By Vince Vitale 

43 of 46 fans that voted on my site this week picked the St. Louis Rams. As I stated I was very worried about this game for the Rams. Las Vegas had the Detroit Lions a one point favorite but betting in Vegas pushed it to three. Why was everyone else thinking the Rams would lose. Well it took only six seconds in this game to get more worried. For some reason the Rams started the game with an on-side kick which did not fool the Detroit Lions. David Vobora was injured on the kickoff as well. On the following two plays the Rams were called for offsides and then defensive holding. Nobody could ever imagine that this was just the start of what would be a embarrassing 44 to 6 loss to the Detroit Lions.

The Rams actually seemed to dominate the first quarter with a huge edge in total yards and two trips inside the Lions 10 yard line. On the Rams second drive of the game Sam Bradford hit Danny Amendola with a pass inside the 10 yard line but he fumbled and it was recovered by x-Rams player Jonathan Wade. Still after one quarter of play the game was tied at three.

After the Rams tied the game on the last play of the first quarter Josh Brown kicked off to Stefan Logan. Most players would not return a kick from five yards deep in their end zone but Stefan Logan sure did. Stefan Logan returned the kick 105 yards right through the Rams defense. Only Bradley Fletcher even had a shot at stopping Logan. We did not know it but the game was over at this point. The Lions had only two drives in the second quarter but they made them count. The Lions went 81 yards in 13 plays and 80 yards in 12 plays to take a 24-6 lead into halftime. 

The Rams were unable to do much in the second half and basically just got further embarrassed by the Lions. The Lions went on to a 44-6 victory. To make matters worse in the 4th quarter Ndamukong Suh tipped a Sam Bradford pass up in the air and intercepted it as well. Sam Bradford was 23 of 45 for 215 yards and two interceptions. Steven Jackson again was a warrior competing the entire game and gaining 114 yards on 25 carries. Danny Amendola had twelve receptions for 95 yards after Mark Clayton was hurt early in the game. Worse than the loss to the Lions is the fact that word is Mark Clayton suffered a torn patella tendon and will be lost for the season! The St. Louis Rams have also reported that Guard Jacob Bell and TE Darcy Johnson suffered concussions.

In addition to the terrible 44-6 loss to the Detroit Lions I was almost as mad about the fact that the Rams played Sam Bradford and Steven Jackson until the end of the game. With only eight wins in the last 3+ years the Rams can’t afford to lose their franchise running back or only running back. Steve Spagnuolo may want to compete but there are times you need to be smart. This was a time to get A.J. Feeley some work and to rest Steven Jackson who has yet to be 100% this year. Hopefully the Rams can just throw this film away and start working on their game plan for the San Diego Chargers.

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By Vince Vitale 

As I said in my St. Louis Rams 2010 Season Preview the biggest problem with the 2010 St. Louis Rams will be their lack of quality depth. I believe players 1 through 22 will keep the Rams in games, but the lack of quality depth from 23-53 will kill them. This fact already has reared it’s ugly head after only one game. Late in the game against the Arizona Cardinals with cornerbacks Kevin Dockery and Justin King injured the Rams were forced to play Bradley Fletcher on the weak side with safety James Butler filing in as the nickel corner. The Arizona Cardinals had two long drives late in the game and ending up winning 17-13 on a pass from Derek Anderson to Larry Fitzgerald, where it appeared there were some coverage issues on the play. 

To compound the loss to the Arizona Cardinals we are now finding out that the Rams had several key injuries during the contest. According to the Rams cornerback Kevin Dockery has a “significant” hamstring strain, and cornerback Justin King may also miss the Oakland game with a hamstring injury. So that leaves only Bartell and Fletcher so rookie Jerome Murphy will be forced into action. Luckily the Raiders passing game is not that good.

In addition to the weekend secondary the Rams will also be without LB Chris Chamberlain who fractured his toe and may be out for the season. Chamberlain is the first backup at the linebacker position and plays significant time on special teams as well. The Rams will now only have David Vobora and rookie Josh Hull to back up Diggs, Laurinaitis and Grant. Look for a heavy doss of Darren McFadden on Sunday.

On offense the Rams will be without TE Michael Hoomanawanui who suffered a high ankle sprain and could miss several games. Hoomanawanui who was the star in the preseason will be missed as Sam Bradford looks for a safety valve when pressured. Billy Bajema and Daniel Fells will have to step up. Not sure why the Rams kept 4 tight ends on their roster but now they will need them. The Rams who already have the worst receiving core in the league, and were damn lucky to get Mark Clayton will now be without starting receiver Laurent Robinson who aggravating an ankle injury, and never seems to be healthy. Marshall Faulk today said the Rams receivers are bums on NFL Network. The most disconcerting news of all today was that running back Steven Jackson had an MRI today for an inflamed knee and is listed as day to day. If the Rams have to play any games without Steven Jackson they will have a hard time scoring at all.

