Burwell: Young QB Davis shows he can lead team

  • To unlock all of features of Rams On Demand please take a brief moment to register. Registering is not only quick and easy, it also allows you access to additional features such as live chat, private messaging, and a host of other apps exclusive to Rams On Demand.

RamBill

Legend
Joined
Jul 31, 2010
Messages
8,874
Burwell: Young QB Davis shows he can lead team
• By BRYAN BURWELL

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/colu...cle_8ef6122a-193f-53b6-862f-e7170637b78b.html

Feel free to lament the plight of the Rams as this frustratingly incomplete football team is stuck on the proverbial hamster wheel. They churn and they churn, they spin and they sweat, but always seemingly going nowhere fast. So here we are heading into a Week 4 bye in the NFL season and we are already wondering when (if?) everything is going to click between new defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and all his creative Xs and Os and a talented defense that so far hasn’t lived up to its enormous promise.

So while we impatiently wait for the inevitable defensive breakthrough (We think. We hope???) to occur and for the Rams to stop giving up 34-point spasms to the ordinary likes of the Minnesota Vikings and the Dallas Cowboys, allow me to pass along this sliver of hope for something a little more upbeat about the Rams’ current wheel-spinning status.

Sunday inside the noisy Edward Jones Dome, while the Rams defense was getting gashed at all the most inopportune moments in this 34-31 loss to the Cowboys, coach Jeff Fisher got a confirmation of something he has suspected all along. Young Austin Davis is a quarterback he can believe in.

Don’t expect the coach to blurt out his unconditional love for the second-year QB with only two NFL starts on his resume. At least not just yet. But privately, Fisher probably already knows what most Rams followers have been rooting for all along. This undrafted passer with the on-field swagger of a high-round draft pick gives the Rams offense a chance to be something more than an unsightly, two-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust yawn machine.

The Rams suddenly look like an offense that has weapons. They can run the ball, but they can go airborne whenever they please. They can beat you on deep routes down the sideline or dig routes into the teeth of the secondary. They can beat you in the wide-open spaces in the middle of the field or cash in on touchdowns in the confined real estate of the red zone.

Davis had a few unfortunate glitches, including a killer pick-6 fourth-quarter interception that all but ended the Rams’ chance at knocking off the Cowboys. But for most of the game, he was as impressive as you could imagine. Davis completed 30 of 42 passes for a career-high 327 yards and three TD’s and a 98.0 pass efficiency rating.

But for the second week in a row, Davis proved that he is more than capable of running the Rams offense as well as any veteran with far more years of service under his belt. When asked what he thought of young Davis’ performance, Fisher didn’t hesitate to offer him praise, knowing full well that every word he utters will somehow be picked apart to look for signs of a budding QB controversy.

“Oh I think you saw how he played,” said the head coach.

He didn’t bother rattling off the stats, only mentioning the two picks that he obviously would love to have back and the dropped TD pass by tight end Jared Cook that could have dramatically changed Sunday’s outcome. “I thought he played well enough for us to win,” said Fisher.

And of course, you know where this is going right?

OHHHH MY GAWD!!!! Who is Fisher going to start at quarterback in two weeks when the Rams travel to Philadelphia on Oct. 5 after the bye week?

Hello QB controversy. We are still in the lower range of such stuff because this QB controversy is still in lower case. Shaun Hill is still nursing a tender thigh injury, which means he could still be at least a week or two away from being ready to play in an NFL game. So when asked if Davis’ play had forced him to reconsider his belief that Hill will take back the starter’s job when he is healthy, Fisher smiled.

“No,” he said. “I’ve stood behind that decision.”

Trust me on this. Fisher won’t spend a moment fretting over this. He won’t give up his decision on whether Davis has done enough to earn the job until he absolutely, positively has to make that decision. I believe the earliest possible date for him to tip his hand will be two weeks from now on the morning of that Eagles game.

But know this. Davis has done enough to win the job. He has completed 72.3 percent of his passes (68 of 94 attempts) for 754 yards and three touchdowns in three games. He has a QB pass efficiency rating of 93.1. But the biggest thing that you have to understand about Davis’ impact on the Rams is that Fisher now knows he isn’t handcuffed into coaching those grinding, unsightly offensive game plans that count on slogging through aesthetically unappealing 16-14 games.

The Rams can move the ball with Davis behind center. They can score with Davis. They can throw the ball deep with accuracy with Davis. They can challenge any defense that wants to load up the box to stop the running game and make them pay for that indiscretion. And all with Davis distributing the ball all over the field (he targeted six different receivers four or more times on Sunday and completed passes to eight different targets).

This is his job and we all know it, and we don’t need Fisher to say it publicly to make it so.

For now, though, Davis is playing this like the cool politician. “Well I’m not really thinking about it, honestly,” he told reporters on Sunday. “Coach Fisher has been pretty clear, when Shaun is healthy, he’ll be the starter. Until I hear different, that’s my approach.”

If he keeps playing like this, he will hear different soon enough.

Now about that defense ...
 

RamBill

Legend
Joined
Jul 31, 2010
Messages
8,874
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #2
Despite losing 34-31 to the Cowboys Sunday, the play of QB Austin Davis provided a ray of hope for the Rams. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Bryan Burwell reports from the Edward Jones Dome. (2:28)

Watch Burwell's Good News, Bad News