Across the internet tomorrow thousands of writers will trot out their Week 6 NFL Power Rankings, and those selfsame thousands will all have one question on their mind: "How terrible can I make things for St. Louis Rams fans this week?" The answer, even after a bye week filled with soul-searching and good fundamental football: Really terrible! I've been thinking about how bad things could get for the Rams in tomorrow's lists, with the Seattle Seahawks vaulting to 2-3 in the NFC West standings, and here are some possibilities:
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- Measured questions about strength of schedule and offensive uptake. This has not been a well-timed season for the Rams. They installed a complex new offense for their second-year quarterback to learn right before the NFL lockout wiped out most of the offseason, and when the regular season began as scheduled they were greeted with an incredibly difficult schedule. They've done worse than expected even given those conditions, but they could have done better than expected and still finished the stretch 0-4. [Note: Nobody in the Power Rankings business will talk like this.] ↵
- Unmeasured speculation about Andrew Luck. I haven't seen so much early draft speculation since David Robinson got hurt 17 games in and the San Antonio Spurs announced that they would spend the rest of the season writing "Mrs. Tim Duncan" into their notebooks, just to see what it looked like. At last count the Rams would be able to trade Andrew Luck for Julio Jones, a vial of Jerry Rice's youth serum for Torry Holt, four first-round draft picks, and a Jimmy John's franchise. ↵
- They haven't won any games! None at all! Ha, ha! The Rams have won zero games, they've played terribly, and their fanbase is demoralized. If you're looking for pageviews, as a Power Rankings Ranker, the smart money is to see if you can't get a law passed allowing you to place them behind several CFL teams. ↵