St. Louis Rams have first pick and no choice but to get a QB
03:49 PM CST on Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The St. Louis Rams thought they had a quarterback in 2006.
Marc Bulger flourished under new head coach Scott Lenihan. He passed for career-bests 4,301 yards and 24 touchdowns against only eight interceptions that season and earned a trip to the Pro Bowl.
But injuries and a descending offensive cast have doomed Bulger since. He has been unable to play a complete 16-game season since 2006 because of injuries, and his play when he has been on the field has been less than sterling.
Bulger has thrown more interceptions (34) than touchdowns (27) and has lost 30 of his 36 starts since 2006. Lenihan was fired after the 2008 season, but the hole at quarterback remains.
The Rams had a chance to address the problem in 2008 when they had the second overall pick of the draft. But St. Louis passed up Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan for Virginia defensive end Chris Long. Ryan was selected by Atlanta on the next pick and took the Falcons to the playoffs as a rookie. Long and the Rams finished 2-14.
The Rams had the chance to address the problem again in 2009 when they had the second overall choice in the draft. But St. Louis passed up Southern Cal quarterback Mark Sanchez for Baylor offensive tackle Jason Smith. Sanchez was chosen three picks later by the Jets and took New York to the playoffs as a rookie. Smith and the Rams finished 1-15.
The Rams have the chance to address their problem in April again. St. Louis has the first overall selection and another potential franchise quarterback awaits them on the draft board.
Do the Rams finally draft a quarterback and give their fan base hope of one day fielding a competitive team again? Do they select 2008 Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford of Oklahoma? Or do they take the highest-rated player on the draft board and another lineman in Nebraska’s Outland Trophy-winning defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh?
The NFL is a passing league. Six of the top eight passing teams last season won division titles. The Colts (No. 2 in passing) and Saints (No. 4) met in the Super Bowl.
If you don’t have a quarterback, you don’t have a chance in today’s NFL. The Rams don’t have a quarterback. The time has come for them to address the most pressing need on their roster.
I thought our selection meeting for the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2010 was one of our more difficult ones. Of the 14 players on the final ballot, 10 were all-decade selections.
In giving the nod to Russ Grimm, Rickey Jackson, John Randle, Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith for induction, we on the 44-member committee left behind six all-decade performers: wide receivers Tim Brown and Cris Carter, tight end Shannon Sharpe, running back Roger Craig, center Dermontti Dawson and defensive tackle Cortez Kennedy.
They return to the queue in 2011 and will be joined by first-time eligibles Deion Sanders, Marshall Faulk, Jerome Bettis, Curtis Martin and Willie Roaf.
So the ballot for the Class of 2011 will include two of the top five rushers of all time (Bettis and Martin), two of the top five receivers of all time (Carter and Brown), a couple of eight-time Pro Bowlers (Kennedy and Sharpe), the usual assortment of all-decade performers (Craig, Dawson, Roaf, Sanders, Chris Doleman, Terrell Davis, Aeneas Williams) plus Charles Haley and his five Super Bowl rings.
Remember that the committee can only enshrine five modern era candidates at a time.
The Class of 2010 was again heavy on the offensive side with four inductees to only three on defense. That class includes senior candidates Floyd Little on offense and Dick LeBeau on defense.
So which five would you pick for the Class of 2011? In making your selections, remember that the gap continues to widen between offensive and defensive players in Canton. In the game’s modern era, there have been 113 players enshrined on offense and only 68 on defense.
I’m of the belief that at the end of the day, when they close the doors on the Hall of Fame for good, the numbers need to add up. Right now they do not.
The Philadelphia Eagles won their last NFL championship in 1960, outlasting the Green Bay Packers 17-13 at home before 67,325 at Franklin Field. This season marks the 50th anniversary of that championship.
Rumor has it the Eagles may be considering celebrating the anniversary of that title (Vince Lombardi’s lone postseason loss) by scheduling one game at Franklin Field this season. Ironically, the Green Bay Packers are ticketed to visit Philadelphia this fall.
The Eagles moved out of Franklin Field into the Vet in 1971, then on to Lincoln Financial Field in 2003. Franklin Field is on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania and remains in use as a football venue by the Ivy League Quakers.
The facility has been refurbished and now seats 52,593. The Eagles would need to add 15,000 seats to accommodate all of the ticket holders from Lincoln Financial Field. But it can be done. And it should be done. What a terrific idea.
Brett Favre took a physical beating in his last game of the 2009 season, an NFC title game loss to the New Orleans Saints. He went home to Mississippi where he is pondering his annual retirement.
But his division is giving him something to think about this spring and summer. The NFC North is loading up on pass rushers to get after Favre and the other quarterbacks in the division.
The Vikings already have the division’s best pass rusher in Pro Bowl end Jared Allen, who led the NFC with 14 ½ sacks last season. The Green Bay Packers also have a returning Pro Bowl pass rusher in outside linebacker Clay Matthews, who collected 10 sacks as a rookie in 2009.
Now the Chicago Bears have added a Pro Bowl pass rusher of their own with end Julius Peppers in free agency. He had 10 ½ sacks and forced five fumbles last season for the Carolina Panthers.
Not to be left out, the Detroit Lions signed Pro Bowl pass rusher Kyle Vanden Bosch in free agency. He was a Pro Bowler in 2009 and as recently as 2007 was in double-digits in sacks (12 ½ sacks) for the Tennessee Titans. At 31, he still has some gas in his tank to give a jump start to Detroit’s 29th-ranked pass rush.
The Fritz Pollard Alliance, the watchdog for diversity in the NFL, named its scouts of the year at its annual meeting at the NFL combine and picked two men with Dallas ties. The alliance named former Cowboy Alonzo Highsmith as its NFC scout of the year and C.O. Brocato as its AFC scout. Both scout the Southwest, Highsmith for the Green Bay Backers and Brocato the Tennessee Titans. Brocato is a long-time resident of Arlington and has been on preliminary Pro Football Hall of Fame lists for his innovations in scouting.
Not Without Hope, by Nick Schuyler.
This book details a tragic fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico last summer by the author and three friends, including Oakland linebacker Marquise Cooper and end Corey Smith.
Their boat capsized, and only the author survived the 41 hours it took for the search and rescue. What a tragic and sad tale of three young men dying in the prime of their lives. The four men clung to the capsized hull for hours on end, fighting turbulent seas that kept washing them off the boat into the shark-infested waters.
Schuyler chronicles the teamwork the men employed to stay alive through that first night, then the physical deterioration of his friends who would die in the frigid waters. It’s a miracle that Schuyler himself survived.
Powerful stuff.
With no salary cap and no salary-cap hits to absorb for bad contracts this off-season is giving NFL teams a chance to clean up their payrolls.
Anyone over the age of 30 with a decimal point in his paycheck was suddenly in jeopardy, which is why such prominent players with recently minted contracts as Jake Delhomme and LaDainian Tomlinson were released. By last Sunday night, 23 players who were primary starters for teams in 2009 had been jettisoned.
Rick Gosselin is the author of GoodFellows, the story of Detroit's surprisingly successful St. Ambrose football teams of the '50s and '60s.