What the fuck did I tell you?

So, Sam Bradford made his debut with the Rams tonight. The Vikings smacked the Rams 28-7. Bradford was sacked 4 times. He had most of the first string offensive line in front of him, most of the time. The Vikings did not put all their 1st string defenders against him, at least not on all plays.

What do you take from these events? How about this line from Football News Now: The real story, however, is the lack of protection the Rams' offensive line provided their new leader. There you have it ladies and germs: The real story line is the lack of protection the Rams' offensive line provided Sam Bradford.

What did I tell you? What did I say? What have I warned of a thousand and one times? What did my last post on BleacherReport.com say?

What I am saying to you now I say in anger, and not with gloating: YOU'D BETTER FIX THAT OFFENSIVE LINE! I MEAN NOW! I don't give a fuck what you have to do. Trade players. Mortgage the future. Give up picks. Pay money under the table. Shtoomp female owners if that is what it takes. Get some offensive linemen in ASFAP.

Folks, it is worse than I thought it would be. I expected them to be pretty loose and sloppy. Disorganization was what I expected. I saw some of that, but that isn't the real story here. I did not expect them to look this... bad. They look plain overwhelmed at the point of attack by much superior athletes. The Viking D-Line did not win the battle at the line of scrimmage. The Vikings utterly annihilated the Rams at the line of scrimmage. That is damn scary.

Now, whilst I do not buy into the Viking theory, you just read my praise for the Viking D-line recently. Yes they are talented. No they are not that talented. This is only the 1st preason game. They should not be this hot at this point. The Ram line should not surrender 4 sacks all game long, much less in less 2 quarters of play.

What I saw set off a lot of major alarm bells. Even VanRam--who is a major apologist for the Rams' offensive line--is now showing real signs of worry. You can attempt to downplay it all you want, but you are wrong. Jason Smith looked more like the human sieve than the #2 overall pick from 2009. Jamie Dukes drew particular attention to Smith's case. The guards looked pretty bad also.

You should have read the expression on Dukes' face. It was somewhere between disdain and horror, and that came from a former center. He also warned of the lack of talent elsewhere on the field, something I am very cognizant of.

I am surprised the kid completed 6 of 13 passes for 57 yards. Considering the wretched protection he got, that was damn impressive. As Mike Florio said, the only good news for the Rams is that no joints on Bradford's body exploded like popcorn.

Billy, I want you to take a deep breath and write on the dry erase board 1,000 times: "David is never, ever wrong about the Rams. I need to get some offensive linemen right now."

Nah, skip it and just get the fucking linemen! I don't need to be proven right anymore. Just fix it!

Marshall Faulk is basically right

http://www.turfshowtimes.com/2010/2/19/1317497/marshall-faulk-gets-it-wrong-on

VanRam just took major exception to a few statements Marshall Faulk made in his recent Sporting News power-rankings piece. Specifically, Faulk said the following:

They've earned the No. 32 spot. It's well-deserved. The Rams are more worried about firing their trainer and their equipment manager than they are worried about the coaches responsible for their play on the field. That says a lot. When the first offseason move you make is to fire your trainer? Perfect. Maybe the draft will help. But at no point last season did I see anything that made me think they were turning the corner. It's painful to watch.

What is wrong with his statement? Let me think... ghee... I can't really find much if anything wrong with that statement.

• Did we earn the 32 spot? Yep. We went 1-15
• Did we fire our trainers? Yep.
• Did we fire Pat Shurmer? Nope. I guess we are more concerned with firing the trainer than fixing the offense.
• Did we show signs of turning the corner last season? Hell no.
• Is our offensive line worse now than last season? Yes. Icognito is gone. Barron is sure to follow. Jacob Bell will likely return with a hell of a hamstring problem. Our OL is worse, not better.
• Have we come off the bottom? Nope.
• Was it painful to watch? Nope. It was beyond painful. It was excruciating as fuck.

So Marshall is right, isn't he? Yep. I will grant that VanRam is correct about our defense. Our defense is looking better and better. They have bought into Coach Spag's system. They are playing like a unit. They are trusting each other, working together, and covering their personal responsibilities. I like what I saw defensively most of the season. However, I doubt Marshall was ripping the defense.

Marshall is charter member of the Greatest Show on Turf. Watching that pathetic excuse for a Lombardi running offense must have just about killed him. God knows it just about killed me. I am certain that Marshall was thinking first and foremost about our offense, which was a hopeless basket case yesteryear. We need a major offensive overhaul, and that includes the Offensive Coordinator position.

I don't believe Marshall has any ax to grind, any grudge, or any hidden agenda. Also, I would love to see him back with the organization.

The off-season is young. We have some time to do some work. However, I must acknowledge that it is strange that our first move was to fire the training staff, rather than Pat Shurmer.

