I bet you haven't read his name in a while well its back and im going to explain why he was probably the most important piece of our offense this year. As Van would say more after the jump..

Hi im hibachi40 a st louis rams fan whose probably lost 10 years off his lifespan watching this years rams team perform week in week out. Like many of you, except the people who actually predicted we would suck (i dont get you guys...) I thought the rams would be pretty good this year. Im still having to live down how hype i got watching the first part of the eagles game and then immediately watching our team literally fall apart. Anyways because i couldnt bear accepting that we are just this bad on offense i tried to find a reason and i found it in that first game of the season.

Dannold Eugene Amendola or Danny Amendola as we know him was our most talented receiver coming into this year, and while he wasnt super fast or incredibly big he did have a knack for getting seperation from corners in man and finding holes in zones. I know I know your asking "but hibachi how could someone who could only pick up 3-5 yards on an average reception be so intricate to our offensive gameplan?" well my fellow depressed brethren he offered so much more than that.

Now i dont know if you guys remember this since it was soooo long ago our team was fully healthy but danny was actually our WR2 on opening day, not Mike Sims Walker (i just got the willies). This is very important so remember that ok? With Danny we had a receiver who could almost automatically pick up 4 or 5 yards even if our line was incapable of blocking for 2 seconds, wait thats too long, like a second. This would keep us out of 2nd and long or dare i say 3rd and long, which is a guaranteed punt, making everyones job that much easier when it comes to moving the chains. As im sure you have read Danny was the pacifier for our infant offense. Now im sure you saying greg salas did a great job of filling in and he's much more physically gifted than danny so what gives? Well here comes the shocking revelation ready for it? Greg Salas was a rookie. Before you x off this page bear with me im about to hit home.

We all heard in training camp that greg was struggling to pick up the playbook but it wasnt because him and mardy gilyard were study buddies it was because, and god i hope im right about this, in order to play the role josh mcdaniels wanted him to play he would have to learn not just the slot recievers routes but also wr1's routes and wr2's routes because of our patented no huddle offense. Yes i like many of you have wondered whyyyyyy dont we use it more and the simple explanation is we cant. Why cant we? Because we have no danny amendola. Now back to the observation i made earlier do you remember it? Danny was our wr2 meaning he was in our base offense. I was so surprised by this when i first saw it 13 weeks ago but never really took the time to think about it. What do the patriots do with aaron hernandez when they go hurry up? they split him out wide and move their wr2 to slot (you getting it?) the reason teams can never match up with the patriots is that they have so many moveable parts that they can do anything with. Bring hernandez back to tight end with gronkowski you have a singleback big running formation, split him out wide you have a shotgun 3 wr set with a tight end. If you were a defensive coordinator what would you do? I'll wait....

Anyways thats what our team was supposed to do. I still hold to the fact that danny amendola is wes welker and alot of our offense is shaped to be like new englands. Kendricks is Hernandez LLoyd is Branch and... well we havent found a gronkowski yet. Can you imagine we line up first down 2 tight ends run the ball for 3 quick yards next play no huddle we come out with danny at slot next to lloyd, kendricks outside on an island with a corner and bajema.... being worthless with steven in the back field snap the ball and hit a quick out to danny for a first working against a linebacker because the defense had no time to sub an extra corner. Then hurry up again and run it again with steven against a defense running zone because we have three recievers to cover then hit kendricks on an in route against a corner who cant tackle him so he picks up extra yards.... anyway im getting too far ahead of myself. Maybe everybody thinks im crazy but i really believe this was mcdaniels plan for our offense and he just lost his key cog which is why we couldnt run the hurry up as much as we liked which is why we look like we should be playing against high school teams which is why our defense is always gassed which is why we are sitting at 2-10 right now.

But yeah this post made me feel better about where we are as a team, i think, lets get ready to watch some ugly football monday night.