Wilson is the best QB in the division until proven otherwise. He’s got pretty remarkably consistent numbers..30+ TDs.
But a great Rams season and 35+ TDs from Stafford will certainly make this an argument.

Dog said:

Hoping Allen fools us all and we immediately see why the Rams were comfortable not addressing the need.

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Not trying to be overly dramatic but I would say our season pretty much counts on it.

Personally, I have a ton of respect for Kyle Shanahan. I believe he's a top 5 coach in the NFL. He's built a very talented roster and has a great system. His situation with Jimmy G reminds me of Reid and Alex Smith, McVay and Goff. I'll even go on to say the 2019 Niners were better than the 2020 Bucs.

At the end of the day it's hard to hide a QB when you need to score late in the fourth quarter. The Niners drafted Trey Lance with a particular player in mind. The kid is a tremendous athlete, great arm. It's gonna be very interesting to see how it all plays out in SF this year.

This feels like THE YEAR it all comes together!

den-the-coach said:

I've had this debate with others, PFF's grade included Blythe both at Center & Guard, if it just rated him at Center, he would have graded above Allen. Does not matter, it's a different Brian Allen and I'm anxious to see him rise to the occasion and put all our minds at ease.

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Is this a guess, or do you have the breakdown?

Because in 18, Blythe graded out about 20 points higher on PFF when he was playing guard, exclusively.
And if he was playing guard that bad in 19, even more reason that Allen could've looked bad in 19.

CGI_Ram said:

I love that answer by Snead.

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Same.

I think Snead has great confidence in his department and its process, but I don't think that should be interpreted as over confidence.

The Rams understand that even with great process, there's a ton of variance in the draft and that's why they value getting a lot of picks.
More picks with a better process gives you better odds of getting productive NFL players.

Loyal said:

There's no crying in football! ~ @den-the-coach

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You did not have to add the blue font. Seriously have no issue with it either way, the great Jim Valvano said you should do three things everyday, "Laugh, think & cry." Nothing wrong with that and I don't think anyone is ever going to question Aaron Donald either.

Who is going to push them off the MR53?

All 3 looked real good to me. Rams needed some fresh blood in this DL ...badly. Brown, Hoecht & Williams fit nicely. Our DL has a good blend.

Reed has always delivered on the field in real games. I believe Reed will get many more snaps this season than most think he will. Burgess has been slow to return to form from the time he was broke. Scott has a bad knee and so did Rapp. This secondary could carry this defense right to the SB if they remain healthy with help from the Pass rushers up front.

2021 NFL Season Kick-off: Are You Ready For More Football?​

The ongoing tech revolution is impacting the NFL in the form of wearable tracking technology that delivers scads of practice-day data to NFL coaching staffs. Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores, for instance, says he meets every day with strength and conditioning coaches and athletic trainers to parse this data, trying to assess who might have had too much time on his legs and who needs a nudge to jack up his effort.

“We talk about loads and intensity, speeds, distance over a given period of time,” Flores says. “We can gauge and forecast where there may be some problem areas. We use that data.

“As a staff, you have to use your eyes, too — what you are seeing on a day-to-day basis. Coaching instinct, call it.”

Tech and that coaching instinct will become even more vital to teams in 2021 as coaches and front offices wrestle with a new question: What does load management look like with an extra game on the schedule? Will a player like Saquon Barkley, coming back from a torn ACL, see his touches affected?

The NFL, which hadn’t changed its schedule since 1978 when it went from 14 to 16 games, will play 17 regular-season games this year for the first time ever. It’s a big deal to the league — commissioner Roger Goodell called it “a monumental moment in NFL history” when the change was announced.

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Now come the challenges, including the demands of an extra week of game speed and all its potential reverberations of risk. Will teams seek to save snaps to rest key players with a Week 18 looming? With expanded playoffs already in play thanks to 2020’s extra wild card, more teams could be in the hunt later in the season, adding urgency. And adding chances for teams to outthink each other.

