It's Trent Green day 'round the internets. The former Rams, former Chiefs starter and current Rams backup QB will get the start against the Kansas City Chiefs in tomorrow night's Governor's Cup. 

Some more items of interest to kill some time on someone else's dime:

• Being a 38-year-old backup (playing on a three year contract) lends itself to wondering just how ready a QB is. The PD asked that question, and the Rams apparently are satisfied with Green's ability at this stage of his career. 
• Drew Bennett wants to get over his preseason on-field foibles and prove his worth. He needs to for the Rams sake and for his own good with Keenan Burton looking like he's ready, or at least the better option. Bennett will not play tomorrow night in the backup exhibition in KC. 
• A Quinton Culberson profile at the official Rams site. Culberson has looked good this preseason, and I think he'll make us forget all about Brandon Chillar, and, even more frightening at one time, prove the Rams front office folks right.
• NFL.com has their Rams season preview up.
• Our friend at Ramblin' Fan takes a look at it.  
• The Football Outsiders have a sneak peak at college football season, which starts in ernest this weekend.
• Field Gulls reviews the tape from the Seahawks loss to the Chargers. 
• A look at the 49ers WR situation.
• Is Kurt Warner going to start this year or not?

With Steven Jackson in camp, the St. Louis Rams offensive potential took a major upswing. No secret there. But with fantasy drafts getting ready to slow down servers everywhere over the next week, Jackson's return has implications in that realm as well. Here's a quick, two cents worth of analysis on the fantasy prospects of individual Rams players...and one unit.

Using tiny floating Linehan heads as stars in a tier-like ranking system that seems to be sweeping fantasy analysis...

Steven Jackson, RB - Jackson's back, and he's going to produce in Al Saunders' offense. Two cautionary notes that wouldn't have be here w/out Jackson holdout: 1) he won't see as much work as normal in the first and probably the second game of the season. Plan accordingly. 2) Any long holdout automatically gets an injury risk asterisk next to it. There's not really a direct correlation between holdouts and injury, but not having seen contact ups the possibility. Still Jackson's only 25 and has a reduced workload playing just 12 games last year. 

Torry Holt, WR - Holt's usually a 5 star (or head) fantasy contributor, but his age and the offensive learning curve for the new playbook drop his stock somewhat. He could also lose some catches to an increased role for McMichael.

Randy McMichael, TE - The Rams top three receivers this year will be Holt, Jackson and McMichael. That's order I'm safely predicting, but you could have a long debate that the team leaderboard will shape up differently. Either way, McMichael's looked great in preseason and will see a lot of balls thrown his way.

Marc Bulger, QB - Bulger's had a baaaad preseason, at least in the two games thus far, struggling with his timing and getting over some gunshyness after being sacked 764 times, or something like that, recently. Still, it's preseason, and Bulger's a solid veteran. If the o-line holds, he'll be a decent option, thanks in no small part to Steven Jackson's magial receiving abilities.

Rams DST - Yeah, this is a surprise, but I'm fairly optimistic about this group. Return man Dante Hall looks born again, and extra emphasis on the special teams units looks like, through preseason, it could pay off, finally. The defense looks good, except for some questions about depth. Leonard Little leads a front seven that will make some noise this year. The schedule makes this a tough call for three stars (heads), but if you're one of those people who draft defense last, you could do a lot worse.

Drew Bennett, WR - Here's a guy who needs a really big year, or could find himself on the chopping block after the season. He has his doubters.

Keenan Burton, WR - Burton has the size and skeelz to be a good possession receiver. How quickly he adjusts to the pro game and a giant playbook will determine his impact this year. If he seizes the opportunity and Bennett falters, Burton could be a nice waiver wire pick up.

Antonio Pittman, RB - Forget Brian Leonard, if Jackson misses time and the o-line is clicking, Pittman will get the numbers for the Rams...just not enough to make him a feature back on your team since he'll be sharing work with Leonard and Travis Minor. He's still the second best runner on the team.

Keep your eye on: Donnie Avery, WR; Dane Looker, WR; Trent Green, QB.

