Rams Fans United - Los Angeles Rams Fan Discussion Forum

Call me cynical, but this notion that superior X's & O's from Sean DaWhizKid McVay will fix all that ails the 2017 Los Ramos....and we should all get ready for the Playoffs in January 2018.....(to paraphase Kevin DaLittlePischer Demoff).....RINGS HOLLOW TO ME.

I dunno which NFL ex-Head Coach said it, but it was a good line:

"It's not about the X's & O's....it's about the Jimmys and Joes!"
ie. If we want to sniff the Playoffs anytime soon, we need to improve the quality of players on our roster!! Period. Full Stop!!!

The group that Snead, Fisher & Dammoff assembled for 2016:
--came DEAD LAST in NFL Offensive categories across the board
--with a supposed Defensive Genius at the helm in Gregg Williams, the Rams D got blown up by:
New Orleans (away game, but Saints were no contenders in 2016)
Arizona (at home, and dominated by non-Playoff 2016 Cards team)
SF (swept by the inept & dysfunctional 49ers...even got shutout 28-0!)
Atlanta (okay, strong team)
-in fact, after Rob Quinn got hurt & missed half of 2016 games (again for the second season in a row), Los Ramos pass rush was pretty pathetic....and our DEs behind Quinn, Sims & Hayes are both on the wrong side of 30!!

Wade SonOfBum Phillips has a decent resume that hopefully compensates for the reduced energy level of a AARP guy....and he wants to go to a 3-4 D this season. Gee, that's nice.....but for that you need a stable full of good LBs.......Ogletree & Barron are stellar.....but our yutes like Forrest and Littleton are not going to keep opposing OCs awake at night.

Our DBs?? Well, the remaining "core" of of defensive backfield of TruJo and TJ McDonald are both UFAs.....so there may be wholesale personnel turnover in that area. Even promising EJ Gaines seems to have a hitch in his giddy-up these days. We have to hope that Late Rounders & UDFAs like Blake Countess, Marqui Christian, Troy Hill, Michael Jordan et al can step up. Again, not to sound totally pessimistic....but,

--Offensively in 2016, WE WERE DEAD LAST IN ALMOST EVERYTHING;
--Defensively were wilted in the Second Half of 2016, even with our relatively strong DC and defensive Coaching Staff (compared to our Offensive Imposters of Boras & Groh anyway)....yet even with decent D coaching, decent D personnel (we thought)....Los Ramos 2016 D was not consistent, nor efficient. And when you look at the DLine, the LB Corps, or the Defensive Backfield.....personnel issues scream out at every level.

Again not to sound overly pessimistic.....oh yeah, our STs are damm good! .....there, see some optimism (although Greg TheLeg Zuerlien is also a UFA )

Anyhoo, my point is that we need BETTER PLAYERS on our roster to have a snowball's chance of making the 2017 NFL PostSeason......
....new X's & O's, new enthusiastic eclectic Coaching Staff, "new culture" , yadda yadda yadda ......sound nice.....but all those images of Todd 2015ROY Gurley running into all those brick walls tells me we need to jettison alot of our existing 2016 Rams Roster....big time.

We have two methods of doing this:
Free Agency, which Les TheHaircutThatWalksLikeAMan Snead, has had very limited success in.....

AND...

The NFL Draft.....where Snead has fared better. Whilst Snead had has hits (Brockers, Gurley, Donald, etc ) and misses (Quick, Pead, Mannion, etc)...he seems to certainly fare better drafting than LS has in Free Agency. The Draft is also the cheaper way to reinforce a weak roster!

SO....TO THAT END.... an idea from The Great White North to augment our paltry number of 2017 Draft Picks:

The Cleveland Browns Management Team needs to give HOPE to the MistakeByTheLake Faithful who dole out after-tax dollars to attend the Browns' antics at The Factory Of Broken Dreams.....right?

So, how about trading up to Los Ramos #37 Pick and then the Cleveland Browns Braintrust can tell BrownsNation.....
"Hey, we are being bold here and are making a move that will give us a real opportunity to make IMMEDIATE IMPROVEMENT!!! Via this trade with the Rams, our Franchise will have FOUR PICKS IN THE TOP 37 OF THE 2017 NFL DRAFT!!!"

Here are the numbers (per Draftek.com's Chart):

To Cleveland:
Rams Second Rounder, #37 Overall (530 points)

To Los Ramos:
Browns Second Rounder, #52 Overall (380 pts)
Browns Fourth Rounder, #97 Overall (112 pts)
Browns' Fifth Rounder, #158 Overall ( 27.8 pts)
Browns' Seventh Rounder,#190 Overall(15.0 pts)
TOTAL POINTS.....................................534.8 pts

With the Browns picking at the top of each Round (4th & 7th above, not their 5th though), Snead might be able to pull off even more trades.

