The Rams' 3-1 record in the preseason was earned when their opponents pulled their first-teamers off the field. Unfortunately for the Rams, Seattle showed no such courtesy. Seattle's front seven and the noise level of the stadium consistently flustered the Rams' attempts at offensive execution. It should say something that our best offensive lineman today was Alex Barron, who made Patrick Kerney largely a nonfactor in this game. However, Brandon Mebane, Darryl Tapp and Darren Jackson were constant threats, and the rookie Aaron Curry was often sent into the backfield as well. The result was starkly similar to last year's Rams line performance -- multiple drive-killing penalties, a collapsing pocket, and very few inside running lanes for Steven Jackson. Our guards collected 40 yards in penalties, with the People's Champion, Richie Incognito, amassing a false start and two personal fouls for "finishing blocks" well after the whistle. If we lived in feudal Japan, Spagnuolo might call upon Incognito to draw his short sword and perform ritual suicide, but he was hardly the only problem on the Rams' line. Brown and Bell, despite being penalized less, were far from effective. The Rams generated absolutely no running room between the tackles, even in the first half when Seattle was playing relatively "honest" (i.e. not loading up the box), and again Steven Jackson was solely responsible for his yardage. The line play continued to ripple outwards in terms of consequences for the Rams' offense. Much of the optimism behind the Football Outsiders' preseason prediction of an 8-8 record or better depended on three key factors that were all in poor form today:

1. Heavy investment in linemen -- they focused on our high draft pick, but the free agent dollars given to Brown should also be factored in. While Smith didn't make any obvious mistakes, there was a constant flow of ugly teal shirts into the Rams' backfield, and the Rams designed few running plays in his direction.
2. Improved red zone performance -- their rationalization was that this would get better simply by improved luck alone. The Rams went an ugly 0-for-2 in this department.
3. Better third-down performance -- Rams went 2 for 12 today, and 0-for-3 in terms of these key factors.

Again and again, though, penalties put the Rams in unfavorable third down situations. Here is a chart of the Rams 12 third-down opportunities, and you can see this for yourself:

3rd down	Penalty	Outcome
First Quarter
3rd-and-14	Richie Incognito: false start on first down	Punt
3rd-and-22	Richie Incognito: unnecessary roughness on second down	Punt
3rd-and-7	Donnie Avery: illegal block/holding on second down	Punt
Second Quarter
3rd and 2	None	First down
3rd and 1	Randy McMichael: false start Jason Brown: delay of game	Missed field goal
3rd and 12	None	Punt
Third Quarter
3rd and 5	Seahawks' Darryl Tapp: offsides	First Down
3rd and 20	Richie Incognito: unnecessary roughness	Punt
3rd and 9	None	Punt
3rd and 6	None	First Down
3rd and 8	None	Punt
3rd and 9	None	Punt
3rd and goal	None	No score

Incognito was benched briefly after his second personal foul, but the coach didn't bawl him out in the process. Instead, he put his arm around the player and gave him just a few words -- probably something to the effect of "keep giving them hell, but stop when the whistle blows." As you can see from this chart, the Rams got markedly fewer penalties from this point forward, but by that time any semblance of offensive rhythm on first and second downs was blown. While there were positives deeply buried in the game, particularly in our first quarter performance, the Rams offense cut its own throat with these drive-killing penalties. no comments

When we originally previewed the season's first month, we forecast a Week 1 loss in Seattle. (Boo!) Given the events of the preseason, though, does this prediction still hold up? In St Louis, we've seen the emergence of Laurent Robinson, the shuffling of linebackers, and the transformation of the defense into a producer of sacks and turnovers. We also haven't seen Marc Bulger under center since the preseason's first game. In Seattle, they've lost 3/5ths of last year's starting offensive line, including the stalwart Walter Jones, and sacrificed TJ Duckett for the even older and slower Edgerrin James. Here's what we wrote then:

Week	Date	Opponent	LY: Record	LY: Points	3Y: Record	3Y: Points
1	Sept. 13	at Seattle Seahawks	4-12	294/392	23-25	1022/1024
Rams games vs opponent, last three seasons:
Week 6, 2006: Lost 28-20 at home Week 10, 2006: Lost 24-22 @Seattle Week 7, 2007: Lost 33-6 @Seattle Week 12, 2007: Lost 24-19 at home Week 3, 2008: Lost 37-13 @Seattle Week 15, 2008: Lost 23-20 at home