It's gametime.  Is it Week 1 of the regular season?  No.  Does it mean much in the full scope of Ram relevance?  Not really.  Does it give us a chance to break down some of the more intriguing storylines of the off- and preseason while getting to watch football?  Yes.  Yes, it does.

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The first practice of the Rams' training camp is a week away.  It's tough to get from the final days of April, which host the draft, to the end of July which awakens the football fans who have slept through the summer.

But now we're here, close enough to start looking at some of the storylines we should be following as Rams fans, storylines that hint at whatever destiny awaits us over the next 5 months of this NFL season.

Position breakdowns after the fold.

Continue reading this post »

Somewhere along the way Brett Favre fumbled his pride, or maybe that's the problem, too much pride. Either way, I've tired of the whole saga, the daily back and forth in the media. I always liked Favre, and even the Viking face painters would have to admit he's one of the greatest to ever play the game. And this happened. The great Brett Favre became just another self-important, petulant athlete, more Chad Johnson than Bart Starr.

Ok, enough ranting... Let's talk about our QB, the decidely non-petulant Marc Bulger. Like so many others on the Rams, he's facing questions about his health, and we're all waiting with baited breath to see how he looks in camp after a season taking snaps behind a wet paper offensive line and continued beatings normally reserved for tackle dummies or  Lions quarterbacks.

Bulger started just 12 games last season and got sacked 37 times. Still, that wasn't a career high; that came the season before, in 2006, when opponents sacked Bulger 49 times. That's a lot of abuse, and you can see why some are more reserved in their expectations for Bulger, who suffered a concussion, always a tricky injury and one he took some time to recover from, last season. (backing him up is another concussion sufferer, Trent Green.)

But, hey, that's what all those pads are for, right? Bulger's healthy now and was able to go full tilt at mini camp back in May. Expecting him to return to form isn't unreasonable. Old friend Orlando Pace is also healthy and ready to reassume his role protecting Bulger's blind side this season too. With just a week and some change before camp starts, we can at least expect status quo from Marc Bulger, who's capable of being one of the best passers in the league when he's on.

In browsing through the news at RotoWorld, I noticed they had a feature on projected pass attempts, and project Bulger to throw the ball more than 500 times, one of seven QBs projected to do so. Bulger made 588 attempts in 2006, a season where the Rams played from behind more than a few  times. However, it was also a season that featured a healthy Steven Jackson, who takes away some of the team's need to pass with his running ability.

And, for me anyway, that's the what the question about how many attempts Bulger makes this season hinges on: Steven Jackson at the center of an Al Saunders offense. You're not exactly walking out on a rickety limb to say that the Rams figure to run more this season. That idea drove what probably rates as their biggest free agent signing, the addition of G Jacob Bell. The spread as primary offensive formation days in St. Louis are gone, and the team once known for the air attack, has become a run first team. Fine with me, but how will that effect Marc Bulger this season?

First, of all, it should help him. More rushes means less pressure on Bulger, less work. That's a good thing, especially since he's got a few years left on that contract he signed before last season. Second, and this is where we get into the numbers, I don't think the Rams QB will make fewer pass attempts; I think alot of those pass attempts though will be shorter passes, shovels to Steven Jackson and dumps to McMichael over the middle, rather than the big routes that got Rams receivers deep behind defensive fronts.

During Saunders' stint in Kansas City (and I use that comparison because there was a more stable QB situation across the state than during his 2 years in DC), Trent Green had 500+ passing attempts in all but one season, 2002; however, the running backs, full backs and tight ends caught almost 50% of the completed passes during those seasons. Nevertheless, Saunders didn't have weapons like Torry Holt during his OC'ing days in Kansas City. The Rams have a great balance of skill players, and you can be sure Saunders' gazillion page playbook uses all of them. 

It's still a new era, so we'll see what's in store.