To me, every pick in the NFL Draft is a crapshoot.....so the more picks we assemble, the more favorable the odds in landing some useable talent. It's just maximizing the probablilities mathematically IMHO.

The plan above yields us 3 extra picks in the 2017 Draft.....a "weaker draft class" (per the pundits) but that has a plethora of talent bunched in a bell curve in the mid-rounds it is said (particularly CB talent).

Anyway, I say jettison TruJo, as he ain't worth the monster contract , and load up of stud CBs, WRs, OLs, LBs, TEs, .....well, you get the picture, eh!!

Okay.....fire away at my plan to save Les MarbleMouth Snead's career!

Cheers from Vancouver, BC!

Have to look at the bright side of the 2016 campaign: Our punter punted for more yards than our offense gained!!!!
Perhaps we should have punted now and again on 3rd, 2nd or even 1st down.

CanuckRightWinger wrote:
Okay.....fire away at my plan to save Les MarbleMouth Snead's career!

Cheers from Vancouver, BC!

Okay riddle me this my fine feathered friend??? Why would Cleveland make the trade? Seems to benefit the Rams far more than the Browns and I don't think the Browns will just trade picks because the have so many of them. There has be be a player they are in love with in order to make this deal.

Everybody wants to trade down, but you have to have a partner in order to allemande left or allemande right even for a Canadian Right Winger such as yourself.

I don't see the tam needing a lower second round pick, and to my mind, the utility of the lower round picks is limited at best.
My proposed trade also has little chance of happening.
I would send Michael Brockers and the extra fourth round (compensatory) pick to Cleveland for their second first round pick.
It won't happen because Brockers is too valuable, even on a 3-4 line. An alternative might be to send Robert Quinn and a fourth to Cleveland for the first and maybe a fifth or a sixth.

CanuckRightWinger wrote:Anyway, I say jettison TruJo, as he ain't worth the monster contract , and load up of stud CBs, WRs, OLs, LBs, TEs, .....well, you get the picture, eh!!

The picture that I get is that we'd be trading a higher pick for multiple lower picks. More picks gives us the ability to "load up" on multiple positions. But you end up with less chance of finding a "stud" at any position. And we'd be unlikely to find a corner with Tru's ability at his height.

They did have an abundance of premium picks through the RGIII trade. I thought by now we'd have built a pretty good team. But we were mired in that now famous "7-9 bullshit" for 4 years, and ended up even worse by year 5. So much worse that we were easily the worst team in the league by late December. All those premium picks brought us to that point.

If we let our pending free agents walk and stick to the draft to build the roster, that will take several years. I suppose what they do or don't do in free agency will tell us if those comments by Demoff were just a smoke screen. If they let the free agents walk without replacing them, it will be pretty clear that "This is not a rebuild" comment was B.S.

I agree we can't expect to compete with the current talent. It sure looked like it was a case of just plain getting beat by a better player when I watched them. If the guy lined up across from each player is better then how much improvement should we expect?

But acquiring more picks and expecting things to change? How optimistic should we be if they went that route? It didn't the previous 5 years. I'd rather they be more active in free agency and try to be more competitive right away. All that building through the draft did was make us the worst team in the league by year's end.

shmendrake24 wrote:I don't see the tam needing a lower second round pick, and to my mind, the utility of the lower round picks is limited at best.
My proposed trade also has little chance of happening.
I would send Michael Brockers and the extra fourth round (compensatory) pick to Cleveland for their second first round pick.
It won't happen because Brockers is too valuable, even on a 3-4 line. An alternative might be to send Robert Quinn and a fourth to Cleveland for the first and maybe a fifth or a sixth.

First off, welcome to RFU shmendrake24. Glad you could join us.

RE Brockers, it's not so much his value to us as much as the dead cap hit if we trade him ($11,250,000). Not going to happen.
According to SportsTrac, we currently only have $2,007,335. dead money on the books (Foles $1M, Sensabaugh $1M + 2 smaller) for 2017.

We will likely need to cut some bait somewhere as after all cap adjustments for '17, the Rams only have $38,985,625. to sign free agents and the good ones don't come cheap.
Tru is great but he is a large chunk of that right there.

This is going to take some real negotiating by Mr Snead and I hope the can get it right.
Let's hope the new staff and the beautiful city of the Angels will make for some added interest in our team.

Some answers to the "Doubting Thomases" who have infiltrated our ranks.....

First to den-the-historian, the Albany Arbitrator, who understands human nature, the human condition and the Corporate Instinct For Survival.

