Try! I’m known for trying to do almost anything when it comes to the St. Louis Rams. In doing so, I’ve learned a great deal. For instance, Photoshop doesn’t really capture the majesty of a Rams game ticket, or at least that’s what the guys at the stadium entrance have told me on more than one occasion… Call it Kismet or Karma, I’m left with tailgating in the parking lot of the Edward Jones Dome most Sundays, though the quick chats with law enforcement before I’m politely escorted away after presenting my current ticket “masterpiece” have become kind of a ritual…

“So you actually paid a guy for this?” The nice St. Louis policeman waved the ticket I’d tried to use in my face.

“Yup! I paid a guy named Will Horton…He’s over there somewhere,” I pointed vaguely off in several directions. The policeman’s rookie partner followed the wavering line of my pointing hand. “You should go find him. When I left he was selling tickets to a bus load of Nuns… Can I get a refund for my ticket?”

The veteran cop elbowed his newbie partner who was still scanning the crowd for the now infamous “Will”. “You want a refund for this?” He rolled his eye, “This ticket is worse than the last time you tried this…” He pointed at a few minor glitches in the ticket’s appearance. “…For instance, most tickets have the name of the opposing team printed on them?”

I took a quick look at the ticket he held two inches in front of my face. “St. Louis Rams vs. THEM. I don’t see a problem," I replied. All opposing teams are “THEM”, aren’t they?

Filed to ESPN: #Jets close to finalizing deal for Rams RT Jason Smith, league sources. RT Wayne Hunter part of deal. Smith, No. 2 pick '09.

— Rich Cimini (@RichCimini) August 28, 2012

And with that, the de-evolution of the Rams' tackle position is finally complete. It cannot possibly get any worse. From having a future Hall of Famer in Orlando Pace in his prime just seven years ago, to Alex Barron, to Jason Smith, to Barry Richardson, to this. Trading the latest highly-drafted bust (and yes, we can officially call Smith that now) straight up for one of the very worst players in the NFL. 

There are ways to rationalize this move, particularly once the terms of the deal are released. If the Rams get a draft pick back as part of the deal, great. If this is a straight-up salary swap, then the Rams can cut Hunter and save themselves cap room compared to the cost of keeping (and potentially cutting) Smith. 

One way you cannot justify this move is in optimism for your starting tackle job, your backup tackle job, or any concern at all about Sam Bradford's health.

In signing Barry Richardson from the Kansas City scrapyard and acquiring Wayne Hunter, this is the "production" that they have accumulated at the tackle position.

20 penalties.

19 sacks.

17 quarterback hits.

68 pressures. 

That's your combined pass-blocking effort from Hunter and Richardson in 2011, two guys who somehow managed to start all 16 games for their teams. No matter how bad Jason Smith was in his time here -- and he admitted that at times he sees himself as "somebody who's not even capable of playing football" -- he was never as bad as this. 

Jets blogger Joe Caporoso describes Wayne Hunter, perhaps charitably, as "emotionally checked out" in New York. However you describe it, his play, or lack of it, illustrated a man who has completely given up trying.

Meanwhile, Paul Boudreau and the Rams did right by Jason Smith. They took a man who was broken, physically and mentally, and helped him rebuild. They taught him the subtler art of blocking, and put him in low-leverage situations until he started to get it right. I was half-hoping they might have been able to build him back into the starter's job here, but instead they built up his trade stock and sent him into a presumptive starter's job.

Now the Rams have to hope that the chemistry between Harvey Dahl and Barry Richardson works out. They have to plan on moving Rokevious Watkins into the starting left guard position sooner rather than later (fine by me) and relying on Quinn Ojinnaka to be the swing man. Because they no longer have a workable Plan B.

I guess the good news is this - it can't possibly get any worse.

There are nice ways to play off preseason losses. But after the Rams' first string offense and defense fell apart against an undermanned Dallas Cowboys team, playing without Demarcus Ware or their top three pass-catchers, being nice just isn't realistic. Jeff Fisher's new team regressed to a lot of bad habits that they retained from the Steve Spagnuolo era: poor positioning and poorer tackling on defense, and a complete inability to handle the pass rush on offense.

The latter breakdown falls on Sam Bradford, who saw his preseason stock plummet in a woeful 6-17 performance that was somehow both better and worse than the numbers suggest. On the positive side, Bradford did make a number of good plays - just not as many as he did a week ago. But on the negative side, Bradford again showed a susceptibility to fall apart mentally and mechanically in the face of a pass rush, an achilles heel that NFL teams will be happy to continue to shoot arrows at. 

