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Rams should show caution
Sports Columnist Bryan Burwell
[More columns]By Bryan Burwell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
11/24/2009
Seven years ago, the surprising elevation of Marc Bulger as a starting quarterback began quietly enough inside the Rams Park press room on a Monday afternoon, when Mike Martz came into the near-empty room clutching an injury report and cursing.
"He broke his hand, damn it," said the white-haired football eccentric. "Kurt broke his bleeping hand."
It was December 2, 2002, and Martz discovered through a belated x-ray that Kurt Warner had been playing for two weeks with a broken right hand. Warner would play one more season with the Rams, but his days as the Rams starting quarterback were numbered the moment Martz got that '02 injury report, and Bulger's tenure as his permanent replacement were about to begin.
And now here it was another Monday afternoon, nearly seven years later, and Steve Spagnuolo was the bearer of similar bad news, clutching another injury report in his right hand.
"Marc broke his leg," said Spagnuolo, peering down at the yellow slip of paper. "They're calling it a tibial plateau
fracture."
There was no cursing this time, just a simple matter-of-fact dispensing of the news. But buried between the lines of Spagnuolo's dispassionate delivery of the facts was a rather fascinating example of the cyclical nature of life in the NFL:
Marc Bulger's days as the Rams' starting quarterback appear to be ending in almost the identical fashion in which they began.
This hairline fracture just below his left knee is a six-week injury, and there are only six games left in the season. So do the math. Unless Rams management decides to bring him back as a caretaker for a yet-to-be-drafted quarterback of the future, the 32-year-old Bulger — a two-time Pro Bowler who began his career with the Rams with a three-year 27-12 record as a starter — has probably played his last game for them.
Because he and Warner will be forever linked (and how coincidental was it that his last game as a Ram was played on the same field with Warner?), I hope Bulger is lucky enough to find some similar success in his NFL life after the Rams. After a rags-to-riches rise from a sixth-round pick (by New Orleans) who spent his first year bouncing around the NFL practice squads, then developed into a Pro Bowler under Martz's tutelage, Bulger spent the last last five seasons getting beaten up and worn down with a chronic case of battered QB syndrome on some historically bad teams (15-44 as a starter since 2005).
And while all the Bulger bashers are reveling in his downfall, I hope he ends up getting a second life on a good team next season. That's what I'm rooting for.
As the bashers are celebrating life without Bulger, I'm hoping the Rams understand that just because Bulger is probably on his way out, that doesn't automatically mean that a first-round QB is in their immediate future.
I know it's quite popular to assume that there is no other reasonable alternative for the Rams this spring than to use their high first-round pick — likely to be among the top two or three selections barring a mad late-season winning streak — on a young QB and build around him for the future.
Not so fast. Beware of drafting a QB high in the first round for need. I will give you several reasons:
Alex Smith.
Akili Smith.
Tim Couch.
Cade McNown.
Those are the sort of disastrous mistakes that can set a franchise back five or six years, and the Rams can't afford another five years of bad football.
You need to be absolutely sure with quarterbacks in the first round or you'll get burned. If the Rams do their homework and they believe that there is an absolute can't-miss guy right there at the top of the draft, then by all means do it. But who is that guy? Would you risk a top three pick on Sam Bradford now when he won't be able to even begin working out after his knee operation until six weeks before the 2010 draft?
The two QBs everyone keeps bringing up that the Rams should have drafted over the past few years are an interesting case study in why taking a quarterback based on need is such risky business. Jay Cutler looks like a classic head case with a load of unfulfilled potential who might end up getting the general manager and head coach in Chicago fired. According to several reliable NFL sources, the word out of New York is that the Jets personnel department still isn't sure that Mark Sanchez has shown them enough as a rookie to lead them to believe that he is their certain quarterback of the future.
So as deep as this '09 QB class is supposed to be, every one of these prospects has huge question marks hanging over his head. There's no argument that the Rams need to find a young quarterback for the future, but they certainly don't want to hand this team over to an inexperienced kid who might be a lot closer to Alex Smith than a young Peyton Manning at a time when there are so many holes in this offense that even a future Hall of Famer would struggle running it.
Here's a smarter plan. Find yourself a game-breaking pure No. 1 wide receiver (Dez Bryant?) to fill that glaring offensive need, or a beast of an interior defensive lineman (Nebraska's Ndamukong Suh?) or another nasty linebacker or game-breaking safety who will become can't-miss Pro Bowlers and shore up the chasm-like gaps in this interior run defense. It's time for the Rams to start hitting home runs drafting so high in the first round, and by reaching for a quarterback just to fill a need, the pathetic streak of picking only one player this decade in the first round who became their Pro Bowl player (Steven Jackson) is sure to continue.
If the QB draft class is as deep as the draftniks say it is — and if this revamped personnel department is as astute as I suspect it is — the Rams will find an adequate young arm in the second or third round.
But in the first round, I don't want adequate.
We've seen enough "adequate" around here to last a lifetime.
It's about time to draft another star.