The ones that figure out how to best handle it all just might enhance their chances of reaching SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, the site of Super Bowl LVI. Which, thanks to the added game, has been pushed back to Feb. 13, 2022, making it the latest Super Bowl in history.

“Are we going to get like the NBA?” wonders Brian Billick, the NFL Network analyst who won Super Bowl XXXV as head coach of the Baltimore Ravens. “We already have teams sitting players if they’ve clinched. You’ve now extended the number of games you have to think about that.”

Coaches may try to save snaps here or there, but it seems unlikely that a superstar such as Tom Brady would sit out a game to rest. Brady’s own QB guru, the former MLB pitcher Tom House, who has a company — 3DQB — that trains quarterbacks, says one extra game “will not make a significant difference for quarterbacks.”

In most instances, Flores says, “The quarterback plays every snap, the O-line every snap, all things equal and going well. All others really manage themselves — the running backs, wide receivers and tight ends are in and out of the game and most of the defense, too, other than one safety or one linebacker. So that can manage itself, especially early in the year when no one’s really ready to play 80 snaps. We try to break it up, and we have that in mind, but at the end of the day, you need to put your best players on the field.”

Billick calls running back “the most demanding position in the NFL, for my money, because of the beating you take.” So teams may face juggling at that position. “Is it Week 15-16-17 where you have to walk that balance?” Billick says. “If you have a 250-plus-carry guy, how do you manage the last few games? You don’t want to be protective and miss the playoffs or a seeding, but you can’t wear a guy out so he’s not as ready for the playoffs as you would like.

“One more game, face value, how much difference does it make? Well, it really does.”

“To some, it’s one more exposure to risk,” adds Scott Pioli, the longtime NFL executive who won three Super Bowls as director of player personnel for the New England Patriots and is now an analyst for the NFL Network. “To others, it’s one more shot at opportunity.”

Owners and the NFL Players Association have talked about expanding the schedule since at least 2010, and an 18-game slate was even discussed in previous Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations. This year’s schedule, following new media deals for the league that are reportedly worth more than $100 billion, reduces the preseason to three games (there were none last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

There will be two weeks between the end of the preseason and the start of the regular season, which is slated to begin Sept. 9 and end Jan. 9, 2022. Teams will still get one bye week, which means the 17-game regular season will be played over 18 weeks.

Players, of course, are concerned about additional injury risk, and some even grumbled on social media when the 17th game was announced, including New Orleans Saints star running back Alvin Kamara. But the change was part of the 10-year extension of the CBA negotiated last March between the NFL owners and the NFLPA, and the players passed it by a narrow margin as part of a tradeoff to share in the league’s new media deals.

The NFL points to injury data that says a preseason game is the football activity that has the highest rates of injury and concussions; in fact, a preseason game has a 27 percent higher rate for missed-time injuries and a 15 percent higher rate for concussions than a regular-season game. Does that mean there’s no meaningful difference in injury risk from swapping out a preseason game for a 17th game? That, of course, remains to be seen.

Still, limiting plays is on the league’s mind. Here’s an example: While examining options to possibly tweak overtime rules, the league is wary of adding too many additional snaps to what will already have been an exhausting Sunday for players. So a potential OT option — the college-style shootout — is considered unattractive since it would pile too many plays onto players who are already playing more games than ever.

And there have been adjustments to training camp in recent years, including an acclimation period before padded practices begin and a reduction in padded practices overall, from 28 to 16. Coaches also build in days off for certain players. Bruce Arians, head coach of the defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, enjoyed success doing that last year with veterans such as Rob Gronkowski.

And with wearable tech, “coaches are now able to quantify the demands of their practice,” says Leigh Weiss, director of Rehabilitation/Physical Therapist for the New York Giants, who chairs the NFL/NFLPA Lower Extremity Soft Tissue Injury Task Force. “Maybe they thought a practice was moderate, but the data shows something else. … Maybe their wide receivers ran a whole bunch, and it might tell the coach to back off or when to step on the gas. We couldn’t do it five years ago; now it’s common practice.”

