Friday, September 14, 2007

Roster shifts

How do the Rams figure to compensate for all their missing players?

Offensive line: Alex Barron to LT for Pace; apparently Milford Brown at RT in Barron's place; Claude Terrell at RG for Incognito.
Analysis: While I like the Barron move, I don't understand the Rams staff's hard-on for Brown. He can't play guard, so let's move him to tackle? I would go with Adam Goldberg at RT and Andy McCollum at RG, preferring his veteran savvy to the knuckleheadedness of Terrell. Brown is distinctly the weak link here; don't look for Randy McMichael to run many patterns Sunday. Maybe this year.

Secondary: Lenny Walls steps into the starting lineup for Hill. Jonathan Wade remains nickelback. I assume Darius Vinnett is the 4th DB.
Analysis: Not good. I'd be ok with Walls covering the 49ers' off-receiver, I think Arnaz Battle, but he can't cover Darrell Jackson, and Ron Bartell hasn't proven ready to move into that line of fire, either. I'd rather pull Jerametrius Butler off the street and plug him in, not that that's going to happen.

LB: Chris Draft replaces Pisa. Draft is a consummate veteran. Not only should the Rams not miss a beat here, if Draft maintains his run discipline, this could mark an improvement for the run defense, and maybe turn a light bulb on for the constantly overpursuing 5-0.

D-line: Wroten, who I'm disgraced to say is still employed here, and apparently will be all year, may be replaced by Victor Adeyanju moving inside or by practice squad pick-up Louis Leonard. I can't think Victor is going to be too effective inside except maybe as a pass-rusher. He's coming off an injury, and he seems too small for the position. I figure LaRoi Glover will have play a lot more than they want him to, and Adam Carriker may be on the field all day, spelling Glover when he's not playing NT. Cliff Ryan better have ice bath reservations after Sunday's game as well. Thanks to Wroten the damn idiot, the Rams are going to be undermanned here at least until L. Leonard is up to speed.

There might be a couple of bright spots. If Barron looks good at LT, the Rams will be secure at that position for a long time. And Draft has potential to improve the LB play.

But that's a couple of bright spots in a dark, deep hole, because the Rams look completely outmanned in the trenches. Leonard Little and James Hall had better show the hell up, which neither did last week. Marc Bulger had better get himself in sync. And fitted for a flak jacket.

I fear the Rams' engine is missing too many parts to even start, let along run smoothly.

Circle the wagons!

Good grief, this season has gotten off to a rough start. Facing all but a must-win against the 49ers on Sunday, the Rams are going to have to do it without:

* Orlando Pace, out for season, LT, starter;
* Richie Incognito, 3-4 weeks, RG, starter;
* Claude Wroten, idiot, DT, 2nd-string;
* Pisa Tinoisamoa, at least 1 week, WLB, starter;
* Fakhir Brown, 2 weeks left in suspension, CB, starter;
and now?
* Tye Hill, 4-6 weeks, CB, starter.

For crying out loud, half the secondary and now almost half the offensive line gone!

Hard to see anything good coming out of this. Even with the offensive skill players intact, you would now have to figure a 3-5 record at the bye week would be exceptional given the injury circumstances.

2007's shaping up as a lost season.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Cut Claude Wroten NOW

Word is leaking out that Claude Wroten is about to receive a 4-week suspension from
the league for violating the league's substance abuse policy.

Gee, I wonder what drug that was, considering he was arrested prior to the 2006 NFL
Draft Combine for possessing an amount of marijuana large enough that he was going
to be charged with drug dealing.

Claude came into the NFL and Rams Park with strike one already. Then he got arrested
this past offseason for kicking in his girlfriend's door. Strike two.

This suspension? Strike three. Wroten has proven unworthy of the unwise risk the Rams
took drafting him.

Get his worthless ass off of this team now.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Rams predictions audit trail

Here are the 2007 predictions for the Rams by various publications and pundits.
Could be fun to come back to this at the end of the season, assuming I can find it...

Pro Football Weekly - 3rd place, NFC West (Jim Thomas predicts 2nd place)

Sports Illustrated - 2nd in the West, with same 9-7 record as Seahawks, but failing
to make playoffs in favor of Seattle and also 9-7 Dallas.

Sporting News - 8-8, third place behind the Whiners and Seattle.

ESPN Radio - Mike Greenberg: last place, but 8-8.
Mike Golic, 9-7, 2nd place behind Seattle.

TMQ - last place, record of 5.8-10.2. Don't ask. TMQ sucks anyway.

RamView - tie for 1st with Seattle with the two meeting again in the playoffs.
Hopefully that three-game series will go as well as it did in 2004. I have the
Rams losing to the Saints in the divisional round.

RamView's Super Bowl? Broncos over Eggles. Find somebody out there predicting THAT one.

2007 predictions

Thought I'd better get my '07 predictions out there in the unlikely event any of them turn out
to actually be right. I hope they don't get accidentally deleted or anything if they turn out too bad.
Just saying...

NFC West:
1. RAMS 2. Seattle 3. Whiners 4. Big Dead
Rams and Seattle meet a third time in the playoff wild card round.

