St. Louis Rams Real Talk: Week 3

When the referee identified the St. Louis Rams as "St. Louie" in the opening moments of Sunday's matchup with the Chicago Bears, we all thought it was cute.

St. Louie! How can we not LOVE these cads?!

Turns out that was a bit of foreshadowing. The Rams turned back the clock to the 1940s: Crank up the Benny Hill and watch the offense go... I'm not saying that the Bears and Rams made a conscience effort to sully the legacy of NFL Films President Steve Sabol, who passed away this week. But they didn't do anything on the field that would be worth of film stock either.

It was bad enough for Deadspin to devote an entire post to it, though.

1. Oh, Sammy.

Sam Bradford is playing behind a makeshift offensive line and has a WR corps that would make the Dolphins pinch their noses. These are not things to ignore when evaluating our QBs performance.

BUT.

18/35 for 152 yards and 2 interceptions?

There were 1,696 men in pads this weekend getting paid to play professional football. Sam gets paid more than all but seven of those men. That is not a typo, Sam Bradford is the 8th highest-paid player in the National Football League. He's the 27th highest-paid player in ALL of professional sports in the US, according to Forbes.

OK. So you're not the guy who thinks that we should just take a players salary and expect him to be exactly that good a player. (See the reasons why above.) And I'm not that guy either.

BUT.

I think it's fair to start trying to get a return on investment for Sam Bradford's paycheck. He was injury riddled last season, and he's been putrid in two of three games in 2012. At a certain point, you've got to rise above the circumstances, shitty as they are, and make some things happen. And if we're all going to sit here and accept that no QB could do anything with this OL and WR group... then why play him at all?

It's not the big things. We get the big things.

It's the little shit. Like taking the sack with 4:20 left in Q3 after being in the pocket for six seconds. He knows the rush is coming; why isn't he getting out of a busted play? This is one of three sacks Bradford took that he didn't have to—when he had time to throw it away or run, but didn't.

I'm not ready to cut bait. Yet. But if you're going to be a star in the NFL, then eventually, you've got to be a star in the NFL.

2. Speaking of offense...

Was the game plan simply to see if there were enough penalties out there to move up and down the field a few times?

I'm only kind of joking.

Only 15 planned rushes? Bradford ineffective, so we call his number 35 times? Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you usually try to protect backup offensive lineman by NOT having them in pass protect 70 percent of the time?

I know Mike Martz was on the call for the Lions/Titans game, so he couldn't have used an old Bears coach's pass to sneak back into the booth. So that's off the table as far as excuses.

You know how many times the Rams got into the Red Zone? None.

3. The defense came to play.

Take away the pick 6 and the late field goal that was more icing on the win and the Rams D surrendered 13 points on the road in a tough stadium to play. That's going to keep you in 90 percent of games, but the Rams offense was a disaster area.

(Side: Remember when they almost didn't kick the FG before half? The offense somehow could have been worse.)

4. We need to make the Cards/Cubs and Bears/Rams an annual tradition.

I was originally going to go to this game, before stupid real life got in the way. But about 10 times I was in a conversation about how bad-ass it would have been to take in a Cards game Friday and Saturday then a Rams game on Sunday.

Can we just flip it to each city on a bi-annual basis? Would anybody be against this being a third-weekend-in-September tradition?

Twitter Reacts:

Jason Smith! Shouldn't you find something better to do while you're on the Jets bench? It's over, man. It's over.

Evil Mike Tomlin, not a big of a fan of the Rams D. I don't know why he's taking shots in the middle of one of the worst offensive performances we've seen, well, since all of last year.

You know what? Nevermind.

Yes. I ripped that red zone stat from Trey Wingo. I felt bad about not giving him credit, so here's his Tweet about it. Hopefully he didn't rip it off from someone else. If so, that's on him.

Annnnddddd the hits just keep coming. Let's bring up one of the worst Rams games ever, SportsCenter. Just what we needed today.

Why is Jarrett Payton a verified account?

Honestly, why?

Record: 1-2

Real Meter: (Where we project the Rams win total for the year): 5