Q: What's the last thing the opposing captains say to the St. Louis Rams right after the coin toss?
A: Come get your whuppin.
The NFL is, by a wide margin, the most successful sports league in America. The reasons for this are numerous, but on the Top 5 list has to be parity. The New York football teams aren't better than Green Bay, even though they have 25 times the resources. The NFL has set up a system that punishes teams when they win and rewards teams when they lose. If every team were 8-7 or 7-8 going into Week 17, the NFL would have its ultimate dream season.
Yes—the NFL is doing what it can to make sure the Rams are good. But right now, they're as bad as they've been since moving to St. Louis 16 seasons ago. Hard to believe, I know.
That's why the Rams' lack of success is galling. They're getting premium draft picks and preferential scheduling considerations in the hopes that this sad-sack franchise can reboot itself into something that isn't a complete embarrassment. Yet the leaders they've employed over the past three seasons have made all the wrong moves and drowned every edge with a violent resistance.
Before the 27-0 pasting the Pittsburgh Steelers (also minus 3 offensive line starters and their first string QB, mind you) administered to the Rams on Saturday, Pro Football Talk quoted sources saying that Rams ownership was "torn" about the coaching and management staff. Unless being torn is deciding whether to sue Steve Spagnuolo and Billy Devaney for their salaries back, then consider me confused. No other team in the NFL is expected to do less, then goes out and does less.
Hopefully Rams ownership saw the Colts, on Thursday night, win their second game of the season. They had no business being within 10 points of the Texans, but there they were driving down the field with under 2 minutes, giving a playoff team hell. Or maybe they caught the Vikings going on the road and putting it on the Redskins with yet another 3rd string QB. As rational fans, it's better that those teams won. Those wins improved the Rams draft order. But as actual fans, it's a travesty to see a team so willing to roll over in every facet of football.
Playing hard for Spags? Bullshit.
The administration has been propped up by people that are either stupid, afraid to call for another man's job or a combination of both. But the talent differential in the NFL from top to bottom isn't great enough for a team to be shut out twice in 4 weeks. I don't know what 'not playing hard' looks like for the Rams; if it's worse than what we saw on Saturday, then it's time for everyone but Steven Jackson to be cut.
The Rams are a terrible football team with a lame duck coach and GM. We knew that before the Steelers big boy'd them.
What we found out, though, is that these losers aren't even willing to play hard. Bottom line: they've embarrassed their fans by being the only team in the 2011 season that has flat-out quit. They're not willing to compete, even when the other terrible teams in the NFL are.
A joke of a season comes to a close Sunday. To bad it was played on us.