NFC South:
1. New Orleans 2. Carolina 3. Tampa Bay 4. Atlanta
Saints will blow out the rest of the South and knock off the Rams in the divisional playoff.

NFC Central:
1. Chicago 2. Green Bay 3. Minnesota 4. Detroit
Lions could surprise this year though I think they're a year away.

NFC East:
1. Philadelphia 2. Washington 3. Dallas 4. NY Giants
Washington's the NFC surprise team; Dallas is the NFC disappointment; Philadelphia? The NFC champion. Predictions hinge mightily on McNabb and Portis returning to past form for their teams.

AFC West:
1. San Diego 2. Denver 3. Kansas City 4. Oakland
The Chargers seem too talented not to do well, but look out for Denver. I'm picking them to
go on a road upset run of Indy and New England and then beat Philly in the game after that.

AFC South:
1. Indianapolis 2. Tennessee 3. Jacksonville 4. Houston
Titans the AFC surprise team; Jagwires the team most difficult to predict.

AFC Central:
1. Baltimore 2. Pittsburgh 3. Cincinnati 4. Cleveland
Cincy's soft defense will make it tough for them to crack this division for a postseason spot.

AFC East:
1. New England 2. NY Jets 3. Buffalo 4. Miami
Brady BLA BLA BLA Randy Moss BLA BLA BLA Belichick BLA BLA BLA. But I am NOT going to be a lemming and pick them to win it all like everyone else.

MVP: LaDainian again
Comeback player: Donovan McNabb
First coach fired: Romeo Crennel
AFC Wild Cards: Pittsburgh & Denver
NFC Wild Cards: Seattle & Washington
Super Bowl: Denver over Philly

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

The Preseason Challenge is not dead!

....even though it may look like it right now. I took a lot of the blogging off-line
and need to get week 2 up on the Preseason Challenge blog. That may be all
the farther I get, though. It's really a challenge for a person with more free
time. I think blogging each game was too ambitious, in retrospect. I could have
more quickly knocked off the one-page summary of each week's action, and
maybe got to week 3 that way.

I get through Saturday to watch as much as I can before I'll give it up for '07.
And, no doubt, try again in '08.

Why isn't this coming out in the proper size? Is Blogger going to be as big
a piece of crap as the Yahoo blogging tool? 'Cuz I really don't want to move
and repost everything again.

TMQ sucks

Note: this is a politically-oriented post.

In the past the magic of the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column has been that
Gregg Easterbrook didn't stick to just football. Especially since a lot of his football
shtick has gotten tired and repetitive, the non-football material has proven an
interesting and fun change-of-pace.

But not this year, now that Easterbrook has seen fit to inject some kind of smartass
liberal commentary into the column every week. Maybe I've been tone-deaf, but I
hadn't noted any politically partisan material within the column before. TMQ mostly
left politics out of the column or played it like a libertarian when he included any.
This week, we have him calling Iraq the worst foreign-policy mistake in US history,
and wisecracking in haiku that Matt Millen makes Dick Cheney look competent.

Gee, call me a neophyte, but it takes about 20 seconds of research to see that Vietnam
cost the US nearly 20 TIMES as many lives as Iraq has. A foreign policy mistake that
manages not only that, but to deeply divide a nation for generations domestically, is
EASILY a bigger mistake, and makes me wonder if Easterbrook was visiting another
dimension, or drinking blueberry almond martinis, during the years 1965-1975 or something.
If you feel like getting all political, TMQ, spare me the misinformed liberal myopia that equates
Iraq and Vietnam. That is nowhere near the level of intellectual honesty I have come to
expect from your column.

The US also entered the Spanish-American War at the behest of newspaper publishers -
there's great decision-making! Kennedy's Bay of Pigs fiasco took planet Earth to the
brink of total nuclear war; that was a good risk! How about the Clinton administration
ignoring genocide in Rwanda? How many innocent civilians perished there? A MILLION!
Not a good decision in hindsight! How 'bout Korea? How 'bout the Battle of New Orleans
being fought after the British surrendered? How about the entire Carter administration?
How about Truman letting Stalin run roughshod over Eastern Europe following WWII? The US
got kind of scooped there, didn't it? Wasn't it a bigger mistake that intelligence that would
have led to bin Laden's capture prior to 2001 wasn't followed, as opposed to that which
has happened in the aftermath?

And calling Dick Cheney "incompetent" in anything other than pheasant hunting is little
more than an impetuous liberal diatribe. He is certainly fit to do the job and is never described
as less than the most powerful VP in US history, never described as other than one of the most
politically adept VP's, and if you believe a VP's role is to advance the President's policies,
he has done that beyond question. That Cheney has been a singularly effective Vice President
is not even for those diametrically opposed to administration policies to argue against. I didn't,
and don't, like much of anything about Al Gore's politics, but have never called him an
incompetent Vice President. He was quite successful in the role itself; granted, determining a
Vice-President's success, though we can all agree Agnew was probably a failure, is about as
precise as projecting regular-season results from NFL preseason games.

Hey, I got it back to football! TMQ, I'd request for you to do so as well. The Web already has
millions of places to find strident liberal commentary; Tuesday Morning Quarterback has no call
to serve that market.

End rant.