A terrifying St. Louis Rams fact from Football Outsiders Almanac 2012, which is out now and worth your 12 bucks—"in 2011, St. Lois had a league-high 110.0 Adjusted Games Lost (AGL), the equivalent of losing seven key players for the year in training camp." Apparently that's the second-worst number of the last 10 years. And this team wasn't that good already! Rodger Saffold and Jason Smith were some combination of injured and not very good, Sam Bradford got hurt, by the end of the season I'm relatively sure that the Rams just weren't using any cornerbacks, and Danny Amendola had the most disgusting season-ending-injury ever in Week 1.
↵Which is to say that the Rams would probably be better this year even if they hadn't gotten better; they'd be playing their starters, whomever they turned out to be, more often unless lightning had struck twice.
↵Don't get me wrong: I'm trying very hard not to expect anything out of the 2012 St. Louis Rams. Life is better that way. But they spent so much effort remaking this team, both on and off the field, that a swing of a couple of games doesn't seem like anything Steve Spagnuolo and Josh McDaniels wouldn't have done.
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