Talent vs Effort: Getting to the heart of the Rams problems

But in reading Bernie’s column, I couldn’t help but be annoyed with it. To me, Bernie is arguing semantics. He and Haslett are arguing over the rather cloudy definition of the word “effort”. Really, how do you measure effort? It’s kinda hard. I’m sure Haslett is taking into account the week heading up to the game, the locker room atmosphere, and the pre-game drills while Bernie is saying “they don’t block, therefore they aren’t trying because you have to try to block……..therefore, no effort.”. Which I think is a stretch, to say the least.

Bernie even points out in his own column that the team is full of “losers and a thinning roster” yet he blames Haslett for not getting “effort” from these players when they can’t execute and for not making changes to the roster when there’s little to make realistic changes with? C’mon. They aren’t good. Period. As a matter of fact, a lot of them stink or have always had bad attitudes and lack of concentration.

You can’t make a pile of crap smell like a rose bush and that is exactly what Bernie is expecting. Management filled this roster with a lot of guys who either can’t play football very well or are more interested in their paycheck than their reputation. Those players need to be cleared out and it’s gonna take at least one offseason to disinfect that locker room.

Btw, Bernie also mentioned that Incognito was taunting the fans after the game. Does anyone know what he did? Honestly, thin line or not, they have to do something with him. I don’t know if you cut him, but his attitude is way out of balance. He probably needs to go, though.

As I understand it, they were booing him, and he was trying to get them to increase the volume…not sure why he would be doing this after basically getting his ass handed to him, but I believe that was the case…if that counts as taunting, then he is more stupid than I imagined, even after the comments from last week, in which case he should be cut.

he was doing the cupped hand to ear thing walking into the tunnel. like an idiot. He just didn’t know when to quit with it.

If you wanted to max out effort, without any talent, you could bring back the Pottsville Maroons. They were a bunch of hardscrabble Pennsylvania coal miners who decided to form a football team and then beat the whole damn world of football – including the best team on the planet at the time, the U of Notre Dame. In fact, you could re-create them by cutting 95% of the team, and picking the best 53 guys laid off from the Chrysler plant in Fenton. (I’d keep OJ Atogwe, and probably end up resigning Dane Looker by accident after mistaking him for one of the Chrylser guys.) They might not win games, but they’d never stop playing.

If you wanted to max out talent without any effort, clone the 2000 Minnesota Vikings, with the unstoppable Daunte Culpepper, Randy Moss and Chris Carter on offense, and nobody home on defense. This was the core of the 15-1 juggernaut from two years earlier, a team that curled up and died in the playoffs against the Giants, 41-0.