Rams vs. the NFC West: streaks of futility

As you might suspect of a team that's gone 5-27 the last two years, the Rams aren't on the good end of very many streaks in the NFL right now. In fact, they don't have a winning streak longer than two games against any other team. They're on a losing streak against 21 of the 31 other NFL teams.

Nothing's more appalling, though, than their current trends against their NFC West rivals. Scott Linehan (and Jim Haslett) went 3-15 against the rest of the division: 2-4 in 2006, 1-5 in 2007 and 0-6 in 2008. They've lost two straight to the Whiners, both meetings last year. (Last win: 13-9 at San Francisco, 11/18/07). Their recent futility against the hated Big Dead is enough to frequently wake RamView up in the middle of the night. They've lost FIVE straight to worthless Bill Bidwill's team. Arizona, oddly, has scored exactly 34 points in four of those wins and the average score of those five games is 37-19, Big Dead. Not only that, the Rams' last win over Arizona was pure luck, 16-14 on 9/24/06, the game where Kurt Warner fumbled the snap away with the Big Dead in imminent game-winning FG position. (and Jim Hanifan got a cramp.)

And that's not even the Rams' worst losing streak. Their worst streak, beginning to rival the old SOSAR 17-game losing streak to the Whiners, is their EIGHT-game losing streak to the Seahawks. They haven't beaten the Seahawks since going 3-0 against them in 2004-5, including the wild card playoff win in Seattle (27-20, 1/5/05). How bad has this streak gotten? The Seahawks went 4-12 last year and the Rams STILL couldn't beat them either time!

And the ways the Rams have lost to Seattle over that stretch are galling. Seattle's beaten them more than once with their top receivers missing. The first game in 2008, they arguably had their top SEVEN receivers out. (And the Rams still couldn't cover anybody.) Josh Brown beat them twice in 2006 with buzzer-beater FGs. Gus Frerotte fumbled at the goal line in the Dome in November 2007 to keep the streak alive. Of all the streaks in the football world, Seattle's against the Rams has to be the least-deserved, but it rages on.

That's a lot of negative momentum to reverse, but it's where Steve Spagnuolo's going to have to make pretty quick inroads against to get this team turned around. Even with the Cardinals coming off a Super Bowl run, the Rams' NFC West opponents are all highly beatable teams.

Time to start making that stand up on the field.