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Without Walter Jones (knee), Max Wahle (retired), or center Chris Spencer (torn quad), Seattle will be much more vulnerable to the Rams' budding pass rush. Hasselbeck is a quick enough quarterback in terms of recognition to be able to hit hot routes, and the Rams have very little tape on the offense that Jim Mora and Greg Knapp is trying to install, but they should still be able to inflict a good deal of punishment, and force more short completions and incompletions. This brings Seattle's scoring punch down a significant notch. It also places more emphasis on the Rams' addition-by-subtraction move to dump Tye Hill and promote Jonathan Wade. The diminutive Hill would be a terrible matchup against the lanky Nate Burleson, but the taller and more physical Wade should be able to keep him in check. Finally, the addition, and proven effectiveness, of James Butler in the box should prevent short runs from becoming long runs. Last year, Julius Jones and TJ Duckett both found themselves in open space five yards from the line of scrimmage, and were able to race untouched for massive gains. Butler and the more disciplined Spagnuolo defense should prevent these 5-yard gains from becoming 50-yard gains, taking another significant bite out of Seattle's ability to run a quick-strike offense. So I think we will see a significantly improved Rams defense, though not a lockdown effort by any means. These are not the Titans or Steelers, but they should prevent the team from getting beaten by a large number of big plays. That said, I don't see reasons to be more optimistic about the Rams' offense than I did a month ago. So rather than a 30-17 Seattle win, I see a much closer game, something akin to a 20-17 battle decided by turnovers and a fortuitous field goal. Honestly, I could see it swinging either way. no comments

As Jim Thomas points out in his Game 1 preview, the Rams have been NFC West doormats for the past three years, winning only 4 of 18 games against the Seahawks, Cardinals, and 49ers. This includes a streak of eight consecutive losses to Seattle, a team we once owned in division play. The depths of our suckitude in 2008 can almost not be plumbed. The Rams allowed a horrific 92 points more than they scored in their six division losses, more than any team in the league and almost matching the 2007 Dolphins (-96) as the worst divisional showing of the last five years. What's really embarrassing about this ignominious mark is that the NFC West has been among the least competitive of all divisions in the NFL over that same span of time. Here's a chart of how many wins outside its division each division in the NFL had in 2008: AFC South: 26 NFC East: 26 AFC East: 26 NFC South: 22 AFC North: 19 NFC North: 13 AFC West: 12 NFC West: 10 With the exception of some unexplainable shenanigans in Tampa and Buffalo, the rest of the NFL has not gotten worse since last season. And in AFC play, the NFC West gets matched up against the powerhouse AFC South, so if the Rams are going to make improvements this year, it has to start within the division. Curiously, both the Seahawks and 49ers are moving toward a much more run-oriented offense, which puts a lot of focus on the Rams' key efforts to improve on defense. Middle linebacker James Laurinaitis and 8th-man-in-the-box James Butler will get ample opportunities to set a new tone, defensively, against these division foes. The Rams still look overmatched against the high-flying Arizona Cardinals' offense -- particularly that triple-threat of receivers -- but if anything the desert birds' defense looks worse than a season ago, which puts the onus on our rebuilt offensive line to produce both sustained drives to own the gameclock, and big-play punch to turn red zone opportunities into touchdowns. Ideally, the turnaround will start this weekend in Seattle. We'll be revisiting our preseason prediction for this game (a 30-17 Seattle win) before kickoff, and looking at key matchups and signs for optimism. We will hopefully also be getting the perspective of our hyper-optimistic correspondent at Flock Of Seahawks. (For the record, G-man has already predicted a 24-10 win.) Good luck, and go Rams! no comments

