A while back I passed along some info that the Rams were scouting WR Prentiss Elliott, a member of the Oklahoma Thunder WFL team. Elliott had a promising freshman season at Oklahoma State, only to be kicked off the team the next year, in 2005, for unnamed violations. Anyway, like most redemption stories go, he hit bottom a couple years later, and is now trying to turn things around via football. The Oklahoma Thunder of the WFL (not ot be confused with the OKC NBA team) gave him that chance, and now he might get a shot with another league, the NFL.

Is it going to be the Rams that give him a chance in the big leagues? An assistant coach with the Thunder, Thom Roundtree, told the Examiner-Enterprise of Bartlesville, OK, in story filed yesterday afternoon, that Elliott would attend the Rams training camp next month. A profile of Elliott appearing in today's Tulsa World says nothing about the WR attending camp with the Rams, but it does note that the Rams have been one of several teams to have scouted him, viewing every Thunder but one and asking for tapes of each. Given that level of interest, it wouldn't be surprising if Elliott has been invited to camp.

You can read about his impressive stats with Thunder - WFL caveat - at the Tulsa World link above. That's about the closest thing to a scouting report I can find. A look at the 2004 OSU team listed Elliott at 6'0" 175 lbs as a freshman. He may well have added some weight since then, but the 24-year-old profiles much like the other Rams wide receivers.The Thunder's official site lists him at 6'1" 205 lbs.

He stood out as a return man at OSU, so you'd have to think if he still has the kind of speed they say he does and he really has been invited to camp, that Elliott will get some looks as a returner, an area where the Rams are still looking for more definitive answers.

What? A football draft that didn't include three months of hype and 'round the clock analysis? The UFL held its innuagral player draft last night, and I think you're going to be surprised at some of the names.

Bledsoe, Sapp, Sanders, Suggs... Well, to be more specific, Fred Bledsoe, Cecil Sapp, Steve Sanders and Damon Suggs. But the rosters of the UFL's four teams have a some names Rams fans will recognize. Leading that list is none other than Adam Archuleta is playing for the as-yet-unnamed Las Vegas team, along with Gary Stills, a special teamer brought in by the Rams last year.

Not surprisingly, the Orlando team, coached by former Rams DC and interim head coach Jim Haslett, has quite a few former Rams...and Fred Bledsoe. LB Tim McGarigle, OT Rob Petitti, and CB Darius Vinnett all spent some time with the Rams during Haslett's tenure.

Drafted doesn't mean contracted to the UFL. According to their web site, these are players who worked out for the league this year, and they'll be offered contracts in the near future. The UFL will continue filling out their rosters in July and August, catching plenty of guys who get cut as NFL teams start shearing their rosters. That should keep some football players from having to use those communications degrees for a while at least.

Last year, it was Steven Jackson. The year before, Marc Bulger. This year, we're keeping an eye on the contract situation of Rams FS OJ Atogwe. For the ballhawking safety, the situation is a little different. The Rams used the franchise tag to retain Atogwe's services, with the intention of negotiating a long term contract in the very near future. OJ, however, has yet to sign the franchise offer - though he is practicing, not holding out - waiting to see what the Rams commitment to him is. For more on Atogwe's situation, see this post from last week.

Anyway, I bring this up because I thought about Atogwe's situation as a restricted free agent last season and noticed two items of interest in this situation. Last year, when he was a restricted free agent, the Rams made him an offer at the first round level, not the highest RFA tender level (that's a 1st & 3rd round), in February. He didn't sign that offer until June of '08, but did go through minicamp and OTAs with the team. Precedent? Would help us breath a little easier if Atogwe was just late getting things signed, but it's obvious that's not a factor in his situation with the franchise offer.

Last year's situation with Atogwe does help explain why he's so adamant to get a long term deal done. If he and the team don't come to terms on a long term deal this year, he'll be forced to go through restricted free agency again next season, where he'd earn less money even at the highest offer than he would this season under the franchise tag. This season, the highest tender for RFAs paid the player $2.79 million; Atogwe would get $6.3 million as a franchised safety.

In short: Atogwe wants a long term deal because thanks to the wacky CBA-less NFL rules, he won't reach free agency until his age-30 season (2011), missing out on the years when players of his level get their biggest contracts. You can understand why he wants to get something done.

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What got me thinking about the Atogwe situation again was this article at Football Outsiders looking at the not-so-simple contracts for 3rd through 7th round draft picks. The Rams, the piece points out, have historically been one of several team in the league that gave second day draft picks three-year contracts instead of four-year contracts as a rule. In part that was done to minimize risk and save money...there's a comment or two to made here about the fabulous success of the Zygmunt/Shaw Era of Rams drafts. Now, new GM Billy Devaney has made Kevin Demoff his cap man, and Demoff has always been a four-year contract guy when it comes to second day draft picks. Will that change? We'll know the answer to that real soon. I'll leave it to you to read the piece and learn why it matters.

What the heck is the WFL? What in the world are the Rams doing scouting a player in WFL?

To answer the first question, you need to recall a bit of history. The time: the mid-70s. The war in Vietnam was drawing to a close, the sixties were long passed and a national malaise was setting in. The World Football League was a short lived experiment to compete with the NFL...it didn't. Maybe it was that whole national malaise thing.