It's nearly impossible to grade this game without comparing to the previous week against Kansas City's vanilla defensive set. Bradford looked like an All-Pro in that game, making four outstanding plays and no negative ones in his 16 snaps. This week, though, Sam's game grade takes a significant tumble. Here is my per-snap breakdown. 

As you can see from these grades, Bradford wasn't alone in the Rams' struggle to defeat the pass rush ginned up by Rob Ryan and the Cowboys. His receivers failed to bail him out on several occasions, as an examination of Sean Lee's game-turning sack shows.

Vernon Gholston's career high point might have come at the NFL Combine. It's been all downhill from there.

There is a time every year before the NFL season begins when we all wonder what's going on a little more than usual. Sure, we all ponder things like coaches and draft picks - not to mention free agents, but the thing that gets us scratching our collective heads comes later, doesn't it? Yesterday, the Rams gave me yet another chance to reach for the Blanton's as I grumbled, "Huh?"

Yup! Gholston's the name, and "you've got to be kidding me" is the game. Vernon Gholston... I have it on good authority (I'm a fiction writer, so I make things up!) J.K. Rowling dropped the Gholston character from her famed "Harry Potter" series because "It just didn't work out..."

Now before you start screaming at me to "cut the guy some slack" or "he's worth a look", take a short gander at his record of achievement since he entered the NFL with the sixth overall draft pick by the New York Jets in 2008. In fairness to the Jets, they drafted a defensive lineman that screamed potential. In his days at Ohio State, he set a record for sacks with 21.5. At 6'3", and 260 lbs, he was a touch small, but his measurable-s in the NFL Combine were impressive. He ran a 4.56 second 40 yard dash, 10'5" broad jump, 37 bench press reps, and a 35.5 inch vertical leap. Draft-nicks like Mel Kiper were comparing him to Dwight Freeney and John Abraham. When you're right Mel, you're...Well you never really right, are you Mel?

Gholston came to a Jets team longing for a hybrid defensive end/outside linebacker. They needed a pass rush to compete in the tough AFC East. What they drafted turned out to be more a defensive version of Ryan Leaf than a Freeney. He had problems adjusting to the NFL. Two glaring weaknesses became apparent almost immediately: Vernon thought his brute strength would translate to the pros, and he never really figured out the mental aspects of NFL blocking schemes. He's failed to register a single sack in his career to date and became such a liabilty in pass coverage, he found himself riding the pine for the majority of his time in New York. To me, he's a classic case of thinking brawn translates to on field prowess. It just doesn't happen that way Vernon. This is the NFL, and the best of the best are students of the game, not just the weight room warriors.

Those stats I mentioned? Here you go:

Stats courtesy of NFL.com

Now when you consider his signing bonus of $2.025 million, and base salaries per year of $295,000, $2.9 million, $3.48 million, $4.06 million, and $4.64 million during his 5 year rookie contract, he doesn't seem all that expensive, does he? That's because there were contract escalator that would have increased the value of his contract to $50 million, but he never hit one of his marks. All he had to do was cause and recover a fumble, and he would have been $9 million richer. Just one fumble... Nada, none, zip - That's how many sacks he's had in his NFL career. If he makes the Rams roster, and he happens to get on the field to make a QB sack, Vernon may just break down and cry. He will most definitely try and keep the quarterback he sacked, but the referees should be able to explain things before he reaches the sidelines. "Put him down Vernon. No you can't keep him.., How about a cookie?"

Maybe Rams head coach Jeff Fisher is getting a little cocky? He and Rams General Manager Les Snead have taken on a couple of red flag rookies this season in the draft, so maybe they think they can do something with Vernon too? The thing is, Gholston isn't a problem child off the field - just ON the field. The Rams star middle linebacker, James Laurinaitis, has to be wondering if his fellow Buckeye alum is going to help, or hurt, a defense that seems on the verge of being something special. While the Rams do have a bothersome injury at defensive end (Eugene Sims lower leg injury; in a walking boot), they really aren't that shallow at the position. Plus, I can't help but think the Rams need a hybrid DE/OLB to compliment the duo of Chris Long and Robert Quinn as the "hand in the dirt" DEs.