While some coaches famously want all the reps they can get, Arians says he prefers three preseason games. “The fourth one was usually all guys trying to make that final cut, and you weren’t playing anybody that was an injury risk for playing in your first two ballgames,” he says.

The two-week buffer between the end of preseason and the regular season will pose another wrinkle. Sitting starters after two preseason games means they’d have three weeks without a game until the opener. “That’s a long time to have no action,” Flores says. “I would say it’s going to be a feel thing for each coach.”

A team’s bye week will help determine how it approaches in-season work, Arians says: “If you have an early open date in a 17-game sked, that’s going to be a grind in December. Last year, I didn’t like having a Week 13 (bye), but I’d probably rather have a Week 10 to 13 open date with a 17-game schedule. Once you get to Thanksgiving, you start limiting the number of snaps in practice as far as full speed versus walk-through. You should be ready to go by then and not have to physically do as much.”

Beyond load management, the NFL sees the 17th game as a way to help grow the sport overseas — each of the 32 teams will play an international game at least once every eight years.

The 17th game adds quirks, too; no team can finish .500 now because the slate is uneven. And given today’s laser-accurate QBs, four more quarters could put the NFL record book under siege, especially for counting stats such as passing yards. FYI: Peyton Manning set the single-season record (5,477) in 2013.

On the question of how to handle this first season of 17 games, no one has all the answers yet. They’re looking for them, though.

“I know the technology side will help us prepare the athletes,” Weiss says. “Ultimately, you want to have them peak at the right time. We’re going to learn a ton this year.”

Coaches included. Flores knows just how to approach it. “Fluid is the right word, and that’s the game of football,” the Dolphins head coach says. “We all have to adjust. In this case, it’s a 17th game. We’re built to be flexible.”

Bryce Perkins' patience pays off​

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – For more than a year, quarterback Bryce Perkins patiently worked behind the scenes, trying to maximize every opportunity.

On Tuesday, it all paid off by earning a spot on the Rams' initial 53-man roster.

"I mean, it feels awesome," Perkins told theRams.com after Wednesday's practice. "I definitely wanted to open the offseason, really wanted to come back to training camp a better version of myself than I did in OTAs, and I really worked hard. I was going in with the mindset that I put the work in, and then whatever else happens, I'll be able to walk out of that really knowing that I got better personally. So everything worked out. I'm super excited. My family's excited for me. And now it just makes me want to work even harder, to elevate even more."

The accomplishment is all the more impressive when considering Perkins' path.

He originally joined the Rams as an undrafted free agent out of Virginia last year, and was among the many offensive rookies across the league who first began learning their schemes and systems in a virtual offseason program. Between preseason games and joint practices getting canceled and spending the majority of his first season on their practice squad – he was inactive after being promoted ahead of their divisional round playoff game against the Packers – the closest thing to live game reps before this year's three preseason games was the action he saw in a pair of intra-squad scrimmages.

While quarterback John Wolford handled scout team duties – meaning, being responsible for simulating an opponent's offensive tendencies for the Rams' defense in practice – Perkins still got valuable mental reps of the offense from watching him. Perkins credits the experience with helping him gain a greater understanding of the offense, which was further evidenced by the way he operated it across three preseason games last month.

Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O'Connell, who also coaches the team's quarterbacks, was proud of Perkins' achievement, given how much time they had invested into his development over the last year-plus.

"That was a lot of fun for me from start to finish," said O'Connell, when asked what he had seen from Perkins over the last 3-4 weeks. "We obviously had a little bit limited offseason last year, no offseason leading into training camp. It was really no exposure to him other than some Zoom meetings before last year's training camp started. And then we start going to work with Bryce, and him and I set out on a plan that would culminate with him playing in these preseason games at a really high level, and I cannot tell you how proud I am of him for the work he put in behind the scenes to be prepared to play. Not always the most easiest of circumstances in those games, as you guys well know, but for him to lead that group, improve every single time he went out there, give us chances – I know we didn't come away with any victories – but for that group, he was leading out there and to put us in position to try to win football games."

