Clearly the Football Outsiders missed a lot in the 2009 projection that suggested the Rams would, or at least could, win eight games. But they did get one thing right! One suggested place for improvement pulled through, at last, but unfortunately, it was:
↵↵↵The St. Louis offense recovered only five of 17 fumbles in 2008. This one actually was correct. Even the Rams can't avoid fundamental laws of entropy, and they recovered seven of 16 offensive fumbles last year.
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The astonishing ability the Rams chapter of the Football Outsiders Almanac ascribe to the Rams of the last three years is this: even when it seems like they can't get any worse, when they've already been beaten to the ground by bad luck and poor personnel, they get worse. The only thing that got better in 2009, of all the seemingly certain spots for improvement after that disastrous 2010 was Steven Jackson, who is clearly the matter to the unluckable St. Louis Rams' anti-matter.
↵It's tough to make this prediction, but as a baseball blogger I have to stick to my guns on this one: This year, the Rams will finally regress toward that beautiful, not-the-worst-team-in-football mean. It has to happen eventually—this is like postponing the tide for two years. I wouldn't but for it to happen a third time in a row, but I'd be wary while I wasn't doing it.