Like I said at the beginning of this rambling treatise, it's that time of year. It the time when coaches reach for a veteran player in the hope they can get the best out of him. Last year it was Ben Leber for the Rams, or maybe it was Brady Poppinga? We see it every year, but it doesn't mean I don't shake my head in wonder on whom coaches will decide to roll the dice...

I'd like to thank Will for inviting me to pop in here at RamsHerd. For those that don't know me, I'm a life long Rams fan, and an Editor at Turf Show Times. I'm also the author of a newly published novel - Devin Briar. It's available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBookstore, Smashword.com, and any other site where great books can be found. I appreciate your support!

Football Outsiders' Vince Verhei, writing for ESPN, rates Sam Bradford as "the worst starting quarterback in the NFL."

We love lists, and when ESPN's John Clayton emerges from his hobbity shire to rank the NFL's quarterbacks from Aaron Rodgers to Blaine Gabbert, we scramble through the listings to find out where our guy lands. This year, it's 17th, with the arrow pointing up. It's positive, generous even, and predictably it has prompted a backlash from the naysaying community of statistical analysts.

A year ago at this time, I wrote on the folly of evaluating Sam Bradford on a purely statistical basis, how there was much more to the Rams' quarterback than met the stat sheet. By any advanced quarterback metric, Bradford did not have a very good rookie season, what with all the Shurmurball and Spagnuolo's insistence of taking the ball from his QB's hands in the fourth quarter of every game. 

Bradford was being coddled. We all knew it, and we all knew he was capable of much more. At the time, I was fully expecting Josh McDaniels to awaken the beast within Bradford's game by unveiling complex combination routes, doubling or trebling his average depth of target, and showing the world what this thoroughbred was capable of.

All that happened was that McDaniels exposed how little Billy Devaney's expensively cobbled offensive line was capable of. Any route in the tree that took longer than two seconds to develop had to be ignored by the Rams' quarterback, who was thrown to the turf 48 times in fewer than 400 dropbacks. No other quarterback took as much punishment on a per-play basis. He had to focus more on self-preservation than on stressing the secondary.

The result after two years is a collection of unsightly statistics that allows writers such as Football Outsiders' Vince Verhei to write things like this:

You could make a strong case that Bradford is the worst starting quarterback in the league. Of the 30 quarterbacks with at least 500 passes in the past two seasons, Bradford ranks last in yards per completion, yards per pass attempt, yards per pass play (including sacks), touchdowns per pass and NFL passer rating.

This bucket of haterade which Verhei dumps on Bradford may be mean-spirited and short-sighted, but it isn't factually incorrect. However, it does miss the point. These statistics do not paint a picture of Sam Bradford, quarterback. They paint a picture of a pair of broken, failed offensive systems. Two systems that have almost nothing in common except for their ineptitude. 

But statistics are no magic mirror - they can only show what has been, not what will be. These stats reflect a quarterback in distress, not a quarterback whose skills have evaporated or were never there to begin with.

So far this preseason, we are seeing Sam return to a more comfortable offense, an evolutionary advance on Shurmur's system with more emphasis on stressing the intermediate level of the defense. We are also seeing a few young players -- notably Brian Quick, Lance Kendricks and Austin Pettis -- begin to step up as reliable targets.

We are seeing an offensive line that is paving holes in the run game, and keeping Bradford's jersey clean. And as a result, we are seeing a glimpse of the Bradford that we have been waiting for since the Rams drafted him first overall three drafts ago.

However, as far as predictors go, preseason football is a pretty lousy magic mirror in its own right. We learned that all too painfully last year.

That said, Sam will get a tougher test this weekend, facing the Dallas Cowboys and Rob Ryan's revamped secondary. So far, opponents' starting quarterbacks (Carson Palmer and Philip Rivers) have gone 16-21, 142 yards, with 3 INTs and zero scoring drives. Rookie corner Morris Claiborne is a rapidly rising star, their corrolary to our own Janoris Jenkins. And the third preseason game is traditionally the most like a real game in terms of starters' time on the field.

However, the real test doesn't come until the regular season starts. Like it or not, Bradford is going to be compared to every quarterback that he plays against, and this season's schedule starts against Matthew Stafford, Robert Griffin III, and Jay Cutler. He'll go head to head with Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady (in London, no less) midseason. And he will continue to battle against the glass ceiling of his own untapped potential.

