Stopping Matthew Stafford and the Detroit Lions for three quarters apparently wasn't enough for the St. Louis Rams' young new defense--in Week 2, against the Washington Redskins, all NFL eyes will be on the Rams D as it attempts to stop Robert Griffin III a week after he put together one of the most impressive rookie debuts in recent memory. The Edward Jones Dome crowd will be focused on what the Rams' offense and their own would-be franchise quarterback, Sam Bradford, can do; everybody else in America, though, will have another preoccupation.
That the Rams are without their own 2012 first-rounder--run-stuffing DT Michae Brockers--will likely go unnoticed, so it'll be up to Chris Long and Robert Quinn up front and Cortland Finnegan and Janoris Jenkins in the secondary to keep RG3 reined in (and also get their own names in the proverbial papers.)
It's not often the Rams find themselvs in one of these overgeneralized Big Narrative Games, and the whole thing feels a little weird after all this time; Robert Griffin III seems almost certain to regress a little, inasmuch as he's probably not the best quarterback in football yet, so I'm not sure how much credit the Rams would or ought to get in such a situation. But I guess it's better than just being irrelevant.