The St. Louis Rams have been linked to multiple players since 2011 NFL Mock Draft season began, but it's usually been the same few—Julio Jones, Aldon Smith, more recently Robert Quinn. But Yahoo!'s latest mock draft throws a new tea-leaf into the crystal-ball mix, suggesting former consensus No. 1 Nick Fairley could fall the Rams' way at 14. Questions about Fairley's intangibles—namely his commitment, his maturity—have made him an enigma in draft discussions over the last few months, but I don't remember him ever falling this far.
At Turf Show Times they've discussed both the possibility of a Nick Fairley pick (somewhere between impossible and very implausible) and its feasibility, given the way his character concerns—he's supposed to have "taken plays off" as a college man—intersect with Steve Spagnuolo's by-now infamous concern about the Four Pillars of Rams football, which can be summarized as 1. Don't take plays off; 2. Never take plays off, even when you want to; 3. If you're taking plays off, stop doing that; and 4., Don't be the kind of guy who takes plays off.
I think this is all academic, given what an unlikelihood it is that he falls this far, but I'd be hard-pressed, if I were the Rams, to pass up on a player so talented.