His surrounding cast will have a lot to say about whether he breaks through that ceiling, or just gets broken. His line has to continue to play clean football. His young receivers have to continue to make the tough catches over the middle that this offense is predicated on. And Bradford will have to get up from the big hits that are inevitable in this game and deliver bigger ones himself.

If that happens, the stats will come, the wins will come, and these storylines will have to find another struggling young quarterback to leech onto.

To quote Sam Bradford, "Wow." That was his response to Danny Amendola's highlight-reel-worthy one-handed, no-look touchdown catch that put the Rams up 14-0. But it may as well extend to the whole game, a 180-degree turnaround from last week and one of those rare football days when every single thing seems to go right.

Last week's Rams fan mantra, "It's only the preseason, it's only the preseason," might fall on a few deaf ears tonight in the wake of a manful 31-17 tuneup of the Kansas City Chiefs. Everything clicked for Jeff Fisher's team tonight, from start to finish, from first string to third, from Sam Bradford's first pass (an absolute beauty) to the rarely-seen victory formation.

But.

It's only the preseason.

In many ways, the game was reminiscent of last year's preseason home opener, an outright embarrassment of the PeytonManningless Colts. Again, everything appeared to be clicking for a Rams team on offense and defense. This is a better Chiefs team, and one that played its first string for longer than the Rams did, but we don't know that they were taking the game's outcome any more seriously, Governor's Cup rivalry be damned. 

So let's not focus on the score, which doesn't matter. There were still plenty of things that do matter that we can take away as very positive outcomes from this game, and let's start with the one everyone can say together: "Nobody got seriously hurt."

On offense:

• The newly-nicknamed House of Pancakes kept Bradford as clean as he's ever been in a Rams uniform, and he got to shake some more rust off his deep passing, starting with a gorgeous 30-yarder to the right sideline, finding Danny Amendola. (He also launched one down the left sideline that Steve Smith couldn't catch up to.) He went 6-9 for 102 yards and two TDs against a pretty strong Chiefs pass rush and secondary, in a single quarter of work. That is not bad, no matter how you spin it.
• Bradford's timing looked a lot better as well. His throw to the end zone on 4th and 2 was a gutsy play, but a canny one as well as he saw the Chiefs' DB beaten and out of position to do anything but draw a flag. Bradford soft-tossed the ball in there for what looked like a fresh set of downs as Danny came back for the ball and got plowed over. But somehow Danny came out with the ball in hand and six points on the scoreboard, amazing even Sam.
  
  
• Backup center Robert Turner did a nice job in both the run and passing game. Jackson found some wide-open running between Turner and Quinn Ojinnaka, two guys who are essentially here to be placeholders for better-pedigreed starters. Even Barry Richardson did a nice job on Tamba Hali. At this point, I have to be relatively happy with where we are on offensive line depth.
  
  
• Amendola played a good portion of the game outside the slot, and looked like he belonged. A key to Schottenheimer's offense is positional flexibility among his WRs and TEs, so taking an existing weapon like Danny and establishing him in a new spot makes him that much harder to game-plan against.
  
  
• Also, Lance Kendricks did a damn fine Dustin Keller job. We need more of that, Mr. Kendricks.
  
  
• Brian Quick carried forward his good practice field form, making several tough catches and out-muscling Chiefs DBs for position to make plays. Justin Blackmon laid down the blueprint yesterday for the Jaguars, and Quick followed it to a tee.
  
  
• In the lower ranks, Daryl Richardson's running really stood out. He was decisive and sudden to the hole, a must for an inside runner, and despite his small size he was not an easy man for Chiefs defenders to bring down. Richardson's primary competition, Isaiah Pead, did not have a good game by any means, but he was not to be denied on a cathartic one-yard touchdown dive.
  
  
• We'll have to get tape to be sure, but Jason Smith appeared to do a stand-up job in his time with the 2s. And he spent additional time on the sideline, by himself, practicing his stance. The light switch may be coming on.

On Defense: 

• Robert Quinn got his first real test in Chiefs left tackle Branden Albert, and he did well. Albert is much quicker with his hands than and surer in his backpedal any Rams tackle on the roster, and kept Quinn at bay for much of their time. But Quinn got the better of him anyway with a wicked pass rush that ended in a monster sack of Matt Cassel.
  
  
• Janoris Jenkins continues to be a playmaker, forcing a fumble on the Chiefs' first offense possession to set up Bradford. The Rams took a 14-0 lead and never had cause to worry for the rest of the game.
  