The Los Angeles Rams had a 4-12 Public Relations problem with their fans in a market where the sun shines, the women wear bikinis, and folks are free to go surfing of swimming in the beautiful blue Pacific Ocean. Still and all, with all these SoCal distractions, Los Ramos had to terminate their HC near the end of his FIFTH YEAR of reign. The Rams Owners felt the pressure of the LaLaLand hordes and terminated Jeff Fisher, faster than Demoff could say "Holy Fook, our hype about Jared Goff being the next Peyton Manning didn't work!! I need a scapegoat to fire and sacrifice to Ramsnation. Hey Les, tell Jeff I need to see him in my office ASAP....and tell him to bring his Playbook and the keys to the Executive Bathroom! "

Compare the SoCal scenario above to what Browns Ownership has in their MistakeByTheLake Marketplace eh! They have a 1-15 Public Relations problem with the Browns faithful.....ya know, the poor saps who pay after-tax dollars to go watch perennially inept football at The Factory Of Broken Dreams. By the way, in Cleveland when the sun DOES shine, its usually through frigid air, because Northern Ohio is NOT SoCal. In Ohio they have 4 seasons.....Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter & Road Construction Season. The girls in Cleveland wear Babooshkas, not bikinis....and any swimming in the toxic waters of Lake Erie (the largest body of eternally polluted water in the world BTW) can lead to numerous skin and respiratory disorders. Wanna go "surfing" in Cleveland? Better have a good computer..........anyways, it is against such a dank and bleak backdrop that The Browns braintrust have their PR nachtmare....so I opine that the two-year wonders presently running the football operations might want to save their jobs by showing BrownieNation that there is no moss growing on their Nikes eh!! ....and what better way to do that than move up to get FOUR stars in the top 37 picks eh!!!

Now...on to snackdaddy who is down in the dumps about building a team through the Draft....especially a 4-12 team with a questionable QB.
UM....TWO WORDS....
Dallas Cowboys!!

In 2015 the Cowboys went 4-12.
Early in the 2016 their QB, Tony DegenerativeDisc Romo went down.
Yet they finished a miraculous Jared Cook catch from going to the NFC Championship game the next season after stinking it up at 4-12.

How'd the Cowpokes do that eh???!!!

Two 2016 Draft Picks....Ezekiel Elliot and Dak Prescott seemed to be the impetus that morphed Dallas from NFC East doormats to NFC Champs. Tell me if I am lying!!

Good teams in the NFL turnover their roster about 30% annually.
Lousy teams in the NFL should obviously turn over the personnel on their suspect rosters to a higher percentage, n'est-ce pas?

In my best Mr. Spock:
"It's only logical."

CanuckRightWinger wrote:UM....TWO WORDS....
Dallas Cowboys!!

How'd the Cowpokes do that eh???!!!

Two 2016 Draft Picks....Ezekiel Elliot and Dak Prescott seemed to be the impetus that morphed Dallas from NFC East doormats to NFC Champs. Tell me if I am lying!!

First off canuck, no two word profanity is allowed on our board. lol

It has been stated that their offensive line had a great deal to do with the success of Prescott and Elliot. Beside the fortunate/savvy selections of those two, if not for the protection, things may have gone much worse.

Los Ramos don't appear to be all that stout upfront.

I think snack was lamenting over our failed attempt to build through the draft. We have been the youngest team for what, 3 or 4 years now?

Yet, I personally don't know what we have. The players performance results are a product of Fishers system and tutelage. The players were also selected by them so perhaps the new young blood selected with a new philosophy by new personnel men might work this time.

I have a feeling we are going to go to war with many of the same guys to see which players bear fruit. this is because of our cap restrictions and all the unknowns.
BUT, they can't over pay for anyone. If they tag Tru at least it would be for 1 year so they could get a look at what we do have.

The no brainer weak positions are WR, LB and OL imo. If TruJo goes, than DB is also a concern. If Los Ramos plan to go with FA's then some of the higher paid guys better look good on tape.

Here's a list of the top Rams players and their cap numbers.

So aside from a headache what am I supposed to glean from your post? You feel that the Rams have a PR nightmare, or is it nachtmare, so the solution to that is trade down and get worse draft picks so we add lesser players than we could with our current draft picks? Because more of a lesser thing is better for PR? Also we should not sign our one good young DB to improve PR and make a better team? You don't like our QB so we need to panic and trade down and draft our own Dak and Zeke?

I clearly need to drink more when I visit your fine board Elvis. I'm not sure if OP is even in English. I know it's a commonly spoken language in Vancouver having been there and having several friends there. But this gobbly gook written down is just painful to try to decipher.