Sports Columnist Bryan Burwell
[More columns]By Bryan Burwell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
11/24/2009
Seven years ago, the surprising elevation of Marc Bulger as a starting quarterback began quietly enough inside the Rams Park press room on a Monday afternoon, when Mike Martz came into the near-empty room clutching an injury report and cursing.
"He broke his hand, damn it," said the white-haired football eccentric. "Kurt broke his bleeping hand."
It was December 2, 2002, and Martz discovered through a belated x-ray that Kurt Warner had been playing for two weeks with a broken right hand. Warner would play one more season with the Rams, but his days as the Rams starting quarterback were numbered the moment Martz got that '02 injury report, and Bulger's tenure as his permanent replacement were about to begin.
And now here it was another Monday afternoon, nearly seven years later, and Steve Spagnuolo was the bearer of similar bad news, clutching another injury report in his right hand.
"Marc broke his leg," said Spagnuolo, peering down at the yellow slip of paper. "They're calling it a tibial plateau
fracture."
There was no cursing this time, just a simple matter-of-fact dispensing of the news. But buried between the lines of Spagnuolo's dispassionate delivery of the facts was a rather fascinating example of the cyclical nature of life in the NFL:
Marc Bulger's days as the Rams' starting quarterback appear to be ending in almost the identical fashion in which they began.
This hairline fracture just below his left knee is a six-week injury, and there are only six games left in the season. So do the math. Unless Rams management decides to bring him back as a caretaker for a yet-to-be-drafted quarterback of the future, the 32-year-old Bulger — a two-time Pro Bowler who began his career with the Rams with a three-year 27-12 record as a starter — has probably played his last game for them.
Because he and Warner will be forever linked (and how coincidental was it that his last game as a Ram was played on the same field with Warner?), I hope Bulger is lucky enough to find some similar success in his NFL life after the Rams. After a rags-to-riches rise from a sixth-round pick (by New Orleans) who spent his first year bouncing around the NFL practice squads, then developed into a Pro Bowler under Martz's tutelage, Bulger spent the last last five seasons getting beaten up and worn down with a chronic case of battered QB syndrome on some historically bad teams (15-44 as a starter since 2005).
And while all the Bulger bashers are reveling in his downfall, I hope he ends up getting a second life on a good team next season. That's what I'm rooting for.
As the bashers are celebrating life without Bulger, I'm hoping the Rams understand that just because Bulger is probably on his way out, that doesn't automatically mean that a first-round QB is in their immediate future.
I know it's quite popular to assume that there is no other reasonable alternative for the Rams this spring than to use their high first-round pick — likely to be among the top two or three selections barring a mad late-season winning streak — on a young QB and build around him for the future.
Not so fast. Beware of drafting a QB high in the first round for need. I will give you several reasons:
Alex Smith.
Akili Smith.
Tim Couch.
Cade McNown.
Those are the sort of disastrous mistakes that can set a franchise back five or six years, and the Rams can't afford another five years of bad football.
You need to be absolutely sure with quarterbacks in the first round or you'll get burned. If the Rams do their homework and they believe that there is an absolute can't-miss guy right there at the top of the draft, then by all means do it. But who is that guy? Would you risk a top three pick on Sam Bradford now when he won't be able to even begin working out after his knee operation until six weeks before the 2010 draft?
The two QBs everyone keeps bringing up that the Rams should have drafted over the past few years are an interesting case study in why taking a quarterback based on need is such risky business. Jay Cutler looks like a classic head case with a load of unfulfilled potential who might end up getting the general manager and head coach in Chicago fired. According to several reliable NFL sources, the word out of New York is that the Jets personnel department still isn't sure that Mark Sanchez has shown them enough as a rookie to lead them to believe that he is their certain quarterback of the future.
So as deep as this '09 QB class is supposed to be, every one of these prospects has huge question marks hanging over his head. There's no argument that the Rams need to find a young quarterback for the future, but they certainly don't want to hand this team over to an inexperienced kid who might be a lot closer to Alex Smith than a young Peyton Manning at a time when there are so many holes in this offense that even a future Hall of Famer would struggle running it.
Here's a smarter plan. Find yourself a game-breaking pure No. 1 wide receiver (Dez Bryant?) to fill that glaring offensive need, or a beast of an interior defensive lineman (Nebraska's Ndamukong Suh?) or another nasty linebacker or game-breaking safety who will become can't-miss Pro Bowlers and shore up the chasm-like gaps in this interior run defense. It's time for the Rams to start hitting home runs drafting so high in the first round, and by reaching for a quarterback just to fill a need, the pathetic streak of picking only one player this decade in the first round who became their Pro Bowl player (Steven Jackson) is sure to continue.
If the QB draft class is as deep as the draftniks say it is — and if this revamped personnel department is as astute as I suspect it is — the Rams will find an adequate young arm in the second or third round.
But in the first round, I don't want adequate.
We've seen enough "adequate" around here to last a lifetime.
It's about time to draft another star.
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