  
• It would be unfair of me not to point out that my personal punching bag Craig Dahl had a very fine game after stinking up the joint a week ago. He seems to see the field well from the free safety position, and is quick enough moving forward to still be a factor against the run. Granted, he wasn't tested much in the passing game, but for today we'll take it.
  
  
• The Rams' outside linebackers made a series of plays. Jo-Lonn Dunbar and Clark Haggan were both active, and veteran backup Rocky McIntosh seemed to be everywhere on the 2nd team defense, getting involved in two fumble recoveries. 
  
  
• Trumaine Johnson and Josh Gordy, the team's presumptive 3rd and 4th CBs if Bradley Fletcher stays on the shelf, both had strong performances. Tru in particular really seems to be coming on, after looking outpaced during the first couple weeks of training camp.
  
  
• A pair of Spagnuolo draftees continue to thrive in the Fisher / McGinnis / Williams defense, as Eugene Sims and Jermelle Cudjo wreaked havoc with the Chiefs' 2nd and 3rd string offenses.

Miscellaneous:

Fisher challenged his team on multiple occasions with aggressive situational play-calling, and got rewarded for it. He cashed in a touchdown on 4th and 2, and appeared ready to got for it on 4th and 4 from the 34, until he remembered that he has a golden-legged field goal kicker to work with.

Fisher even won a challenge on yet another forced fumble from his defense. Spagnuolo's record on challenges was abysmal, and there were numerous opportunities that he let go by for whatever reason. 

You have to take it all with a truckload of DOT-grade road salt, but there was a lot to like in this Rams preseason win.

On Sunday in Indianapolis, Jeff Fisher walked onto an NFL field as head coach for the first time since 2010. We're still waiting for his team to show up. 

I've had my sensible take on the Rams' 38-3 loss to the Colts. It's only the preseason, after all, and it was obvious from the start that Fisher's approach to this game was essentially "just another practice." His coaches installed a very limited number of things that they wanted to work on, and rapidly worked the Rams' core starters out of the game so they could evaluate the roster's younger players.

But there's still this disconnect between what we saw on Sunday - the Rams getting rag-dolled up and down the field - and the image we all have in our head of what a "Jeff Fisher team" is supposed to look like. Win or lose, we're supposed to *hit* the other team hard enough to make them feel it well into the next week. You never hear of a Jeff Fisher team getting bullied. You don't see quarterbacks giggling on the sidelines while playing a Jeff Fisher team, even if they're ahead.

Robert Quinn had the right idea, getting up into wunderkind Andrew Luck's face and giving him a couple of good whacks, even if he did pop back up again. Even if he did burn us with a screen pass / touchdown romp to Donald Brown on one of those. As Luck played deep into the second quarter, the Rams' second-string pass rush was turned into Carl Spackler by Luck's wily gopher ability.

But Fisher wasn't interested in leaving Quinn in to prove any points, or to set any particular tone. As it turns out, he was more concerned about his newly assembled staff performing simple gameday management, like getting the plays in on time. 

"It's kind of an unusual game because the offense puts a drive together and then, bang, they're back on the field one play later because we gave up a touchdown," the Rams coach said. "Then you're trying to catch up with plays for your defense and then you can't stop them and then you can't get the plays for your offense. We tried to get as many plays as we could on tape and we'll move on."

This is not to paint a picture of chaos, or to prompt headlines screaming RAMS SIDELINE IN DISARRAY!

But it is worth noting that not only is this roster a work in progress, so is this coaching staff. And it appears that Fisher is very much in management mode, watching his coaches percolate their gameplans through their overstuffed position groups. He's been sitting back in practice, watching each of his units at work, only occasionally stepping in with a word here or a play-call there. Yesterday was the first time we saw all the pieces at work together, and as I wrote yesterday, they still look like a collection of parts.

To my mind, pure unadulterated football violence was going to be the glue that helped fit those pieces together. Maybe it's too early for that. Maybe in avoiding injuries of our own, our team was behaving with gentlemanly discretion toward the opponent as well. Or maybe Roger Goodell's crackdown on Gregg Williams and the Saints is still casting its shadow over this team. (WARNING! UNFOUNDED CONSPIRACY THEORY!)

Either way, we're all still waiting for this Rams team to become a Jeff Fisher team. Hopefully we won't have to wait too much longer.