Even those who haven't been around Perkins as long have seen improvement in that short amount of time.

"The strides he's made since I even got here and saw him for the first time really ever this spring and to where he is now – just really proud of him and it's a testament to him and the work that he has put into it," Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford said after Tuesday's practice. "This is really important to him. You can tell the way he goes about his business. And then obviously he feels so prepared that he goes out there and plays the way he plays in the preseason games, which is awesome and really fun to watch."

As Perkins alluded to earlier, though, he knows the work is not done.

He was reminded as much when he spoke with his family to share the good news.

"I told my peoples," Perkins said. "My mom and brother and pop called me, super excited. My mom was like, 'Man, it's go-time now even more.' She knows the job's not done. She's excited for me, she wants me to work even harder to keep on improving."

Oh and btw the best way to attack quarters is verticals. Which is an area where we're far better suited to execute in 2021.

Tano said:

As I said - I wasn't sure because I couldn't remember seeing him in the game

But thanks for clarifying

Never saw him down on the ground either.

I think I know what happened why I didn't see him. That was the game that I had issues seeing the game because NFL network didn't go to the game until 10:30 PM EST and I kept scrambling around for a streaming site that would show the game.

Think I missed the first 10 - 20 minutes of the game. Wonder if it happened before I got to see the game.

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I didn't see him either. I don't think that he was targeted or mentioned before exiting.

Score more points, the Rams will. The red zone they will focus. Yes, hrrrm.

@Memento
Your boy Howell started out poorly, maybe he slips to a 2nd rounder!

In my own backyard. Pretty crazy story.

RhodyRams said:

just going to chime in here to mention this

I dont think the OP @PARAM was talking about the cities with the best fans, but the best sports cities as in the franchises based in those cities.

Im sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but go back and read the first post, no mention of fans at all

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Well its says “Best Sport Cities”so I assumed it to be all of it combined. Not just fans but fans could play a factor in being a true “great sports city”, Several citys have the 4 major sports teams, that would just put everyone in a tie for first until you start thinking of communitiy, traditions, championships and winning cultures.

Pitt should get a nod despite not having an NBA team. Theyve got championships or epic teams in Football, Baseball, and Hocky. I mean you gotta go back a bit but the history is there. IMO

Is Oakland a great sports city? I would say despite the Raiders rich history, the recent Warriors, and the bash brothers of the 80’s A’s, Eckersly and Bean ball, no that city sucks at supporting thier teams and for that reason is not a great Sports city.

Chicago is a great Sports city despite a lifelong failure of the Cubs until recently. Its because of the local scenes, the endless support, the big white W’s in everyones windows, that Ivy, even Harry. Not just the bulls and blackhawks. Fuck the Bears and 1985. That city is all about the Cubs and that area around Wrigley Field. And to me, thats enough to make it an endearing sports city.

I dunno, thats how I view great sports cities. And its just an opinion.

Any GOT fans bored? Need a good laugh? Two good vids for ya...

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I thought the title said “Mundt hopes trolling in the trenches pays off”.

BonifayRam said:

Jordan Fuller’s ‘extremely rare’ rise from 6th-round pick to Rams captain shouldn’t go overlooked​

Cameron DaSilva Thu, September 2, 2021,​

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Jordan Fuller’s ‘extremely rare’ rise from 6th-round pick to Rams captain shouldn’t go overlooked

Jordan Fuller wasted no time going from a sixth-round pick to one of the Rams' most important players in just two seasons.

sports.yahoo.com

It’s hard to expect much from a sixth-round rookie. Players drafted that late aren’t even guaranteed to make the team. Jordan Fuller not only made the Rams’ 53-man roster last year in his first NFL season, but he was a Week 1 starter at safety next to John Johnson.

