackled himself on another td but the coaching staff is calling terrible plays for the most part. If we were competitive in every game and still 0-7 I would say it's the injuries but thats not the case.

[Varg6]

I think injuries have made the offense play poorly i.e. Bad playcalling along with Bulger having no confidence in his offensive line whatsoever (Why he still takes sacks is beyond me, doesn't he expect that by now? Throw the damn ball away.)

[Nick]

What I'm saying is we arent even slightly competitive in most games.

I disagree with that assessment of the situation.

We were leading Carolina until the Jackson turnovers in the third quarter.

We lost to San Fran by one point and were back and forth with them the entire game and were in a position to win with a minute left on the clock.

The Tampa Bay game was a one possession game through the entire first half and returned to a one possession game in the fourth quarter.

We played right with Dallas for an entire half and kept it close before they exploded in the second half.

We were neck and neck with Arizona until the end, and possibly could have sent the game into overtime with a recovered onside kick and successful field goal.

The only two games where I think we simply haven't looked competitive have been the last two. I would say for most of our games, our injured team is putting up quite a good fight and has been keeping the games competitive. Have they been able to do it for four quarters? Not always, but these aren't blowouts by any means, which is what I would expect from a team being described as not being "even slightly competitive."

As for scoring on the road, as you said Bruce and Holt both missed on what could have been 14 points. 17 if you count Wilkins' missed field goal. Players have to make plays, and the guys we normally count on with this team simply aren't getting the job done either.