A hope for 2015 (and beyond)...

[shaunpinney]

I'm not sure if it's just me, but the Rams seem to take a good few weeks to "warm-up" to live playing time, our Defence especially. What I mean to say is, if we played this good from week 1 I think we could have beaten the Vikings, Cowboys and the Eagles and with that momentum, who knows what could have happened.

Am I the only one thats frustrated with this slow start again this year? I'm taking out the QB position and play and focussing on our lack of a the Run game in the early weeks, our non-existent defence and special teams, we just seem to take longer than the other teams to 'get match aware' and 'game fit'. Is it the way the Rams deal with the off-season? Can we approach pre-season better? Maybe we should treat pre-season as actual games and hope we get on form quicker next year...

I hope we can continue to improve, the next 3 games are going to be crucial and will really be better indicators of where we're at (even at the start of the season I expected us to beat the Raiders and Redskins) we can't look at these two games through rose tinted glasses...

Bring on the Draft and bring on the 2015 Season

 

[Faceplant]

Amen brother. It frustrates me every year that we start slow. This league is all about momentum, and I would love to see this team go out and put up a few more early season wins instead of always starting 1-3 or similar. Has to be a focus next year. It has to.

 

[Zaphod]

New defensive coordinator and a lot of youth, especially in the secondary, to include some rocky play from our linebackers, and the injury to Long and Hayes just coming back from an off-season of some pretty serious rehab as it sounds really didn't help either. But the biggest factor is that this team's strength is supposed to be it's defense and they were dealing with a new coordinator installing his system.

For that reason alone, I don't expect to see the same kind of start we had this year, unless the schedule is so seriously brutal that it dictates it. I do believe that the league wants us to remain it's whipping boy, and I understand that they gave us the lighter part of our schedule in the beginning of the season absolutely knowing that we would start out slow anyway.

Now, if they start out slow again next year I'll be pissed. But all I really expect to see is continued development of our offensive line, and to be honest even if they experience turmoil there, I think Shottenheimer can still have a decent offense if they manage to keep Britt and Quick is healthy and good to go. Yeah, I want those two back and playing together in the worst way

Even if we draft a QB, we'll be starting Bradford, so I really don't expect any turmoil to start the season there either. Honestly, the one thing we could potentially do is replace the offensive coordinator.

 

[Dieter the Brock]

Our QB was coming off a torn ACL and we had a new defensive coordinator plus lots of rookies
- things were bound to get off to a slow start - that shouldn't be the case in 2015

 

[Big Unit]

To me, the start of this season was different than other seasons, even though we started 3-5 each year (I think). We weren't sure what we had on offense, but the defense was a MAJOR disappointment at first. Keep in mind we had exactly 1 sack - for the entire team - the first five weeks. But EVERYTHING this year was in flux; new defensive coordinator; unproven QB(s); new RB; new Left Tackle; unproven and raw WRs; injured Chris Long; new D-Linemen; unproven and raw secondary - everything.

No longer. While we can tweak numerous positions, we how have an idea of what we have; and of our strengths and weaknesses. Hopefully next year the QB position will be ironed out in preseason, and we'll be ready to hit the road running once the season starts.

 

[shaunpinney]

I hear what you're saying about the start of this season, but it seems to be every season - it's even more essential that we hit the ground running with such a young team, nothing breeds a winning team more than winning games...