The St. Louis Rams get ready to ride the 2012 NFL Rumor mill. Up so far: Draft moves, Jeff Fisher acolytes, and somebody, anybody to help Sam Bradford out.
Look, I don't know anything about how much Adam "Pacman" Jones still has left in the tank, or how his relationship with Jeff Fisher is, or what his tank is even filled with, but I am convinced this is the only way for the St. Louis Rams to truly leave the Steve Spagnuolo era of only signing players who aren't completely morally objectionable behind: The Rams need to sign Pacman.
I don't think I could convince you any better than DCRamsFan does in the above Turf Show Times link, but some people just aren't sufficiently impressed by the fact that he once beat Sting and Kurt Angle for the TNA World Tag Team Championship belt as one-half of "Team Pacman." Without even wrestling!
As a punt returner and a cornerback, Adam Jones is perhaps unremarkable at this point in his career. But as a terrifying spectacle and distraction—well, he's unmatched. Which is just something to keep in mind, if the Rams you see in 2012 still look a little too four-pillars-y to you.
The NFL rumor mill has spent a few years now connecting Vincent Jackson to the St. Louis Rams, but coming into the 2012 season we do have a new piece of information to bring to bear on the question of star free agent wide receivers and Sam Bradford: Brandon Lloyd.
Here's what we learned: A great wide receiver makes the offense better, but nothing—not even Sam Bradford throwing to an established star—can save an offense as hopeless as the one the Rams fielded last year. In 11 starts he caught 51 balls for 683 yards and five touchdowns, and the Rams were still completely hopeless on offense. They could have had three or four Brandon Lloyds and still managed to be just as hopeless, somehow.
Of course, we won't know for a while yet whether the new braintrust's offense is any better than the one Josh McDaniels hastily installed and dismantled with Brandon Lloyd atop the depth chart. But whatever happens with Vincent Jackson, we'll be left to wonder what's the difference.
Consider this a possible perfect storm of free agent acquisition: The St. Louis Rams fire Steve Spagnuolo, renowned far and wide for his Four Pillars of personal accountability, just in time for a certain star wide receiver slash diva—stop me if you've heard that one before—to become available after a down season. This year's star headcase: DeSean Jackson, coming off a down year in a disappointingly pedestrian Philadelphia Eagles offense.
Jackson's kind of the player the Rams hoped Donnie Avery would be: His catch rate is never going to impress—last year it was 56 percent, a career high, and the year before—when he led the NFL in yards per reception—it was only 49. But in a team that's been stuck with the likes of Danny Amendola as Sam Bradford's top target, the 26-year-old Jackson would make a major downfield difference.
Turf Show Times wonders if his emotional immaturity is enough for the Eagles to avoid using the franchise tag on him, and if it isn't the Rams should exorcise Spagnuolo once and for all and give him a shot. Unlike the Eagles, they have nothing to lose.
I'm not sure the St. Louis Rams, less than a season removed from the Mike Sims-Walker debacle, are ready to bring in yet another second-tier veteran wide receiver to attempt to stabilize Sam Bradford's options downfield, but if they want somebody whose value is suddenly a lot lower than it was last week they could do worse than Lee Evans, seeing as it doesn't take an NFL rumors expert to guess that he could be on his way out with the not-entirely-satisfied Baltimore Ravens.
Evans missed most of the regular season in 2011, but he'd looked pretty good in the playoffs before that awful last-minute drop, and the 31-year-old spent several years as a solid option for a Buffalo Bills team that could never find anybody to throw the ball his way.
In any case, some team is likely to pull the trigger, and the good news for Evans if he goes to the Rams is that he's unlikely to have the weight of a Super Bowl near-miss on his shoulders in the first year of the Jeff Fisher administration...
I'm not sure the St. Louis Rams, less than a season removed from the Mike Sims-Walker debacle, are ready to bring in yet another second-tier veteran wide receiver to attempt to stabilize Sam Bradford's options downfield, but if they want somebody whose value is suddenly a lot lower than it was last week they could do worse than Lee Evans, seeing as it doesn't take an NFL rumors expert to guess that he could be on his way out with the not-entirely-satisfied Baltimore Ravens.
Evans missed most of the regular season in 2011, but he'd looked pretty good in the playoffs before that awful last-minute drop, and the 31-year-old spent several years as a solid option for a Buffalo Bills team that could never find anybody to throw the ball his way.
In any case, some team is likely to pull the trigger, and the good news for Evans if he goes to the Rams is that he's unlikely to have the weight of a Super Bowl near-miss on his shoulders in the first year of the Jeff Fisher administration...
The St. Louis Rams are just about to begin a full-sized, lockout-free offseason, and with a new coach at the helm one rumor seems increasingly certain: Jeff Fisher will do the new-coach thing and bring some former Tennessee Titans in for tryouts whenever he gets the chance, just as Steve Spagnuolo and Scott Linehan did before him. Turf Show Times suggests DT Jason Jones as a possible early fit, and given Fred Robbins's age the 25-year-old Jones, a 2008 second-rounder, would make a lot of sense.
They've also discussed this routine as it relates to likely free agent Cortland Finnegan—and given that he's both a cornerback and ambulatory, he'd be a perfect fit for a Rams team that lost nearly every defensive back to some devastating injury or another over the course of their benighted 2011 season.
There are plenty of possible storylines for the Rams heading into 2012, but Jeff Fisher's arrival is one of the likeliest source of free agency rumors we're likely to see all the way until next August. Given how long he was there, no Tennessee Titan is safe.
With the Indianapolis Colts having successfully sucked for Andrew Luck in a year without the best quarterback of all time at the tiller, fans of strong teams with poor quarterback situations have quite a sideshow to watch in the 2012 NFL Mock Draft season: Who's going to be Pretty Good for Peyton Manning? So far the Kansas City Chiefs have been the favorites, perhaps because of some Joe Montana muscle memory, but WalterFootball.com, in the middle of trading the St. Louis Rams' pick to the Browns, reminds us that the Arizona Cardinals still make sense.
That sound you hear is Jeff Fisher calling the Miami Dolphins and asking just how serious they were about that whole contract thing. The Rams will have problems enough in the NFC West from the newly reinvigorated San Francisco 49ers in 2012; the 8-8 Cardinals upgrading from John Skelton and Kevin Kolb to Manning, who as recently as 2010 ran up 4700 yards passing and 33 touchdowns would put two 10 win teams in a division that just last year wasn't supposed to have any.
The Rams taking Justin Blackmon at number four and some other players with their extra picks probably won't be quite as much of an upgrade, no matter how well you think Sam Bradford's going to bounce back.
Vincent Jackson, St. Louis Rams Begin Third Star-Crossed NFL Rumors Affair
by Dan Moore
Here's all you need to know about the St. Louis Rams' ability to build a receiving corps around Sam Bradford: In the two years he's been their franchise quarterback, Vincent Jackson has been available each time—and each time the Rams have been their to puff up the mercurial San Diego Chargers receiver at his value's lowest ebb. This week the Chargers have revealed that they won't be franchising Jackson, and the Rams' number-one receiver is still Danny Amendola. Let the rumor mill churn. The Chicago Bears are presently in the lead, but don't kid yourselves: The Rams will come-a-calling.
They have no choice. They're the Rams. So long as Vincent Jackson is around, burning bridges and catching footballs more than five yards downfield, he'll be drawn to the Rams like a really good wide receiver who's too crazy to play for teams that would otherwise love to have him.
So long as the Rams are around, building larger and sturdier braces for Danario Alexander, they'll have to go after him. It's no use pretending otherwise: they were made for each other.
Mar 06 5:15p