Waiting till next year

A few things we know about 2014 based on the Rams' finish in 2013:

* In the 2014 draft, the Rams are currently scheduled to select 2nd and 13th in the first round. Pick #13 is their own pick, #2 is the pick they stole from the Redskins in the RGIII trade. Everyone in the major media who said the Rams made a bad deal there, care to have a word? And of course, with Les Snead around, always best to say the Rams are "scheduled" to pick somewhere vs. saying they will pick there.

* Both the Manning brothers will visit St. Louis in 2014 as part of what should be a damn good slate of home games. The Rams' scheduled opponents for 2014:

Home: Arizona, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Denver, Minnesota, N.Y. Giants, Oakland
Away: Arizona, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, Kansas City, San Diego, Tampa Bay, Washington

There's daunting aspects to this schedule. The NFC West is the NFL's Group of Death. The Rams haven't beaten the Giants since 2001 or the Chiefs since 1994. Eight games are against playoff teams, three others against teams that missed the playoffs by a game. It's still a friendlier schedule than last year's, though depending on what ways the scheduling people try to screw the Rams over.

When last April's schedule came out I commented that Rams fans should be damn impressed if Jeff Fisher could get an 8-8 season out of it. The Rams nearly got there, without Sam Bradford. They should be able to do some business in 2014.

-$-

Quinn, Hekker named to Pro Bowl

Congratulations to Robert Quinn and Johnny Hekker on being named to the Pro Bowl for the first time. They will be the first Rams to play in the Pro Bowl since the 2011 game (Steven Jackson). It's the first time the Rams will field two Pro Bowlers since the 2007 game (Jackson and Marc Bulger). RamView may actually have to watch the game this year!

CBS Tampa Bay

Quinn, a leading candidate for Defensive Player of the Year, leads the NFL in sacks with 18, also a St. Louis Rams team record. He also leads the league in forced fumbles, with 7, and has been brilliant against the run.

NFL.com

 

In his second season, Hekker leads the NFL in net punting with 43.8 ypa, which the Rams report is the third-best season ever. Equally not well-known to me, the Rams have allowed the second-fewest punt return yards in the league this season, 81 through 15 games.

Best of luck to Quinn and Hekker in Hawaii, and may many more of the Rams have a busy January in 2015.

-$-

Introducing... RamView?

Or to put it more accurately, where the hell has RamView been? You know you have the worst Rams blog of all time when you just let it die in the middle of a football season. And Ramview.com is close to the worst web site on the planet. (Thank goodness for healthcare.gov.)

2013 has been highly busy for me at work, (for which I can also "thank" healthcare "reform") which is great for me, but not good at all for the blog. And my company, as is its right, locked down its networks, killing my ability to blog at lunchtime. I never figured out a way to make up that time. The RamView recap itself takes me longer than ever to do every week, which didn't help me any. By the time I'd get one recap done, it was time to start working on the preview for the next recap. I hope my thoroughness (a/k/a slowness) there has made up for my shortcomings here.

So, all excuses aside, I'm "relaunching" the blog today. I have a few projects in the works for the coming days:

* Rams' 2013 player grades by position
* Rams' 2013 penalty log
* A mega ex-Rams update to make up for everything I missed this season

I'll also pick back up some of the traditional offseason activities of the blog, with "live" blogs of next weekend's playoff games and coverage of whatever college all-star games and practices I can find on TV.

Ramview.com itself is up-to-date for the first time since October (!). All of this year's recaps are up there. It's not very pretty at the moment, but beautification efforts are in progress.

Today also marks the kickoff of RamView's Twitter feed (@RamView1). Yes, I know, I can't keep a blog or a website up-to-date, so add something else, makes sense. It'll be used to post blog updates, website updates and one-line stuff it makes little sense to put here.


A lot of this is going to be done late at night, which may be reflected in its quality, so with that warning out there, let's see how this goes one more time.

-$-