 IT WAS A SPECIAL SEASON, BY RAM RENE (March 5) |
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While watching the Rams
video the other day I started wondering if there was ever a season where fans had an
opportunity to appreciate what was happening as much as we did this year. Every preseason all the publications and shows come out with their picks to win the Divisions, Conferences, and Super Bowl. Most of the time they're pretty accurate ... at least through picking the Division Champions, which usually isn't hard to do. As such, fans have certain expectations. For example, take the Redskins, who were very good last year. This offseason they've made some moves to address their weakness---defense. They've also traded to move up in the draft and now have the 2nd & 3rd picks in the first round with two defensive blue-chip studs, LaVar Arrington & Courtney Brown, set in their sights. Redskin fans expectations have got to be high heading into the new season. They're expecting a lot from the team and anything short will be a disappointment. I'm not saying they must win the Super Bowl, but I'm not sure if they feel that just qualifying for the playoffs and then losing their first game will equate to a satisfying year. The Redskins will win a lot of games but fans are expecting that----so they're not really appreciating each win the way they should. At what point in the campaign will fans realize "Hey, something special's going on?" if indeed something special is going on. Let's look at a team that won the Super Bowl as another example, take the Denver Broncos the first year they won it. The year Denver won it's first Super Bowl expectations were MUCH higher in Denver then last year in St. Louis. We were ecstatic when we won the Division, Denver just yawned because it was expected. Denver didn't really get excited about what kind of year they were having until after their first playoff victory. Someone might say that for any team that wins the Super Bowl of course the year was appreciated. Yes, sure, of course, but that's hindsight. After somebody does something of course it's easy to say "Wow, what a great season". It's much harder to appreciate what's going on while it's going on versus after it's already happened. *Real* appreciation is not tied to the Lombardi trophy. Last season our expectations were much lower. We were coming off ten years of misery; the previous three seasons we had won something like 15 games combined! With all our off season moves, our expectations, on average, ran from 8-8 to maybe 10-6 and a wildcard birth. We appreciated each win perhaps more than other group of fans in the history of the NFL because of the decade of futility and because of the convincing way the RAMS destroyed people. Then, suddenly, we had our 8 to 10 wins and we could then really appreciate everything more that came... 11, 12, 13 wins, NFC West Division Champions, first home playoff game in the history of St. Louis, win over Vikings, win over Tampa Bay to become Conference Champions, getting to the Super Bowl, winning the Super Bowl. If we had stumbled anywhere in the range from winning 9 games to appearing in the Super Bowl I believe as fans we still would have considered it an incredible year. We would have said we've arrived and pointed to this upcoming year with expectations MUCH higher. Instead, we ran the board and so had a greater appreciation for every incremental step along the way than any group of fans, in my opinion, in the history of the NFL. |
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