Uh oh, don't look now, but the computers might be trying to tell us something. By now, even the most optimistic fans have conceded the St. Louis Rams' season. Half the team is injured. The coaching staff possesses all the effectiveness of the current GOP field of presidential candidates. The front office looks like it might be run by Paul Bremer. But let's face it, all of us hold on to some germ of possibility, that little bit of blind obsessiveness that makes you a fan in the first place. That part of you that's so desperately looks for any kind of sign. You're in luck, we found a Week 14 Madden simulation that foresees a Rams win.
The Madden simulation over at the National Football Post predicts a a 17-10 win for the St. Louis Rams.
Battered fan syndrome is a horrible thing, but you just keep coming back, to the point you're listening to someone's video game machine. Well, my friend's bad ass Super Nintendo once got kicked and spelled out the words A-C-D-C on the screen. Sometimes computers know things we do not.
The biggest trip - or delusion, depending on your state of consciousness - is that it sees Bradford completing 18 of 31 passes with a touchdown and no interceptions. Where is this coming from? So very -esque of Bradford this season. What about the other touchdown? It tells us nothing, no matter how fast they play the tape backwards.
Making it realistic enough to frighten you, the defense allowing Marshaw Lynch to rush for more than 100 yards and a touchdown. Maybe this is one of those games like last year...a narrow win with a lucky bounce or two against an equally damaged team. Not even the kind of win that makes up for the ineptness of a three-win season, just a win a la Cleveland.
It might be a nice gesture on the part of the Rams, winning a game on behalf of a city whose sports fans just lost an all-time great to a contract that reminiscent of a Wall Street bonus. And fans everywhere, from Ireland to Southern California, needing to see some sign of life from this team.
Maybe that Madden game, the unpaid intern's Xbox, went haywire and while convulsing its way to death spelled out R-A-M-S W-I-N on the screen, or even just crapped out while the kid had the Rams ahead before the end of the game.
At this point, we'll take it.