It’s still a little hard to believe
Womens Tre Madden Jersey , but during their first year in Los Angeles, the Rams were 4-12 with the worst offense in the NFL. Then they subtracted one Jeff
Fisher, added one Sean McVay, and suddenly the LA Rams are the best team in the
game. And the Seattle Seahawks are not.Though I don’t think the Seahawks are a
bad team by any means, they aren’t too far off from the 7-9 Rams teams that
Seattle wiped away for most of the Fisher years. There are many new faces but
overall, LA isn’t too different from the team that went 11-5 and won the
division a year ago. The only differences they do have are the ones that make
them more likely to go 16-0 than any other team in football. An undefeated
season? Probably not. But at this pace of offensive scoring and defensive, umm,
not-scoring, the Rams are likely to get the number one seed.Can the Seahawks
knock them off their course on Sunday in Seattle? In order to get a better idea
of how jugger this naut really is, I sent five Qs over to Joe McAtee at Turf
Show Times and in kind he sent me five corresponding As.Q: Besides learning the
offense better, what’s different about Jared Goff between last season and this
season?A: Well, it’s tough to be fair here, because he’s coming off of the two
best performances of his career, the last one being absolutely spectacular.If
we’re going off the last two games as something anywhere close to being
representative of what he’s going to provide this year (and beyond), I think the
biggest difference is just the aggression and the success derived from it. It’s
not just that he’s making throws with a high degree of difficulty. It’s that
he’s attempting them. A year ago, Goff would have pulled a lot of those throws
back and either continued to go through his progressions or run or thrown it
away. This year
Shaun Alexander Jersey , he’s going for those throws...and making them.That’s the difference between a solid game where he manages things and
throws maybe two or three touchdowns and a respectable chunk of yardage and the
Thursday night performance where he looked literally unstoppable. And that’s not
something you can ascribe to the scheme he’s handed by Head Coach Sean McVay or
the protection from the offensive line. Those things create the environment
where taking those aggressive opportunities is even possible, but taking
advantage of them is completely on his shoulders.Q: A lot of people talk about
the Rams pushing all-in on 2018, but what are the reasons to think of LA as a
long-term threat (3-5 more years) even if they don’t win the Super Bowl this
season? And conversely, your concerns if they don’t win the Super Bowl as far as
what questions need to be answered in 2019?A: Well, I think the main reason Rams
fans have sincere reason to be comfortable with the medium-term future is that
they have a very good core locked up. QB Jared Goff, RB Todd Gurley, all of
their wide receivers and DL Aaron Donald are all locked up through 2020. In
fact, all of them aside from Goff and WR Cooper Kupp are locked up beyond that.
So there’s nothing to suggest there’s any kind of personnel rebuild needed for a
long time. Of course the other would be the fact that Sean McVay is head coach.
So even if we can’t get the ring this year, there’s not reason for Rams to panic
and assume some precipitous decline is a given.As for if they don’t win the
Super Bowl and especially if they fall short well before then, of course we’re
going to have to look at why. Is it the lack of edge rushing? The Rams have a
fantastic interior rush from Donald and DL Ndamukong Suh, but they’re not
getting solid pressure from the outside. Is that going to come back to hurt
them? Will it be run defense at the second level? Will the offensive line play
drop off?And then you look at the departing talent. Suh is gone. S Lamarcus
Joyner is pretty much certain to be gone. LG Rodger Saffold, EDGE Matt Longacre
and tons of depth are on expiring deals. Filling those as adequately as they
have to this point is a hell of a task.Overall though, the Rams have their
HC-QB-WR nexus stacked with Gurley right there with them and Donald locked up
for what might be the rest of his career. That’s better than most team’s
outlooks beyond 2018.Q: How much of the Rams success could be credited to Los
Angeles? I know this is a complicated question to answer, but do you think this
would have been possible in St. Louis or does the rapid turnaround have a lot to
do with an influx of financial support and desire to make the Rams a show worth
watching immediately?A: Yeah, that’s a really interesting question. I certainly
think the pressure of permeating the LA zeitgeist was a legitimate motivating
factor behind the front office’s performance since returning. I think just in
terms of the pressure, VP/COO Kevin Demoff
http://www.seahawkslockerroom.com/authentic-shaquill-griffin-jersey , VP Tony Pastoors and GM Les Snead knew they couldn’t be, say, conventional in
trying to fix the mess left in the wake of the 2016 season. The Rams returned to
LA, put up a 4-12 season on the backs of one of the worst offenses in league