Expectations weren’t overly high for the rookie out of Ohio State, given where he was drafted, but Fuller has done nothing but leap over every bar set for him. He started each of the 12 games he played last year, had three interceptions and five passes defensed, and recorded 60 tackles from his safety spot.

As if that wasn’t enough of a resume builder for the former Buckeye, Fuller checked another box on Wednesday when he was voted one of the Rams’ eight captains. For a player in only his second year, that’s quite the feat. But it should get even more attention for the fact that he was a sixth-round pick 16 months ago.

Defensive coordinator Raheem Morris has been blown away by the second-year safety, sharing just how unprecedented it is for a player to ascend as quickly as Fuller has.

“It’s really rare. You’re talking about a special human, though,” Morris said Wednesday. “You’re talking about a guy that stepped in. I forget what round he was actually drafted, maybe six. He came in at a sixth-round pick and then be able to come in to become a starter, go through some adversity, fight through an injury, be able to bounce back. Now you come back, attack another offseason. You attack the offseason with a new coach on defense, somebody you got to help out and somebody you got to teach how to communicate with you. Then you meet with that guy and you get a chance to bond with them during training camp, to watch him grow with his team. His team voted him as a captain. That is extremely special and extremely rare. It says it all about the young man.”

Fuller is expected to be the Rams’ signal caller on defense, wearing the green dot and relaying plays to the 10 other players when it comes in from Morris. That’s a huge responsibility, one John Johnson had last year.

Fuller’s intelligence and awareness on the field is evident despite him not being the rangiest or most athletic safety. He knows how to put himself in the right place at the right time, which is what makes him as good as he is.

“I’ve been around a couple of fortunate guys that have come in and contributed. I don’t know if I’ve been around a guy like Fuller who can come in and contribute and also take a leadership role and take a certain responsibility to his guys with examples,” Morris added.

As surprising as it is to see Fuller develop the way he has after just one season in the NFL, there was a contingent of people who knew he would be a good player at the next level. His position coach at Ohio State, Jeff Hafley, tweeted after the Rams drafted him that Fuller was one of the biggest steals of the draft and a future starter in the NFL.

He wasn’t wrong.

McVay and the Rams were obviously high on him coming out of Ohio State and they were surprised to see him available in the sixth round at No. 199 overall. It was one of their best picks of the 2020 draft and Fuller has undoubtedly been a massive steal for Los Angeles.

Fuller has become one of the most important players on defense for the Rams and now with Johnson out of the picture, his role will be even more critical. Hopefully he doesn’t miss time with injury this season because the Rams will be relying on him heavily to not only make plays, but get the defense aligned.

Few people could’ve seen a rise this rapid coming for Fuller, but he’s officially arrived and made a name for himself as a cog in Los Angeles’ secondary.

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I'm damn impressed by Fuller. I knew he was good and love watching him play but to be a Captain? This is soon? With that company? That bodes well for his future and our team!

andre said:

Has anyone seen this anywhere else? I have not, but it would be a good thing, I think. But I suspect the writer may just be wrong here.

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Neil039 said:

I thinking along the lines of division respectability. Crap I’d rather have the wins, just ask New England from 2000-2019 lol

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Yep.

And that pisses me off about the NFC West right now. Seattle just won't die and SF under Lynch is so gawd-damned talented. If these clowns had understood it was time to lay down for a decade or two we'd own the division and the NFC...

</rant>

Are you saying that these shorts (seen here worn in 1987) are no longer in style?

ottoman89 said:

Well, my guy Alaric Jackson made the team so I'm stoked. Still, I worry about ILB, CB depth and OL depth.

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Homer~ All Iowa fans lol. Pretty amazing her made the squad, congrats

I'm gonna disagree with the "proven" part of that. Statement. Unless "proven" means "Has one good season so far". But yes, the AFC has more hyped young QBs. Mostly from being categorically worse at the bottom over the past handful of years.