Just Read that before seeing this here, IT WAS A AWESOME ARTICLE!

He just didn’t have an O-line.

But he still had Pace, Bell, Incognito, Barron, Setterstrom, etc. upfront, Holt at WR, and Jax in the backfield last year. The only changes we’ve made to the OL so far, besides acquiring Brown for Center, was dumping Pace and his salary for Jason Smith. So I’m not willing to give Bulger a free pass on the last two years’ disasters. He did his share to contribute. And yes, the defense was horrible. But our offense only scored 14.5 points per game last season and could never sustain a drive. So our defense stayed on the field. Recall too that when Bulger took over for Warner in 2003, we still had Pace, Bruce, and Holt in their prime and we also had Kevin Curtis, plus Marshall Faulk could still play. Even so, during his tenure Bulger has only taken the Rams to the playoffs twice with a record of 1-2. Nothing spectacular there. Like I’ve said before, I hope Marc Bulger plays this year like a combo of Kurt Warner and Brett Favre at age 30. However, Bulger has been shell-shocked for two years, had his shoulder and ribs hurt badly, and he’s about to hit 33. My guess is that Kyle Boller will be playing QB by mid-season.

Bulger excelled while playing in the Martz system. Bulger also took a tremendous amount of hits while playing in the Martz system, which is what happened to Kurt Warner. When Warner was dumped in favor of Bulger (because he was physically too beat up to play effectively), you could have written this same article (“How Warner became the league’s most underappreciated QB”) about Kurt.

if you were the most sacked quarterback in the league for two years running wouldn’t you be shell-shocked?

To quote bleacherreport.com’s article on Marc Bulger:

Marc Bulger played in 27 games from 2007 to 2008 and was sacked 75 times. To put that into perspective, Tom Brady was sacked 73 times from 2005 to 2007 in a total of 48 games.

The Rams averaged 411 carries for 1,588 yards during those two seasons. To put that into perspective, the 2008 Cleveland Browns carried the ball 409 times for 1,605 yards.

Out of those 411 carries, the Rams averaged 6.5 rushing touchdowns per-season. To put that into perspective, the 2008 Detroit Lions carred the ball 352 times and scored 10 touchdowns.

In both 2007 and 2008, the Rams defense ranked 31st in the NFL in terms of points per game allowed.

So what we have in terms of support is an offensive line that allows the quarterback to get sacked at the drop of a dime, a running game that gains less yards on more carries than the 2008 Cleveland Browns, and a running game that scores 35-percent fewer touchdowns on more carries than the 2008 Detroit Lions.

Now, how many quarterbacks have played with that kind of support and done well?

Pace was on the IR half of 2006 and all of 2007. In 2008 he performed well but not outstanding like a 7-time Pro Bowler, just look back at the footage of some of the Rams games.

Couple this with the fact that they were playing musical chairs at Center since Andy McCollum left, all the other injuries the Rams O-line endured and the fact that our defense was so bad we always had to play “catch up” football, which usually means pass, pass, pass. After awhile you become so predictable the defense knows what your are going to do.

I think watching Bulger this season should really be interesting and I’m betting next season will be even better if he plays anywhere near as good as he has.

Go Rams!

I guess I should have said ‘one of the most sacked quarterbacks’. He got sacked a lot, a whole lot, over the course of couple of years. Wouldn’t you agree?

Oh, by the way, I’m curious, who were the other three quarterbacks?.

Go Rams!