Morning Ram-blings: Bradford and the West

[News Bot]

ST. LOUIS -- We've spent plenty of time over the past four or five months documenting the rise of the NFC West to the top of the list among the league's divisions. We've also pointed out repeatedly how that rise has and will continue to make life difficult for the St. Louis Rams to get back in the postseason.

The Rams were 4-1-1 against Arizona, Seattle and San Francisco a year ago. They were 1-5 against that trio this year. We'll have more on that later today but one factor that's hard to account for is the presence of quarterback Sam Bradford against the division last year and then his absence for four of the six games in the division this year.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz offered a look at that very topic in his blog Tuesday and he makes a valid point about the Rams' success with Bradford against the West versus their struggles without him.

As the blog points out, there's no way to know definitively how Bradford would have fared had he played in the other four games this year. He was good in the opener against Arizona and awful against San Francisco a few weeks later.

Here's what I know -- and this is a good topic to revisit this offseason -- the Rams had success in games this year when they ran the ball effectively. Without Bradford, the Rams had zero success offensively if they didn't have the running game going. Bradford would have given them a better chance against elite defenses like Seattle, Arizona and San Francisco even if the run game wasn't going. With Bradford, the Rams at least have a competent enough passing attack that it can function and be successful if teams want to load up to stop the run.

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-ra...s-bradford-and-the-west?ex_cid=espnapi_public

 

[Ky Ram]

If the Rams showed the same commitment to the run early on that they did late in the season our record may or may not have reflected it. The issues on the line are what really wrecked our season as much as Bradford going down did.
We need to address the line in the draft to remain relevant in the West - AZ gave us the blueprint for that

 

[RFIP]

Here is the "thing" these guys always seem to fail to report on when it comes to #8, and I wonder how many here would have the A#1 answer to this question; What would have been the UNQUESTIONED difference if Bradford would have played IN Arizona, IN SF and IN Seattle? (answer WAY DOWN BOTTOM so you can ponder yourself before reading it)
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Answer: SAM BRADFORD DOES NOT THROW INTERCEPTIONS!

In his "WORST" game of the season on Thursday night vs SF he threw ONE, and it was a poorly under thrown deep ball to Quick who of course did nothing to prevent the pick as the db batted the ball and it was picked by the S. Did I ever mention the bad luck Sam has with deflected balls? All 4 of his picks were (3) deflected or (1) when his arm was hit. Even with that he had 4 ints in 7 games.

By contrast, in the 4 West games Clemons played he had 7 (SEVEN) ints (and 2 garbage time tds when games where completely out of reach.

A strong case could be made, as in Seattle, without Clemons ints in SF and in Arizona the Rams would have been in both in the 4th Q, and with GOOD QB play could have won one or 2 of those games, let alone the MNF game vs Seattle where, with Bradford, the Rams WOULD HAVE won by double digits, as they would have beaten Tennessee as well.

 

[-X-]

Spoiler

he doesn't throw ints

 

[jap]

If Sam had stayed healthy, there is a good chance the Horns would have reached the playoffs this season.