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By Vince Vitale

The Rams game on Sunday remains us of some nights out drinking. Early on its all good you start with a glass of wine at dinner and then maybe head over to the bar for a couple more drinks. Then things start to go well and everyone is having a good time. This is about the time when someone decides to buy a round of shots perhaps Patron. A few shots later you find yourself out in the parking lot wondering what happened. Well we have all been there before, and the Rams were there on Sunday. 

With 1:37 left in the first half of play the Rams Darian Stewart recovered a fumble by Courtney Roby on the Saints 21 yard line with the Rams trailing 14-6. After being outplayed for most of the first half the Rams had a chance to get right back into the game. After a 6 yard run by Steven Jackson Sam Bradford dropped back on 2nd and 4 and threw a ball down the left sideline to Laurent Robinson who appeared open. What Bradford did not see was Malcolm Jenkins coming over from the middle of the field to pick off his softly floating pass. 96 yards later Jenkins was in the house and the Saints were up 21-6 and for all intensive purposes this game was put on ice.

The final numbers do not tell the story since the Rams played with a lot of heart in the 4th quarter and continued to put up stats. Although losing by 18 points Sam Bradford threw for 231 yards, while Drew Brees threw for 221. St. Louis Rams also outrushed the Saints 136 to 132 yards. As I stated in my game preview this game would come down to mistakes and execution.

The Rams most likely would need to win the turnover battle and needed to be better on third down conversions to have a chance to beat the Saints. While the turnover battle was tied at three the Saints by far won the battle. The interception by Jenkins most likely cost the Rams at least 3 points and gave the Saints an instant 7 points. In the 4th quarter Bradford also threw another interception from the Saints 7 yard line. As costly as those mistakes were the Rams compounded that by allowing the Saints to start 10 of 12 on 3rd down conversions while the Rams started 0-of-7. This helped allow the Saints to jump out to a 14-0 lead in the first quarter. For a team like the Rams that has a hard time scoring 20 points they can not afford to give up 14 points that quickly. The crushing blow was when Brees hit Colston on 3rd and 17 from the 17 when the Rams inexplicitly only rushed 3 and dropped 8 into coverage. The laser from Brees was just too hard for the Rams secondary to get there in time and the hole was dug.

After having a less than great game last week against the Arizona Cardinals Sam Bradford struggled again today with a QB rating of 56.3. With three games left to play Bradford is going to have to play much better to help the Rams win the NFC West. The Seattle Seahawks lost 40-21 to the San Francisco 49ers today so the Rams remain in first place, but don’t look now the 49ers are once again only one game out. The will host the 8-5 Kansas City next week in a huge game for both teams.

On a side note congratulations to Steven Jackson for going over 1000 yards rushing for the 6th straight year!

Go back to Rams Fan Spot 

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By Vince Vitale 

The St. Louis Rams took a 7-0 lead 9 minutes and 11 seconds into the game on a 15 yard strike from Sam Bradford to Brandon Gibson and road the NFL’s 4th ranked scoring defense to a 20-3 victory over the Seattle Seahawks. Bradford threaded the pass between two Seahawk defenders into the outstretched hands of Gibson on 3rd and 10. If you did not know better you would have thought that Peyton Manning threw the pass. The St. Louis Rams are now in first place for the first time since early in the 2006 NFL season.

For the game Sam Bradford was 23 of 41 for 289 yards with two touchdown passes and one interception. On the season Bradford now has six touchdown passes which ties him for 8th in the NFL. Sam has made all the difference in attitude for the St. Louis Rams and he shined again today. On the ground Steven Jackson who was a game time decision was a warrior running for 70 yards on 22 carries and catching 3 passes for 54 yards. Jackson also passed Marshall Faulk for #2 on the Rams all time rushing list. Jackson is still the heart and sole of the St. Louis Rams. Kenneth Darby in his backup role once again scored on a 21 yard screen pass from Bradford.

For the second straight week the St. Louis Rams defense dominated the second half of the game. The Rams led 10-3 at halftime and outscored the Seahawks 10-0 in the second half of play for a convincing 20-3 victory. The Rams forced Seattle to punt on their first six possessions of the second half and outgained them 172 yards to 68. For the game the Rams defense had 4 sacks and two turnovers while only allowing the Seahawks one drive of over 38 yards. The Rams defense has held all four opponents to 17 points or less. The Rams held Seattle to 2.7 yards on the ground and gang tackled whoever had the ball for the Seahawks all day.

The Rams schedule is what it is and we will not apologize for it, and need to take advantage of it. The Rams will now travel to face the 0-4 Detroit Lions. The Rams may be doing it with mirrors but the bottom line is they easily could be 4-0 and are playing solid football. The facts are the Rams are in first place in the NFC West and also lead the division in points scored and in the least points allowed.

