St. Louis is a proud city, but an even prouder sports city. Yesterday, they got to watch the Cubs clinch the NL Central in a game against the Cardinals. Today, they got to watch the Rams get eviscerated by the Seahawks, a team most likely headed for a 5-12 season.
If it wasn't for the Chiefs, the Rams would be inarguably the worst team in the NFL. The thing about the Rams is that, on paper, it makes basically no sense. Unlike the Chiefs, who could also be historically awful, the Rams aren't starting a second-year quarterback from Coastal Carolina. And unlike last year's Dolphins, the Rams didn't lose their starting quarterback in Week 3, and most likely won't lose their starting running back for the year in Week 7. The Rams have a proven, capable quarterback, a Hall of Fame receiver who went for 1,200 yards last year and a running back who just two years ago looked like Marshall Faulk if Faulk was built like a Lincoln Navigator. Sure, their defense makes victory nearly impossible, but their offense has scored less points in their three games combined than any of their opponents in one. Last week, a dude in my fantasy league from St. Louis changed his team name to The Greatest Shit on Turf.
The problem is easily diagnosable: The Rams have the worst coach in the NFL. Not only is Scott Linehan completely in over his head, but the players literally don't care. The Rams are a team so imperfectly put together that it's almost sad. Linehan took his first NFL head coaching job with the Rams, and was immediately charged with gaining the respect of Torry Holt and Marc Bulger, the faces of the franchise and two guys who've been around since the glory days. This, quite simply, hasn't happened, and when you watch the Rams on offense looking like a pre-Icebox Little Giants, you start to feel bad for Linehan, who seems like a pretty okay guy.
Today, the Rams looked like they were making strides on offense, but those strides inevitably ended with them shooting themselves in the foot, sawing off the foot with a pocketknife, and then dying of blood loss. Most notably, it seems as if Linehan and OC Al Saunders (probable head coach by Week 5) made a concerted effort to utilize Steven Jackson, that dude they have who totaled 2,300 total yards two seasons ago. Though this seemed to resemble a part of a game plan, it's also possible that they just decided to play Madden 07 last week. The Rams longest play of the year came in the third quarter when they threw a bubble screen to Jackson, who had lined up as a slot receiver. It didn't necessarily fool the Seahawks, but it got Jackson out in space and away from the Rams' awful offensive line. It took him breaking three of four tackles to bust the play open for a gain of 50, but it was still a designed play that didn't end in Marc Bulger throwing behind a double-covered Dane Looker. Two plays later, coming from a timeout, Linehan called for Bulger to fake a hitch before handing off to Jackson. It was kind of like a draw, and Jackson fumbled. They recovered, and on the next play scored their second touchdown of the season, but that's missing the point.
The Rams, in the near future, have no hope. They are a team with a bad, young defense and a capable, but aging, offense. They'll be lucky to pull off three wins this year, and even luckier if they can manage to click on both offense and defense in the same game. Linehan's such a lame duck that he's basically foie gras, and whoever is coaching by the 2009 off-season will have to rebuild a team that's a mess in a way that a plane crash is a mess. This once well-oiled machine is now just a heap of smoking rubble, but you can't even really blame the pilot.
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