NFC West Preview: Where do the LA Rams fit among their division peers?

How the LA Rams do next season mostly has to do with how the LA Rams do next season, but under the NFL’s format and most other leagues, it also matters how the teams within your division do. For the Rams, that may mean playing in the division with three other potential playoff teams and navigating the league’s toughest four-team race.

There are many questions and while we don’t have the “right” answers, me and Michael Peterson, who you may know from our Random Ramsdom link posts, got together on Zoom and talked about the NFC West for an hour. We intended to carve a path for LA to get to the postseason but we ended up talking for so long about the other three teams in the division and the competition that LA is facing that we couldn’t quite get to the full breakdown in this episode.

Did LA do enough in the offseason to improve themselves and to offset potential improvements by the Arizona Cardinals?

Did the Seahawks lose too much to support Russell Wilson for a winning record this time?

Are the 49ers going to regress on defense and if so, will that be enough to pull them off the top shelf?

Is the Air Raid offense something that can ever truly work in the NFL and what does DeAndre Hopkins do for Arizona’s offense really?

Do the Rams have answers for Hopkins, Larry Fitzgerald, DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, and Brandon Aiyuk?

What sort of offensive line do the Rams need to succeed and do they have the personnel for that?