Like every other American, I'm a sucker for rankings. Put it in a top 10 list, and immediately, from Oprah's favorite pursues to NFL defenses, I'm interested.
That being said, I don't know how much stock to put into the various ranking systems as most seem to be completely arbitrary. However, one ranking system I do have some faith in is the Football Outsiders DVOA ratings. [check them out here.]
FO explains DVOA as:
This week the Rams rank 8th overall based only on 2006 performance, with an Offense ranked 10th and a Defense ranked 11th. Now that can change quite a bit from week to week, for instance the Rams ranked 20th overall last week.
Encouraging Fact #2
Zero.
That's the number of interceptions thrown by Mark Bulger so far this season. And while the schedule hasn't exactly pitted the Rams against the league's powerhouses, it's quite a different take from the Martz era when carpet passing (similar to carpet bombing) could make the Arizona secondary look like brilliant magicians.
Too bad Mike Furrey couldn't play safety like he played WR last weekend.