(Cue "Thus Spake Zarasthusa") The dawn brings us the new season of the NFL, a perfectly conceived battle of opposing sides and opposing aspects of our collective personality. Like the arrival of the monolith in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, perfectly formed and inscrutable, it excites and confuses us. There is the visceral conflict that constantly boils in our blood. We revel in the brutish physical battle, broadcasting ourselves into the untouchably fast Chris Johnson, or the unleashed ferocity of Troy Polamalu. We witness a goliath like Ben Roethlisberger become flattened to the ground, then rise again with new life -- and either we rejoice with his rise, or we gain a bottomless fear of his invincibility. If he is our enemy, we yearn to strike him down again and again. If he is our hero, we pray to his ability to withstand any punishment and to deliver us to a paradise. Football contains the roots of both our rage and our religion, perhaps more purely because it is acted out without words -- or rather, with a babel of strange and confusing language, colors, numbers and symbols mixed in with gestures, dances and animal grunts, barked out on the field. We search for meaning on top of this pure action, looking to men with microphones who sit above the fray to cut apart and interpret what we all see, to help us to understand it. We make predictions whose rightness or wrongness can be argued intensely up until a point of conclusion, when one of us is certainly right, and the other certainly not. As the opposite of rage, there is the cold calculation of the rational mind, the constant challenge of planning and anticipation, each team with a master attempting to outthink the other. There is a purely isolated terror and thrill for each, trying to get inside the head of his inscrutable opposite. Each works vainly to mask his own weakness while probing for his opponent's, studying patterns and tendencies in attempt to decode the very essence of the unknowable other, so as to unmask and destroy him. But each of these masters adds new complexity to his own pattern, as year over year innovation and deviousness conspire to create progress. The game evolves to the point that its men of an era ago seem devolved by comparison. Surely they are of us, but could not live with us in this new age. The game's players must become simultaneously faster, stronger, more sophisticated and more specialized. And yet, there is no level of sophistication that cannot be undone by the impact, or perhaps even just the threat, of pure physical mayhem. And as we watch and participate in this theater of intellect and chaos, the unexpected happens. The football is not round and does not roll. It wobbles, it bounces, it flutters. We guard it jealously when we have it, and use all cunning and force to steal it when we don't. In short, Football is life, and life begins anew this week with 16 sets of 16 contests, 256 in all, to determine a list of worthy champions. The season corresponds with the closing of our year, and as the natural world grows dormant and cold with each month, the desperation grows to be one of those that survive to play on in the new year. We mourn those that don't, and try to attach our affections for those that have, then watch in horror as they get picked off one by one leading up to a final, essential battle for the heart of the entire nation. And then there's the Pro Bowl, a kind of awkward curtain call that is best just ignored from this overly extended metaphor, and from any discussion of the sport all together. Life begins anew for the Rams this Sunday, after a long and closely-watched process of rebirth. Can I get a hallelujah! [caption id="attachment_103" align="alignright" width="110" caption="Metaphor Alert!"][/caption] The beginning of the NFL season is supposed to carry with it hope, and this season there are small reasons for us to generate hope. For three seasons, St Louis fans have worked a field filled with stones and rarely blessed with rain, and have cultivated little pride as a reward. If we were returning to the same field, filled with the same stony obstacles, with the same inferior seeds and tools, there would be more dread than anticipation. Why must we suffer when others thrive? But we have watched the team reinvent itself, from the very top on down, systematically removing inferior and incompetent parts. It is a process that began with Chip Rosenbloom's decision to do what his just-deceased mother could not: fire Scott Linehan. Slowly, methodically, the fumigation of a rotted franchise continued. The decrepit John Shaw was retired. The aggressively incompetent Jay Zygmunt and his invasive breed of followers were hacked down. The earth was scorched in order to return it to fertility. Billy Devaney emerged unstained, and was given full rein to rebuild, and that he has done with a young coaching staff anchored by the steadfast and relentlessly positive Steve Spagnuolo. That has has continued to do by purging the roster of the aged and unhungry, continuing right up until the season's dawn, with the surprising release of Chris Draft. The very core of the team, withered and failed, must be restored. Devaney has recharged and strengthened the foundation of the team by bolstering its offensive line, and Spagnuolo hopes to invigorate its counterpart with a new scheme and discipline. We do not know yet what will come of this, but we do know that the approach, finally, is right. We know that it is not completely futile to plant seeds of hope now, in this freshly turned land. no comments