Anyway, it's baaaaaack. This time as an (another) indoor football league, drawing on the limitless amount of football players not quite good enough to make the NFL...or those beset with enough personal problems to ward off scouts from the Raiders. Former Oklahoma State WR Prentiss Elliott might fit both those descriptions, but the last one really stands out. After a productive freshman year at OSU, Elliott got thrown off the team in 2005. Trouble found him again last year when he was allegedly involved in a shooting incident in Tulsa while trying to rejuvenate his career with Tulsa's Arena League team. He received three years probation. 

Now, he's reformed and working on a comeback with the Oklahoma Thunder WFL team, where he was recently scouted by the Rams and the Patriots. Elliott is 6'1" 205 lbs, according to the listing at the Thunder's web page. We'll see where this goes. More than anything, it's evidence that the Rams are still eyeing talent for their WR ranks.

Capped off by the draft and the frenzied build up, April has become something of a second season for football fans, left wanting more after the four-hour advertising event known as the Super Bowl. Now, that second season is about to get another week (or so) as the league has moved the draft to May, "early May" to be specific.

What does it mean? Nothing really. Teams and players get an extra week to scrutinize and be scruntinized. The media gets an extra week to yak about it, and we get an extra week to diagnose the players and the picks.

The real question is whether or not they move the first round into a prime time slot.

More photos » by Jeff Roberson - AP

21 days ago: FILE - In this Aug. 16, 2008 file photo, St. Louis Rams quarterback Trent Green throws during the second quarter of an NFL preseason football game against the San Diego Chargers in St. Louis. Green has decided to retire, according to an online report. Green, who began his career with San Diego in 1993, was released by St. Louis in February and opted to retire after 15 NFL seasons, FOXSports.com reported Friday, June 12, 2009. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

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Trent Green, the man who made Kurt Warner famous, has decided to officially call it quits after 15 years in the NFL.

Truth is such a malleable thing, hence "truthiness." Anyway, the natural extension of that thought goes directly into the evolution of a rumor, and the Rams are still in the middle of a doozy of an offseason rumor...you know, the one that has the team hot on the trail of recently released, from jail and the Falcons, QB Michael Vick.

It's back again today, hot on the heels of the news that the Falcons released Vick. This was posted in the Vick news tidbit at Rotoworld today:

The Rams, whose GM Bill Devaney used to work in the Atlanta organization, are expected to be among Vick's most ardent suitors.

No, they're not among Vick's most ardent suitors. That rumor, which started with Michael Lombardi from the National Football Post, has been thoroughly debunked again and again. You'll notice the Rotoworld tidbit doesn't source anything or anyone? Pundits dogged Seattle coach Jim Mora for weeks, even after he denied it, about Vick coming to the Seahawks just because of their one-time connection. The Rams don't have room on the roster for another QB, much less one that wouldn't be good fit for the West Coast offense. Interstingly enough, there are a number of fans who did vote in this poll that they would like to see the Rams take a chance on Vick. I ask this with an open mind, why would you like to see the Rams take a chance on Vick (or why not)?

Ok, now here's an interesting add-on to what's been a constant discussion of the Rams wide receiver situation: it's not the size, it's how you use it...when it comes to receivers that is, according to this Ross Tucker column at SI.com. Last year's crop of successful rookie receivers were of the speedy, svelte type, i.e. not the 6'1" 210 lbs superstud prototypes, including Eddie Royal, DeSean Jackson, and our own Donnie Avery. The bigger guys didn't have comparable seasons.

First off, this stands out as coincidental analysis. There weren't any "can't miss" WR types, a la Crabtree or Nicks, in last year's draft. The smaller guys, like Avery and Jackson, were the best of the bunch. It's also important to consider the teams they played for. The Eagles had a complete offense. The Broncos, for all their problems, had one of the league's top pass attacks with Cutler, Royal and Brandon Marshall. And the Rams, despite not having a very good offense, had nobody else to throw to, with Holt locked down in coverage...and written out of the playbook for most of the season. That's not to imply that any of those three rookies don't have the ability, because they certainly do.

There is sound logic behind Tucker's point. Part of the reason for the success of these player types is that their speed and agility allows them to manuever around many cornerbacks and deke the press coming off the line of scrimmage. Here's Tucker:

...it takes bigger receivers longer to learn how to fight off the jam at the line of scrimmage, whereas smaller guys use their quicks, which is more natural for a rookie or young player.

There's definitely something to that, and the point is made more interesting when you consider how the Rams new playbook. (Actually, the playbook on defense too, since Spags and Flajole are implementing a system that calls for physical play from the DBs to jam receivers at the line of scrimmage).

But is it a wider trend? That's a much tougher thing to determine. Take a look at the list of the league's top ten WRs in yards from last season. There's a pretty good mix of player types, from the big guys like Andre Johnson and Fitzgerald to the more diminutive types like Wes Welker and Steve Smith. You've got four guys above that 6'1" 210 lbs threshold (Andre and Calvin Johnson, Fitzgerald, and Brandon Marshall), four guys under it (Smith, Welker, Greg Jennings and Reggie Wayne) and two guys right on the bubble (Roddy White, 6'0" 208 lbs and Antonio Bryant, 6'1" 205 lbs). If I were feeling really ambitious, I'd probably go back through the years and look at how the league leaders measure up through the years. But I won't. There's no reason to because I think the information will just confirm an old chestnut of wisdom: it's not the size, it's how you use it.