Relocation and the Rams redux

http://www.turfshowtimes.com/2010/2/14/1310174/2010/2/14/1310174/relocation-and-the-rams

VanRam wrote a nice little blog about relocation and the Rams, and I thought I would comment at some length. At least, in a longer form than permitted by blog replies.

At the moment, St. Louis based fans and naive types are certain that the Rams are staying in St. Louis for the foreseeable future. Who knows what our grandchildren will see, but for our lifetimes, the Rams will be in St. Louis.

Really?

I like the fact that VanRam is aware of the complexity and duplicity of reality. He is aware of the fact that Shahid Khan is not yet the owner of the Rams. He is also aware of the fact that no man in his right mind would ever tell you he was moving a football team when he has 2 years (minimum) left to play in a location. Being a relatively brilliant self-made billionaire, Shahid Khan would not scupper the market for the next two years for the sake of something so stupid as public honesty if he did have plans to move. Billionaires have been known to lie with a straight face whenever it is in their best financial interests to do so.

VanRam is aware of the fact that there is a very tense labor situation developing right now. The cost of running an NFL team may well go up. There is such a thing as the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario looks like this:

• The Players do not agree to any salary cap
• There is no salary floor
• There is no franchise or transitional tag
• We have baseball style free agency
• The owners do not renew and/or sharply reduce revenue sharing among teams
• We have NBA-style contract-dollar trades as a matter of regular business in the NFL

Such an outcome would be terrible for the 53-54th largest market in the United States... especially when the 2nd largest market is calling... and somebody just laid down $750 million to buy the team. This doesn't bode well for any of the smaller market teams. Teams in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Jacksonville, and Tampa would automatically become non-competitive.

The football world hinges on the negotiations currently taking place between NFL labor and NFL management. If the worst case scenario comes to pass, or even two or three elements of the worst case scenario become reality, we will see a period of franchise movement the likes of which you have never seen. Los Angeles won't have one team but two. If San Diego looses the Chargers they can replace them in less than 3 weeks. Chicago will have two teams. Houston might even get a second. Las Vegas will get a team. The foundations will quiver and quake as the mayflower trucks roll out of the small markets.

I don't like firing up my brothers in St. Louis with anxiety and anger. I am just making you aware of the realities of business in this world. The Rams have to stay put, probably for the next 2-3 seasons. That being the case, ownership can and will say nothing to scupper the market, regardless of the real plan.

There is another reality that you must consider. 24 of 32 votes must approve Khan's bid. Each of those men have an agenda. The NFL has stated for 16 years that it is a top priority to get back into the Los Angeles market. The 49ers might like their southern rivals back again. The Cards, Seahawks, and 49ers might like shorter travel times, less time zone hopping, and natural grass. The NFL might want to play Super Bowl 50 in Los Angeles in 2016.

Don't take solace in Ed Roski's desire to have a team in Los Angeles by 2011. I have heard many a report which says that time table is way too aggressive to work out. Few believe the stadium can be finished, and made game-ready, in less than 2 years even under ideal circumstances. Things have a tendency to get delayed here in laid-back Los Angeles. Expect 2012.

Another point that a few of my Lawyer friends have pointed out: The Rams can get up and walk out of the Edward Jones Dome any time they want. They just have to be ready to pay contractual penalties; that's all. There is nothing that magical about the year 2012, 2014 or 2016. It's just a technical question of price. The price is not really that big of a deal if you stand to make a lot more money on the other side. We don't care how much it costs, we just care how much it makes.

So VanRam wants to know if Jason Campbell is an option in 2010

While I have enjoyed the writing VanRam for some time now, I'm going to have sound a bit caustic in this post.

Is Jason Campbell an option in 2010? No. Fuck no. Why would you even consider floating that trial balloon? Why even consider it? Why would you want to? I don't know what would trigger that thought.

Barring an unforeseen miracle Resurrection of Bulger, the Rams will undoubtedly make a quarterback their top pick in the 2010 draft. This means we only want and need a short-run stop-gap solution until the youngin is ready for war. Kyle Boller will fit this description just fine thank you very much. No need to go looking for a new used car.

Let's understand that despite a gob-smacking QB efficiency rating of 86.5, Jason Campbell really hasn't show much signs of life in Washington. We all know that Washington came close to dismissing Campbell this very off-season. We all know their offense stinks. It is almost as bad as ours. To say that their's is better than ours, therefore taking their QB constitutes an upgrade for us is a little like saying the Russian made cars were better than Hungarian made cars during the Communist epoch, ergo you should get a Russian car. I got a better idea: Why not buy a Honda instead? Fuck the Russian and Hungarian cars of the communist epoch.

Adding Campbell to our offense is not going constitute any sort of an upgrade. Let's forget about it. Draft Tim Tebow, slap Ferragamo's number on his back, let Boller start for period of time in which we school Tebow on (presumably) the West Coast Offense.