Virginia CB Rasi-I Dowling: one of several players hoping to blow up draft boards.

Getting geared up for the Senior Bowl, already a few players are starting to hit the radar as players to watch over the coming week. Here are some quick profiles on three names to watch, as well as one to avoid.

CB Ras-I Dowling, Virginia

I know what you're going to say: "Drafting another cornerback? Really?" Third round picks spent on Bradley Fletcher in 2009 and Jerome Murphy in 2010 have yielded one talented starter and one pysical but enigmatic player currently stuck on special teams. Hopefully Murphy can improve his coverage skills and get into the rotation, but the Rams could still use more young talent in the pipeline at the position.

CB depth, a real problem for St. Louis last year, stands out as one of the biggest positives on Green Bay's defense over the past two weeks, as Tramon Williams and Sam Shields -- their 2nd and 3rd CBs -- made game-changing plays to preserve a Super Bowl bid. When you blitz as much as the Packers (and Spagnuolo's defenses do), having a deep stable of lock-down playmakers in the defensive backfield is essential. Accoding to these draft profiles, Dowling could be one of those players, and could be gotten relatively cheaply.

Scott Porter at New Era Scouting and Erik Galko at Optimum Scouting both currently have Dowling rated 6th among CBs, with Galko calling the 6'0" 200-lber "Very physical and experienced," adding that "a good combine will help."

Mike Iupati was one of the breakout stars of last year's Senior Bowl. Who will be there this year?

With apologies to the East-West Shrine Game, Senior Bowl week is when my excitement for draft prospects and hidden gems really starts up. There is a great mix of talent here with top players able to compete away from more heralded underclassmen, and impress their way high up draft boards.

Two of last year's stars were WR/RB Dexter McCluster and OG Mike Iupati, both of whom I coveted for the Rams at various points. McCluster showed unprecedented playmaking-ability-per-pound and shot up from a fringe fourth round pick to the 36th overall selection by the Chiefs; Iupati showed enough versatility and raw power to rise from an early projection in the mid-30s (which would have made him a nice target for the Rams) to 17th overall (and second offensive lineman taken) by the 49ers.

This year is our first on the Bloguin network, and we're pleased to find our very own neighborhood draft experts at OptimumScouting.com (@OptimumScouting on Twitter), and thrilled that they will be in Mobile all week long, tweeting and blogging from the press conferences, the practices, and the game itself. To prepare us for this goldmine of pre-draft intel, here is a quick Q&A with Erik Galko of Optimum Scouting.  

My questions, his answers, and a look at where the Rams might be scouting this week, after the break:  

"With the first overall pick in the 2010 draft, the Saint Louis Rams select... Ndamukong Suh, Nebraska!"

I'm not ashamed to say that I was a member of the "Draft Suh" contingent among Rams fans, as were many of us. In the first rev of our 2010 Mock Draft, back in February of last year, I made Suh the pick, and figured to find another route to a starting quarterback. Perhaps Jimmy Clausen, perhaps Colt McCoy, perhaps (and this was my wish) a trade for Kevin Kolb. However, there's not a day that goes by since Bradford's first day of training camp -- when I got to see him play for the first time -- that I haven't been grateful that we got our QB when we did, and that Devaney and company made the choice they made.

This morning, I was browsing through some scouts' draft boards (New Era Scouting, Optimum Scouting, Walter Football), and was reminded of those Rams fans who very vocally argued that none of the 2010 draft class was worth it, that our QB of the future lay in the 2011 draft.... Looking at the draft boards out there right now, especially with Andrew Luck back in school, I think it's safe to say this wasn't the case.

TurfShowTimes
@RamsHerd but, but, but... Jake Locker!!

(Heh. I sincerely hope Pete Carroll gives in to hometown sentiment and takes Locker ... Oshiomogho Atogwe could probably make the Hall of Fame with two matchups per year against the wild-armed Washington prospect.)

The falling dominos of fate are funny things. If you change out a small one, it changes, however subtly, the way the next ones fall. If you change out one as big as this -- the #1 pick, with the future of the franchise in his hands -- the complexion of the entire season changes, and maybe the entire franchise.

Here's my view on what would have been, after the break...

The Rams just got a helluva coach...

After what must have been a pretty successful interview and two days of contract negotiations between the Rams and Josh McDaniels, Michael Lombardi of the NFL Network (and  a GM candidate in San Francisco earlier this month) thought that things should be wrapping up today, one way or the other.

But even a 20-year veteran of NFL executive offices might have been surprised by the level of drama and intrigue of the past 12 hours ... around the hiring of an offensive coordinator.

• Jay Glazer declared the Rams the favorites, until Chris Mortensen and Adam Schefter said that they weren't.

jay_glazer
Spags is now calling fellow head coaches seeking OC candidates as the McD likelihood dwindling fast

• This led to a feverish few hours as the names of Atlanta QB coach Bill Musgrave and Minnesota OC Darrell Bevell -- first mentioned by RamsGab -- became official candidates for the Rams job.


• Then the other shoe dropped: Seattle fired offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates after one season on the job, and apparently had good reason...

AdamSchefter
Seahawks have been talking with former Broncos HC Josh McDaniels since Monday. Interesting.

(An interesting side note here: Bates coached under Carroll at USC in 2009; before that, he had been Jay Cutler's QB coach in Denver until McDaniels arrived and fired him, along with almost all of the Broncos' offensive staff. You can bet Bates hates him some McD.)

• Barely an hour was spent devoted to this interdivision catfight over the NFL's hottest available bachelor ... or was it an hour-long flashback to high school? Either way, it seemed that Paul Allen's software billions posed the most potent threat to our offer, and pleas went out to the Rams: "Don't cheap out!"

