The positives

[berg8309]

I was frustrated with that game too, but I am sick of negative negative negative in every thread. So here is my thread about some positives to pull out of the game.

1. Mark Clayton is a good WR and an excellent addition. He will help us during the season.

2. Jackson still has it. Yea he was stuffed in the second half, but clearly he is a force to be reckoned with. Shurmur now just needs to figure out how to utilize other players when they start focusing on Jackson to free him up again.

3. Bradford is still special, and will be for a long time. He had a rough patch in the second half, and the interception was clearly from him being frustrated and trying to force a ball in there. However, he pulled himself together and led the Rams to another TD. The kid is going to take bumps, but man is he good. It's hard for a rookie to overcome that stuff and put together a TD drive.

4. Chris Long continue to intimidate. I saw constant double-teaming. Unfortunately when we stopped blitzing, we stopped getting pressure. Long helps the blitz by eating up blockers, so lets keep blitzing!

5. We are getting great position to force turnovers, we just need to finish the play, but we are creating chances.

6. Laurinitis still rocks.

7. Fletcher had a couple of nice breakups. Obviously still some work to be done, but he isn't practice squad material either.

8. Shurmur has the ability and creativeness to call good plays. He keeps turtling and going conservative, and that is bad, but he isn't useless.

9. Our uniforms don't look stupid like the Raiders

10. Glad we didn't trade for Campbell

There you have it, not everything was bad

[Jockelite]

At least someone is thinking positive. Even though it was very difficult im sure to salvage many things positive after the 2nd half "performance." And I agree with Mark Clayton. While he may not be a true number 1 he has provided us with more of a threat then what the Rams have had the past 2 years.

[Fat Pang]

I'm all for positive threads being a glass half-full guy ordinarily and am generally in agreement with what the OP has put forward.

I'm going to take exception with No.8 however, as the third quarter saw some unimaginative playcalling. The Rams have to find a way, much as the Raiders seemed to in their second-half resurgence, to get some depth in their passing game.

I do not feel that the past 18 games have shown that Shurmur has the creativeness I've seen ascribed to him here and another 2-3 games could see him in trouble.

We have to show more against the 'Skins than we did today.

[berg8309]

I wasn't saying that he called a good 2nd half, but the playcalling in the first half worked fine to spread the coverage and give Jackson room. He has the ability, he just seems to refuse to believe he needs to do anything more than run up the middle, run up the middle, 3 yard slant, punt to win games. I think Shurmur could be decent if he was willing to take a risk, but he seems unwilling to until the game is on the line.

[snackdaddy]

I can't agree on shurmur either. Wanna know why he called more deep passes in the preseason? I think its because he had no intention of using them in the regular season. He didn't want to tip his hand, so he showed plays he wouldn't use when it counts. The short passing game makes it easier for defenses to stack the box to stop Jackson. They play up because they know if its a pass, they won't have to back up. So defenses will continue to play 8 or 9 in the box and Bradford will struggle because the field of play for him is only ten yards and all the defenders are in that ten yard area.