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By Vince Vitale 

I started to think about this issue this morning as I was listening to sports talk radio. I found it absolutely amazing and sad that shows were talking more about Jake Westbrook a 32 year old pitcher on the Cleveland Indians with 13 wins in the last 4 years and a 69-71 lifetime win/loss record and career ERA of 4.34 than talking about the upcoming signings of Rodger Saffold and Sam Bradford. With Training camp starting tomorrow where was the football talk, the excitement, the anticipation?

Not only are the media outlets not talking about the St. Louis Rams much I can’t even get Rams fans to discuss the team. This week alone I informed 100+ known Rams fans about the possible Terrell Owens signing and the signing of Rodger Saffold and I received ZERO responses!

Well as St. Louis Rams training camp approaches tomorrow I am curious as to where St. Louis Rams fans are at. Fans should feel this as the start of something special, a new year, new players, a fresh start, and most of all a level playing field as each team is currently 0-0. I however feel that St. Louis Rams fans are currently apathetic to the point of almost being num and I will explain.

Over the last three seasons the St. Louis Rams have played some very poor football which has resulted in them winning only six of their last forty-eight contest, that’s right they have won six total games since 12/31/2006 a span of almost 43 months! That could be considered their top achievement over the last few years but let’s look a little deeper at some underlying issues.

Rams fans rarely talk about anyone else other than Sam Bradford and Steven Jackson, this speaks to almost a decade of terrible drafting. While not winning of late the experience at the Edward Jones Dome has come under a lot of criticism. Recently ESPN rated the Rams quality of arena and game-day promotions as well as friendliness of environment 114th out of 122 professional franchises. The atmosphere along with the play of the team lead the Rams to finish 29th in home attendance in 2009 at 84.6% of capacity only ahead of Detroit, Jacksonville and Oakland in percentage.

This leads us to another issue, St. Louis Rams ownership. Since the death of Georgia Frontiere on 1/18/2008 the Rams primary owners are Chip Rosenbloom and Lucia Rodriguez. From the beginning Chip and Lucia wanted out of that role placing the Rams basically in a lame duck position, seemingly to fans without ownership that cared about the team. To add to this matter the Rams have to be in the upper 25% of stadium revenues after 2014 or they can basically break the lease and leave town for the highest bidder. Currently there is a pending sales of the club to Stan Kroenke but this has been dragging out for a while and I am afraid the fans are tired of hearing about it.

As they say winning cures everything and frankly the St. Louis Rams have not been winners in a while and that has led to this malaise that has come over the city towards them. The product on the field has been bad and even worse than that everything about the team has become boring. The Rams hiring of Scott (Lameahan) Linehan has to be one of their worst decisions. Linehan came across as a talking block of wood during press conferences and seemed simply clueless when making any coaching decisions. The Rams have since moved on to inexperienced Steve Spagnuolo who tries to say the right things but it is still not apparent to Rams fans if we have even started to move in the right direction. Other than Steven Jackson the Rams offense has been awful ranking in the bottom five in scoring three straight years including averaging 10.9 points per game in 2009.

So Rams fans are you still out there?

http://stlouisramfan.blogspot.com/

By Vince Vitale 

Well unfortunately I was correct and the Rams lost a close one 17-13 to the Arizona Cardinals Sunday at the Edward Jones Dome before a spirited crowd. The Rams still need to learn to crawl before they walk and still need to learn how to win and play 60 minutes of NFL football. This has been a problem for quite some time with the Rams. 

Midway through the 3rd quarter it appeared the St. Louis Rams may be on their way to victory when C.J. Ah You forced a Derek Anderson fumble with the Rams leading 13-10. Clifton Ryan picked up the ball with only green between himself and the goal line. Somehow Steve Breaston who also caught 7 passes for 132 yards caught Ryan from behind and knocked the ball out of his hands as he was heading into the end zone. The Cardinals center Lyle Sendlein somehow beat everyone to the loose ball and recovered it for a touchback. Replays showed that Ryan did not cross the goal line prior to the fumble.

The Rams held a 13-10 lead for most of the second half but could not put the game away. In a sloppy game the Rams had a ton of chances as the Cardinals fumbled 7 times with the Rams recovering 4 of those but could not turn them into points. In addition Ran Bartell and Kevin Dockery each dropped interceptions and many of Sam Bradford’s passes were dropped.

We have seen this game many times before, the Rams hang in there but just can’t get the job done. The defense that played well for most of the day allowed the Cardinals to drive 75 yards late in the 3rd before a fumble ended that drive. On the ensuing Cardinals drive they marched right down the field 86 yards in 7 plays taking a 17-13 lead on 2nd and 20 with a 21 yard pass from Derek Anderson to Larry Fitzgerald.