PaulMurph92
If McDaniels goes to Seattle clearly he is all about the money, rams situation much better than seahawks, Spags D will kill him anyway next yr

• This led to all kinds of debate, payroll speculation, and a devil's bargain: Do you pay your OC more than your head coach, if that's what it took to get him?


• As it turned out, though, the Rams and McD started the day essentially agreed to terms, and only $200k apart on the salary number -- hardly an impossible divide.

But after two hours of radio silence and plenty of teeth-gnashing, the deal was done, and Seattle's last-ditch effort left them chasing *cough* Jim Zorn... all in all a delerious, glorious day for Rams fans. But for a coach as used to drama and turmoil as McDaniels, who knows? This might be just another Tuesday. 

Is the Rams' OC drama short-lived, or only beginning?

Things have been awful quiet around St. Louis following the much-trumpeted interview on Saturday between Josh McDaniels and the Rams' Billy Devaney. Much was made of McDaniels' arrival, but keeping in character, Devaney is playing his cards rather close to the chest. Not so much as a Jim Thomas blog nugget or Harold Balzer tweet has emerged with any hint of the interview's outcome.

However, PFT's Mike Florio is channeling Karnac once again, and predicts that McDaniels' brief time on the unemployment rolls is about to end. (President Obama is expected to release a statement trumpeting the hire as a sign of the economic recovery, as soon as it's confirmed.)

If true, it's almost fait accompli that McDaniels will choose the Rams, as his only other confirmed interview has been with the downtrodden Minnesota Vikings. Why choose the Rams over the Vikings? Here's a short (and somewhat obvious) list:

• The Rams have a quarterback; the Vikings don't. Brett Favre filed his retirement papers yet again, and while that may or may not mean that he's really, really done, it likely means he's done in Minnesota, which leaves an unhealthy mess of Tarvaris Jackson, Joe Webb and whatever mystery meat can be signed. Ugly.
• The Vikings are likely in full rebuild mode. Zygi Wilf just shelled out massive dollars in Super-Bowl-or-bust season, and hit bust. Now with several prominent players set for free agency, including the Williams brothers and WR Sidney Rice, and the price tag for pulling Favre back out of retirement even higher than it was a year ago, it would cost ridiculous money just to bring back the core of a 6-10 catastrophe. With Ted Thompson's Packers providing the model of sustainable success (i.e. draft well & draft deep, shy away from marquee FAs) in the NFC North, expect the Vikings to blow everything up and follow suit.
• The Rams, by comparison, are ripe for reinvestment. Stan Kroenke's only big-ticket purchase since taking over full control of the Rams has been Sam Bradford's $50 million guarantee; that investment has paid off handsomely with a six-win improvement over last season, five home wins and multiple sellouts. Clearly, though, the fields are ripe for reseeding, and Kroenke should not be afraid to spend good money on this foundation. A mature and passionate sports owner, Kroenke has shown willingness to invest in success with the Avalanche and Nuggets.
• This should mean that better talent to work with will be available on the Rams than in Minnesota. For McDaniels, or any desirable offensive coordinator, weighing the resources available to you has to be a critical component of weighing your job options.

If Florio's ruminations hold true and McDaniels follows this logical course, it means the drama of the Rams' search for a new offensive shepherd could be rather short-lived; a mini-series rather than a drawn-out soap opera. However, that might be nothing compared to the potential dramatic clash of personalities between McDaniels's tendency to push the offensive envelope and Spagnuolo's history of playing it safe.

The stakes are higher now for the Rams than they've been in a decade, but with experience in the cauldrons of New York and New England, McD and Spags should be able to handle it just fine.

The Rams drafted him #1 in 2010; would you draft him in your fantasy league in 2011? 

The difference between real football success and fantasy success couldn’t be starker than in the case of Sam Bradford. 2010’s runaway offensive rookie of the year contender took every snap for his young team and looked like a seasoned veteran in the pocket while leading his team to a six-win improvement over 2009… and yet he barely ranked as a second-tier quarterback in fantasy leagues. You can blame an ultra-short passing tree, or the absence of game-breaking talent in the WR corps, but the media accolades that Bradford received far exceeded his fantasy performance.

In fact, according to a ProFootballFocus study by Alessandro Miglio (@PFF_ZeroDev), only five players racked up fewer fantasy points per snap than the Rams’ rookie QB.

Fantasy football has evolved from a man-cave preoccupation with strat-o-matic scoresheets into a booming industry with tens of millions of players, and this explosion has changed the very way the game is broadcast and presented. Broadcast dollars, in turn, are the single-greatest source of revenue for NFL teams. In a financial sense, fantasy players are the tail that wags the dog.

Beyond that, however, the rampant popularity of Twitter among fantasy geeks (seeking up-to-the-second information on their sit/start decisions) and among NFL players themselves (some for the same reasons that social media appeals to any of us, others to build up mini media empires) means that players who stat well and those who don’t get to hear about it right away, direct from their “owners,” in volume.

When a player like Maurice Jones-Drew actively plays fantasy (and has drafted himself in multiple leagues), and tweets about his team’s successes and failures, you can say that the culture of fantasy has invaded the very sport itself.

Perhaps this is a reason why, when the players themselves were polled by the Sporting News, they emphatically chose Ndamukong Suh as their Rookie of the Year? Maybe not the only reason, but it could be a factor.

Fantasy heads are also leading the pack among those clamoring for the Rams to bring Josh McDaniels on board to replace Pat Shurmur. After all, Bradford has already shown that he has the arm and the brain; with the right scheme and surrounding talent, he could enjoy a breakout season in 2011.

If that happened, Bradford just might become as big a star in fantasy as he is in the real world of football.

Offensive Coordinator / Shepherd of the Franchise's Future Needed (Earth City)