Rams fans surprisingly confident

On defense, we have very few proven players. We have Atogwe, James Butler, Chris Long, and Laurinaitis. Everything else is a question mark. We don’t know if Bradley Fletcher is going to be any good after his injury, we have no idea if Ron Bartell will return to his past form. On the defensive line, Clifton Ryan is okay but there’s nobody else besides Long. Hall is too old, Robbins is like La’Roi Glover (not very good anymore). At linebacker, Diggs is really old and Bobby Carpenter hasn’t proven himself.

On offense, we don’t have a proven quarterback. Feely hasn’t played in 3 years, Bradford barely played last year (not to mention that he’s a rookie), and Null sucks. The offensive line is a huge question mark. We’ve got Jacob Bell and Jason Brown, but nobody else. Jason Smith still needs to prove himself, Saffold is just a rookie, and Goldberg sucks. At tight end, we don’t really have anybody. We either need Fells to really step up this year, or Hoomawanui needs to be an absolute stud as a rookie. There also isn’t a proven wide receiver.

Basically, our defense has a good core group surrounded by unknown young players or past-their-prime old guys. On offense, there is too much reliance on rookies and young players to have breakout years. That’s not to say we’re not heading in the right direction, we definitely are, but we’re still building. As soon as these young guys gain experience, we can weed out the ones who aren’t very good, and more people will be added through free agency and such around a good core of proven guys (probably including Bradford, Avery, Smith, and others who play well), and we’ll be a good team. It’s just not going to happen this year. For that to happen, we’ll need breakout years from Avery, Robinson, Saffold, J. Smith, Bradford, Fells/Hoom’, Fletcher, Carpenter, Murphy, and Bartell. There is no way of knowing if they will all be good.

Because I just don’t see the big changes I was hoping for, and as the season approaches and I look through my fictitous depth chart, there are still holes everywhere there was last year, minus QB. TE, DL, WR, and OLB are all still weak and that was pretty much the list from last year. But looking at our rookies I see QB has been remedied, CB could be safer for us even with their penchant for injuries, and OL has remained strong. Last year around this time I had this feeling like “oooo just wait NFL, Rams gonna upset the world” because Bulger could’ve been good, Long would emerge, Smith’s protection would lead to offense, Laurinaitis would be a playmaker with Witherspoon helping, our recievers wouldn’t be that bad, etc. etc. This year it’s more like “well, let’s see just how big an impact Sam Bradford’s gonna make” because we got answers at all those spots last year and now the big question rests on this rookies performance.

The real change that I can see, is if Sam Bradford looks good becomes “our offense looks good” becomes “our defense isn’t tired” becomes “our defense is pretty good” becomes “hey, we won quite a bit of games”. That’s nerve racking seeing as it all depends on this rookie QB. Wish we would’ve filled more of those holes from last year but we’ll see how the season ends up. sigh, geuss I can always make fun of Cubs fans.

Second year in system is huge,defense will react instinctively (big deal).If Sam picks up offense and OL remains healthy (8 wins) very possible.