 JIM FADLER'S BOMBSHELLS, OPINIONS, ASSESSMENTS,
AND INFO(Jan 11) |
||
| Back
to the Main Page FEATURES- The E-Zine's Quarterback Watch- -Front Office Debate- Ram-ble's Offseason Analyses Zack Neruda's FOD Analysis "E-ZINE" Fan Profiles- GRITS Ram Fan Smack Chick The HERD's home- RAMS Message Board Add yourself to The HERD's Official Roster (guestbook), if you think you are man enough! The HERD's ULTIMATE link page-add your favorite here! |
GREEN TRADE?
There have been meetings between Jay Zygmunt, John Shaw and Trent Green's agent about next
year. I had thought it would not happen---but I would not rule out a post draft and post
June 1st trade of Green. [The cap hit on Green goes down after June 1.] He does not want
to be a back up at all I hear. NEW TE? I hear the Rams are going to draft a tight end fairly high and/or try to sign an affordable one in the offseason and let Ernie walk away. He could still be back on a one year deal for bargain prices.....Ernie deserves a shot somewhere I think. BRUCE & VERMEIL. The truth of this whole deal is that it was never nearly as bad between the two as is made out...but I also think that some of Vermeil's words really stung Bruce and he will never totally trust Vermeil. Which is too bad because Vermeil has reached out several times to try and heal the wounds....and Bruce has never totally reached back. Bruce is a very high strung, very private person who makes the term.."emotionally complex" wholly inadequate. Vermeil handles people who wear their emotions more vividly....he is better with a Kurt Warner than an Isaac Bruce....better with D Farr or Kevin Carter than Marshall Faulk. WARNER. The issue of looking off the receivers. Green was very good at it during preseason and in the tape I saw of last year. Warner is starting to show some ability at that task. I still maintain that there are only a handful of passers in the NFL that are remotely good at this skill with Marino the absolute best. Flutie is good at it and George is as well. But in the much cursed George's case I think he looks himself off right into blunders sometimes...that is he concentrates so much on doing this he doesn't really know what he is throwing into sometimes. Think about the way that Bruce and the other receivers described Green's passes...they could "pluck them out of the air." Warner throws the same type of ball...if you get the point end down the ball will sink on the QB and/or tend to bounce out of a WR's arms and hands....a WR can pluck a ball out of the air when its point end up. To this I would add a supernatural calmness that is evident in games like the Giants game where in the first half he had every right to get frustrated and angry at all the drops...but he doesn't---he hangs in there and stays within himself and the offense and lets the game come to him. Kurt made a throw early in the Bears game for a big gain to Bruce that was superb...he could not have possibly seen Bruce as Ike was cutting in between the safety and a CB and the ball was right on the money. He has the amazing ability to drop a ball into a bucket from a very far distance...like I said a couple of times I am a Trent Green fan but how can anyone say that anyone let alone Trent Green can do any better than this. THE DEFENSE. About 3-4 games ago it seemed that they made a switch in attacking the tight end. No matter which side the TE lines up on either Jones or Collins takes a real good bang at him and tries to hold him up. Then Jenkins picks him up over the top and the other linebacker is almost always doubling him underneath. If you recall that throw that Beuerlein made to Walls in the first Carolina game you will remember that they had double coverage and it took a perfect throw to get it in there. When Billy has to split out wide to take on a WR or back he is banging and playing bump and run to slow up the release and that seems to be helping alot. He is definitely not as much of a wild gambler anymore. VARIOUS PLAYERS. Gruttadauria is the best bet among the free agents to not come back. They are going to offer Andy McCollum a contract and Tucker will be restricted. But Gruttadauria deserves a lot of credit for the line's success in blitz pickups and stunt assignments... something I used to pick on him about. Fred Miller has a near perfect set up on pass blocking. You could do a computer diagram of how a pass blocking tackle should be squared up with his shoulders and knees bent, and it would be Fred. I would like to see him get another shot at Le Freak on a neutral or home field. Rams coaches have long thought that Ryan Tucker's frame is all wrong for a center and he may have found an NFL home at tackle. Wistrom is an amazing player IMHO....to think that I wanted nothing to do with him before the draft..... his backside pursuit on running plays is as good as or better than anyone in the league, and his sack numbers fail to tell the whole story of his season. Grant is the best at breaking up screens in the league! I would say that his hand-eye coordination must be off the charts along with his football instincts. The players all identify Ray Agnew as one of the main leaders of the team. He is creditied with maintaing the locker room atmosphere and is especially good at keeping hyper people like D'Marco Farr focused. Leonard Little just blows through blocks. He is so fast and so strong that he simply makes the block superfulous....he can slow down the game. He is going to be unbelievable at OLB. Sometimes special teams play does not always translate into regular squad success...but in this case I have little doubt that it will. Devin Bush is better as a free safety than he will be as a strong safety IMHO...I still doubt that he will supplant Billy Jr. PLAYOFFS. I simply cannot abide Jeff George. I think his incredible physical gifts and superb mechanics are totally wasted on a .02 cent personality and one of the biggest punk attitudes I can ever recall seeing. He will make some of the most absurd throws under pressure and then yell at his coordinator or coach....Bring him on..... I fear no team in the NFC...bring on the Colts. CROWD NOISE. St. Louis people are so weird sometimes...its hard to describe to out of towners. I went to a concert once that the performer had to say..."people it's okay to have fun...get up off your butts." In my section at the Dome the noise is pretty good and the rest of the people stay into the game. But I know that there are a lot of sections in the Dome where they sit all game. The endzones are probably the best areas of the crowd for reaction and noise IMHO. Part of the problem remainsthe Dome's acoustics. If you look to the ceiling you will see a series of baffles installed to try and keep the noise and sound from washing out in the upper reaches of the Dome. As a result it seems that the higher up you go in the Dome the less loud it gets. The single loudest point of the Dome is on the field and I don't know that the TV microphones do justice to the sound level at all times. Then again we have those folks who keep writing letters to the PD saying that it is unsportsmanlike to make noise when the other team has the ball. COLLAPSE OF THE 9ERS. The key to the 49ers downfall is not the cap and it is not the departure of Policy, Clark or Eddie Debartolo. IMHO it is a series of terrible personnel decisions and the injury to Steve Young. They choose (ironically along with the Rams) to pursue Gabe Wilkins and lavish big cap dollars on him when his own team was skeptical about his heart, attitude, and ability to overcome injury. What kind of sense did it make to give more than $2million in bonus andcap dollars to Larry Phillips and Charlie Haley....not much I thought at the time. Nor did it make a lot of sense to me to put the franchise tag on Stokes. They seriously inflated what he was worth....Streets will eventually supplant him. And they consistently failed to draft any kind of offensive line help. In fact the organization made a decision at one point to cut way back on the college scouting department....they had decided to concentrate on pro scouting and free agency. As a result they have made a near endless run of bad draft picks. It was bad drafting and bad player decisions, and not this inevitable march to salary cap disaster that a lot of people have depicted it as. That and the one player that they could not afford to lose and really for me represented their only real magic left was Steve Young. Things in 49er land are going to get uglier before they get better...they still lots to cut, and the new owners don't have a clue. A RAMS CHRISTMAS. Lots of new Rams toys in the stocking for this big kid (ie. me)....another Ram Teddy Bear to add to my collection...a box of Warner Crunch cereal....a Rams Zeppelin to hand from the office ceiling....a card from Stan and Georgia (mailed out to all PSL holders) and a team photo today at the game. |
|