history and killed nearly all of the interest from casual fans or would-be
attendees. It’s not that there’s not a population of hardcore fans who would
have attended games and bought season tickets and read TST every day. It’s that
that population isn’t representative of the whole. That was clear at the end of
2016 and early in 2017.The Rams had to permeate a media environment where the
Lakers, Dodgers and USC dominated. Now, LeBron is in LA. The Dodgers are in the
playoffs. And...ok, USC isn’t exactly lighting it up with Sam Darnold gone, but
the Rams weren’t going to be worth much to the kind of people who showed up to
the playoff game last year and not many other games. The Rams had to make some
kind of dent into the LA consciousness or they were going to be a league-wide
joke heading into 2020 when the new stadium opens (for example: see the other
team in LA and how well they’re being supported and covered...).So, I wouldn’t
have suggested it wouldn’t have been possible in St. Louis. The Greatest Show on
Turf happened. Clearly, the roster was good enough last year and that really
only had one trade of note in WR Sammy Watkins who (a) many thought was pretty
disappointing all things considered and (b) only factored in for a single season
on the back of a second-round trade (if anything, you could point to that move
being motivated by these kinds of LA-specific forces and that if you argue it
failed, maybe the entire suggestion that those LA-specific forces helped the
turnaround falls apart). So the personnel was clearly good enough to perform
well on its own with a capable coaching staff. And I don’t see why the Rams
couldn’t have put together a capable coaching staff in the Lou.I think it’s more
a factor that the Rams SEVERELY underwhelmed in the final two years under Jeff
Fisher and his staff despite quality personnel and then with McVay’s arrival
catapulted forward to give those LA-specific forces a chance to perhaps push the
Rams over the edge.Q: You only get to protect one player for the rest of the
season. You can put a magic spell on him that makes him impervious to injury.
Who is that player?A: QB Jared Goff. And it’s as much about Goff as it is backup
QB Sean Mannion.Q: I know you’ve heard of Michael Dickson, so do you have any
concerns at all that Johnny Hekker might not be the best punter in the division
anymore?A: Ooh, so now I get to play defensive, homer-y Rams fan and say hell
no. Hekker’s the best. Dickson’s just a Michael-come-lately.Facetiousness aside,
I think the bigger thing to think about is how valuable punters can be when
you’re not playing spectacular football. Hekker was such a HUGE weapon for the
Rams when the offense
Bobby Wagner Jersey Green , uh, was a very small weapon. And I do honestly think when we talk about the top of the punter talent pool, we could be
talking about them being undervalued in the right situation (which for them,
unfairly perhaps, is being on a bad offensive team).The average salary for the
punter position is $1.514m. For running backs, it’s $1.571m. For safeties and
inside linebackers, they’re both averaging less than $2.1m. But when you look at
running backs, inside linebackers and safeties, the top salaries are more than
$10m (though the running backs don’t have many crossing the line...). Punters?
Nobody is on the books to crack even $5m.So no, you’ll never get me to dis the
Hekk. But I do wonder why so many teams are underpaying a position that has such
an outsized effect on their performance. Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll is
sticking around through the 2021 season after signing a three-year contract
extension.Carroll said he was first approached about an extension last week and
finished the deal on Monday. The contract will take him through his 70th
birthday in September 2021.Carroll is in his ninth season as Seattle's coach and
clinched his seventh playoff berth with Sunday's victory over Kansas City. He is
97-59-1 overall in his tenure and led Seattle to a pair of Super Bowl
appearances, winning the franchise's only championship after the 2013
season.There was some question about the direction of the franchise following
the death of owner Paul Allen in October, but Carroll says he "in great shape"
and is appreciative of how he's been treated by the organization since his
arrival."The organization has been exceedingly good to me throughout the whole
time we've been here and they have continued to take that position and I
couldn't be happier," Carroll said.Carroll is the franchise leader in victories
and had only two losing seasons in his time with the Seahawks ??they went 7-9 in
his first two years. His longevity with the Seahawks contrasts with his first
stints as an NFL head coach when he lasted one season as the New York Jets coach
in 1994 and three seasons with New England before being let go after the 1999
season.This season was supposed to be the start of a rebuild for Seattle, but
Carroll's team has been ahead of schedule and will be back in the playoffs after
missing the postseason a year ago."It feels like we are just getting started,"
Carroll said.
