The St. Louis Rams couldn't leverage a hot start to both halves into an upset win against the 8-2 Atlanta Falcons, but it could have been worse: They could have been playing in a division that didn't really suck. Take a look at these prize-winning NFC West scores: The first-place Seattle Seahawks fell to 5-5 after a 34-19 loss to the New Orleans Saints; the Arizona Cardinals took the wrong end of the palindrome from the reeling Kansas City Chiefs, 31-13; the San Francisco 49ers lost 21-0 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I don't want to say this is a bad division, but (how bad is it??) last week's Seahawks/Cardinals game was advance-scouted by the Omaha Nighthawks.
↵Order has been restored in the cosmos: The NFC West no longer has a team above .500. The division's top point differential—it belongs to none other than the Rams—is -21. The third-place Cardinals have allowed nearly 300 points in 10 games. The top quarterback is a true rookie, and Troy Smith was briefly buzzworthy. The Rams certainly could have hoped for a better receiving corps on which to wean Sam Bradford, but they couldn't have hoped for a better division in which to do it. For all their flaws they remain a game out of first place. And a game out of last place, for that matter.
↵(Rejected UFL team names for the preceding gag: Altoona Lynx; Sacramento Mountain Lions; Virginia Destroyers. One of those is not a real UFL team name, but I defy any member of this blog to tell me which.)