In the end the St. Louis Rams lost their 14th straight home game, their 8th straight to the Arizona Cardinals, 15th straight in the NFC West, and 43rd of their last 49.

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OT Mike Adams (Ohio State)

CB Dwight Bentley (LA-Lafayette)

WR Justin Blackmon (Oklahoma State)

DT Michael Brockers (LSU)

CB Morris Claiborne (LSU)

DE Quinton Coples (North Carolina)

DT Fletcher Cox (Mississippi State)

WR Michael Floyd (Notre Dame)

WR Chris Givens (Wake Forest)

RB Ronnie Hillman (San Diego State)

RB LaMichael James (Oregon)

WR AJ Jenkins (Illinois)

CB Janoris Jenkins (North Alabama)

MLB James-Michael Johnson (Nevada)

C Ben Jones (Georgia)

OT Matt Kalil (USC)

MLB Mychal Kendricks (California)

CB Dre Kirkpatrick (Alabama)

G Ronald Leary (Memphis)

WR Marvin McNutt (Iowa State)

RB Lamar Miller (Miami)

G Kelechi Osemele (Iowa State)

DT Dontari Poe (Memphis)

WR Rueben Randle (LSU)

RB Trent Richardson (Alabama)

G Amini Silatolu (Midwestern State)

OLB Sean Spence (Miami)

P Brian Stahovich (San Diego State)

DT Alameda Ta’amu (Washington)

WR Brian Quick (Appalachian State)

OLB Bobby Wagner (Utah State)

DT Jerel Worthy (Michigan State)

WR Kendall Wright (Baylor)

14. DE Robert Quinn A

This couldn’t have worked out any better for the Rams. I didn’t have them drafting a defensive end in any of my mocks, thinking they’d instead try to develop one of their late round ends from last year, something Steve Spagnuolo has experience with, but then again, I never thought that Robert Quinn would fall all the way to them at 14. James Hall is getting up there in age and Quinn is his future replacement. In the short term, Chris Long, Hall, and Quinn will form a defensive end rotation that could rival Justin Tuck, Osi Umenyiora, and Michael Strahan, who Spags had with his Super Bowl winning Giants.

47. TE Lance Kendricks B+

Tight end was one of their biggest needs heading into the draft. They don’t have a pass catching tight end and pass catching tight ends are young quarterbacks’ best friends. Kendricks was a minor reach, but not a huge one.

78. WR Austin Pettis B-

Like tight end, wide receiver was a huge need of theirs coming into this draft. Sam Bradford simply had no weapons to work with down the stretch. If he’s going to take that next step into a top 10 playoff caliber quarterback, he’ll need some help. Pettis was a reach, however. I had a 4^th or 5^th round grade on him.

112. WR Greg Salas B

Another wide receiver for Sam Bradford. That makes sense considering how bad their receivers were last year. However, Salas was a minor reach and they had other needs before another receiver.

158. S Jermale Hines C-

Safety was one of their minor needs and Hines can play special teams, but I think they had bigger needs (outside linebacker, running back, defensive tackle) before safety and Hines was hardly a steal at this point. In fact, I think he was a pretty big reach by at least 2 rounds.

216. S Mikail Baker D

Another safety? I haven’t even heard of this one. This was a reach and didn’t fill a need. The only reason this wasn’t an F is because it’s the 7^th round.

228. OLB Jabara Williams A-

Outside linebacker was one of their major needs, but Williams was a minor reach so I can’t give this a flat A grade. He can play special teams as well.

229. CB Jonathan Nelson C

Another defensive back? At least this one fits the range decently and can play special teams.

Overall:

I really, really like their first round pick. Of course, it was a no brainer, but I’m still giving credit where credit is due. I think they reached for all 3 of the weapons they got for Sam Bradford, but I like how they are giving him all the help he needs. Some of their late round picks didn’t make sense, but I liked the selection of Jabara Williams in the 7^th and what a team does early is more important. What this team did early was add a player who was top 5 on my board for 4-3 teams in Robert Quinn. They also added 3 needed weapons for Sam Bradford. I liked that.

Grade: B+

By Vince Vitale

The St. Louis Rams signed tight end Darcy Johnson due to Michael Hoomanawanui’s ankle injury which is expected to keep him out at least a month. Darcy Johnson was with the Rams through training camp but was released during the last cuts. Johnson was previously with the New York Giants for three years where he totaled 9 catches for 78 yards. The Rams dropped defensive tackle Jermelle Cudjo to open a roster spot for Johnson. This move seems a little strange since the Rams kept 4 tight ends on the roster to start the season and they still have three healthy ones remaining. If Fendi Onobun was good enough to make the roster than he needs to be good enough to play when needed. We will see how this move pans out for the St. Louis Rams.

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