There. They did it. The Rams found their new third string QB in Bruce Gradkowski. The PD says that he is expected to replace Brock Berlin on the depth chart. Gradkowski has started 11 games in his career, with some success. Gruden isn't known as a friend to young QBs and developing an arm has never been his forte, so Gradkowski comes to the Rams with some upside: he's only 25, has had some success as a starter, and is motivated. As an understudy to the more experienced Bulger and Trent Green, he should get a good lesson on the game.

Is he the QB of the future? Well, that's kind of a loaded term, now isn't it?

The Bears and Raiders also put in waiver claims for Gradkowski.

Hello Wisconsin! The Rams will head to the northern reaches of the Midwest for training camp this year, mixing the corporate retreat theory of team building through isolation with the opportunity to scrimmage other NFL teams. I know for some of us who've enjoyed a stop by to watch snaps at training camp, the move kind of sucks. But, I'll say what I said last time, I don't care if they hold training camp in the Green Zone as long as it helps them win a few more games this season.

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About those Tampa Bay QBs
Some expected/wanted to see the Rams take a QB later in the draft this year. Not necessarily the QB of the future, but a 3rd QB with a little more upside than Brock Berlin. Since the Rams came away from the draft with the same 3 quarterbacks on the roster as before, scuttlebutt has since had us keep an eye on Tampa Bay, with six QBs on the roster now. Below are the six Tampa quarterbacks with odds of the Rams getting them and a pithy comment. Yay, pithy comment!

Jeff Garcia - Garcia's probably the starter, barring injury, etc. Odds: 0

Brian Griese - The really, really poor man's back up QB. The Bucs actually traded a 6th round pick in the 2009 draft to get Griese. I'd say he doesn't make the Bucs final roster AND we're not that desperate for a 3rd QB. Odds: 200:1

Josh Johnson - The Bucs' 5th round pick in this year's draft, and in all likelihood, their 3rd string QB. Gruden et al invested in Johnson, from San Diego, with the expectation and scouting reports to match that he can develop into an NFL starter.  Odds: 0

Bruce Gradkowski - The "Polish Rifle" madea splash filling in for an injured Chris Simms in 2006. He had a great five game run as a starter, beginning in week five, but the wheels came off in week 10 as he threw eight INTs over his next four games before finally being replaced by Tim Rattay in week 15. he saw action in just two games last season, none as a starter. How much upside does he have left? He's probably getting cut, according to the  Odds: 20:1

Luke McCown - drafted by the Browns (an ominous start to your career) in 2004 and traded to the Bucs in 2005, McCown started three games last year, and made a splash in his Tampa Bay starting debut beating the Saints in week 13. He's most likely the #2 QB this season in Tampa Bay. Odds: 50:1

Chris Simms - 'Memba him? He became the talk of the league, the next big thing, after a rocky start to his 2005 season, losing to the Redskins in the first round of the playoffs thanks to an Edell Shepherd butterfinger catch. Then there was the injury in 2006 that caused him to lose five pints of blood thanks to a ruptured spleen. Then there was the contract extension in December of '06 with the assumption he'd start...only he didn't. He got injured and that led to the pundit controversy around whether it was mostly his pride that was truly injured. Anyway, Tampa received several trade offers, reportedly, for Simms this spring, but decided to keep him on the roster and see what happens in training camp. The problem? He's healthy this year and opting to skip team activities. In short, he's a goner. There figures to be some demand for his services, so it likely comes down to a bidding war. I'd think he'd have some upside, particularly for a 3rd spot on the depth chart, but would he sign on to be the 3rd QB? He'd be a good get, at the right price for the Rams, but therein lies the problem. Odds: 25:1

Suffice it to say, the Rams quarterback of the future probably isn't going to be found among the Tampa Bay reject pile. Gradkowski, if he really offers much upside over Berlin, is the most intriguing for the 3rd QB role, and Simms would be really interesting if the Rams hadn't invested heavily in Trent Green as their backup. However, Green's fairly elderly, in NFL terms, and coming off a concussion, so nabbing a guy with #2 potential, even at a #2 cost, isn't the worst idea in the world. As far as the next face of the franchise, I think we'll have to wait for the 2009 draft.