It seems that Head Coach Scott Linehan, who used to be boring and afraid has changed to a new, more exciting coach.  He has developed a personality and has tried to communicate that to the St. Louis media and fans.  Linehan has seemed to figure out that he is on the hot seat, which is where his sense of urgency has come from.  But will this change of personality make a difference or is it too late.  With games against the Super Bowl Champion Giants and the AFC Champion Patriots looming in the upcoming season it would seem that Linehan's time could be running out.  However, he could change everyone's mind with a great offseason and maybe even an unexpected playoff appearance.  Will Linehan's change of character be enough?

Many have questions, but only some have answers.  Long over Dorsey??? Yes. Long over Dorsey, and all I have to say is that was a great move.  Here are my five reasons why: 1) Dorsey is not going to sign until the last week of training camp, thus limiting his production in his rookie season. 2) Dorsey had a down second half of his last season with the LSU Tigers. 3) Dorsey is overrated, and is not the next Warren Sapp. 4) Chris Long is better and more determined.  This is why Long should have been drafted over Dorsey.

As VanRam recently mentioned, Rams minicamp is right around the corner. After picking up eight players draft weekend, the Rams signed 12 undrafted free agents to compete in camp. Normally these players have a slim-to-none chance of making the team; however Quinton Culberson's success last year is an example of why this group shouldn't be easily overlooked. So, in order, here are a few UFA's that I think can make the 2008 squad, and maybe even make an impact.

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First, in my everlasting and fruitless desire to want to be loved and respected, I want to go on the record by saying I really get a kick out of Kenny Mayne the person and ESPN anchor.  That being said, I think Kenny needs to work a little on the whole "author" thing.  An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport  is Kenny Mayne's first stab at writing a book.  The title says it all and it's not necessarily a good thing.  Mayne's straight faced deliveries, dry wit, and stream-of-consciousness diatribes are what made him the sports/entertainment personality he is today, and for the most part, it has rewarded him with a very nice career.  The problem is that his style holds up and translates smoother in 30 second increments with various interruptions from other anchors and commercials.  When reading his book, that same style can seem to drone on endlessly and become quite tiring.  Mayne, himself, refers to his publishing as "not quite a book" as much as it is a "coaster" for a coffee table.  He constantly downplays his own efforts in creating the book and chides the reader for even trying to follow along.  Sadly, the reader (me) ends up agreeing with him and finds it difficult picking it up at times just to get through it.  The book isn't all bad, though.  When Mayne drops the "schtick" and starts writing from the heart about various topics close to him like his children, family, and exploits as an athlete and reporter, the reader becomes engulfed in some pretty amazing stories.  If I was Mayne's editor, I would have had him write nothing but his life and various athletes and personalities he has come across.  Mayne adds a nice touch in the book by offering "illustrations" by his two young daughters.  They are both touching and comical.  As a whole, the book falls way short of it's $24.95 asking price.  In the spirit of Kenny Mayne, I would toss him a ten($) and tell him to start again.

I overheard an argument the other day about the top 5 tackles made by Rams defenders. Obviously, Mike Jones' tackle of Kevin Dyson was high on the list. Leonard Little sacks and Keith Lyle blows were discussed. Even though I knew that I would ruin thier discussion, I had to jump in; I just had to. 

If you rank any Mike Jones' tackle as #1 and a Leonard Little sack at 3 or a Keith Lyle crushing hit at 5, you miss all 5 of jimmy Kennedy's career tackles which clearly makes everyone be on the outside looking in. 

As a die-hard Rams fan over the past 2 decades I was so pumped to see the Rams take a franchise player like Chris Long.  I think he will come in and contribute to the defense right off the bat.  Hopefully Leonard Little can come back this year with a vengance and put pressure on the outside.  I think the defense is headed in the right direction and J. King was a quality pick in the 4th round with plenty of upside.   I was hoping the Rams would have taken Dan Connor in the 3rd round but I think the OL need was more important.  Overall the Rams did a good job and I'm excited to see some of the young guys get some action this year.  We still have plenty of star players and if Pace is healthy the Rams can definitely be a playoff contender.  Let me know your thoughts.

Hey Turf Show Times,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know we still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com. We'll be continuing to make changes and improving things.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
2. Once you're logged in, press your  Z  key in any thread with new comments
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Turf Show Times from YouTube or images from Flickr
6. Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.
7. Customize display options on your Edit Settings page

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Turf Show Times and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Turf Show Times now has all the basic information about the St. Louis Rams and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of St. Louis Rams material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

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There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.

  Since I'm stationed in Germany, I don't get a lot of traditional media output on the Rams #2 pick.  I have to go off of this site, some other random places I get to, and whatever comes on AFN Sports.  

  So now, with just days to go, here's where this Soldier stands...

Continue reading this post »

With two of the best DT's in the business, the Norseman went big for a need. Defensive End:

Jared Allen for their No. 17, No. 73, and No. 82.
(NFL NETWORK)

With two of the best DT's in the business (both made the Pro Bowl), they may now have the best defensive line in the NFL.

The Chiefs get to rebuild. The Vikings have their defensive line.

As all of you know, Jake Long swims with the Phishes.  And that's a good thing.  Now we are left with the proverbial #1 spot.  Besides drafting C. Long, Dorsey, or Gholson. I think all 3 would be more than satisfactory if we stayed put and just fired away.  However... we have a chance to possibly get any one of these three and STILL accumulate great quantity and value on the ole draft board.  
                                                      It's time to look at trade partners. (Let's keep in mind that we are using the standard "draft value guide" that almost every organization incorporates when it comes to evaluating a possible transaction.)

As I look at trades that involve nothing but picks, only two teams stand out:  Atl. and K.C.

In terms of pure numbers matching up, Atl. would have to trade #3 and #48 to get our pick.

K.C. would have to trade #5, #35, and #66 to get there.

Oak., NYJets, and N.O. could trade their entire drafts and still not match up.  This leads me to think of some roster players that would make it work.

Oak:  #4, #104, and Fabian Washington CB (or) #4 and Derrick Burgess DE

NYJets: #6, #36, and Shaun Ellis DE    or
        #6, and Kerry Rhodes S         or
        #6, #67 and Justin Miller CB or DeWayne Robertson DT

N.O.    #10 and Will Smith DE
        #10 and Charles Grant DE
        #10, #40, and Robert Meacham WR

Logic abided, these seem to the choices we face.  If I had my pick.  I would do business with ATL. and get #3 and #48 or I would do business with N.O. and get #10 and Will Smith DE.  What do you think?