The team has gone thru growing pains as a young team with a whole lot of changes struggled to come together under unrealistically high expectations. But and I say this with all honesty they stayed together and have grown together. Two mistakes cost them that game on Sunday against a very good team. The defensive front 7 played well and for the most part the secondary also played well.
This team has relied less and less on hired guns as it has developed it's own players. Ramsey is an exceptional grab and well worth the picks used. Why? Because this team is no longer looking for starters. They are now focused upon developing the starters they have and building the depth behind them. They don't need the 1st round picks for backups.
As soon as Blythe is gone and Noteboom and Allen return they will have their o-line who have played well and are growing up together. Look how clean they kept Goff against one of the best front 7's in the NFL. McVay and Snead are on the right track. Growing pains are unavoidable and the cost of developing young talent. The fact that they were in contention until week 16 is testament to the quality of the team they have built.
I for one am stoked that this team is built for the future. I'm not blind to the failures this year, but as I keep saying their own miscues beat them as much or more than the teams they faced. Next year they will have an experienced young o-line and hopefully will have a full TC to developing their gap blocking technique. The failure of the run game has more to do with Kromer's failure to evolve his unit. Give them the scheme to succeed and Gurley will return to form.
I've gone thru this roster top to bottom and I see a championship caliber team loaded with talent. We watched Edwards, Evans, Williams, Rapp and even Allen grow before us. These guys are good. Okoronkwo flashed enough to feel good about his taking over from Brockers. Ebukam outplayed Mathews on fewer snaps. Littleton showed he's the real deal, a true MIKE that every team needs. Before his injury Allen had outplayed Sullivan. The Browns cast off Corbett proved the Browns don't know how to use what talent they have. Their loss is the Rams gain, a starting LG. Fowler has justified his trade and blossomed into a feared edge rusher an excellent match for AD.
Frankly I don't understand all this doom and gloom. This isn't Cleveland. As good as Seattle and SF are, we have seen that this team can beat them both. This team was built the old fashion way through the draft with good talent evaluations and development. All this stuff about being built for now and not for the long run is complete nonsense coming from talking heads who don't know shit...the same ones that were hyping the Browns before the season.
You want to know a team in trouble? I'm glad this team isn't built like the Eagles. They are only as good as the outside talent they can bring in. That type of team building isn't sustainable. Snead brought in key "hired guns" on short term contracts to keep the team contending while he built and developed the team behind them. IMO Mathews and Weddle are the last of their kind on this team. Anyone else brought in will be like Ramsey, young elite talent worth more than a single short term contract. That's why people who keep saying Dante and Jalen will be gone at the end of their contract don't understand that Snead doesn't work that way. He knew before he traded for them that the money would be there to extend them.
Snead's background is in scouting and player development. That's why his drafts have been so good. Just looking at the moves Snead has made it's clear he knows what he's doing and has a plan on how to get there. That by definition would mean he also has a financial plan as well. I have to laugh when I look at the doom and gloom articles in the media about the dire financial straights the Rams are facing. But they include guys like Kupp who is signed through 2020 so his contract is a non factor now. The same thing with Jalen Ramsey, his jump will be about $10M in 2020 which means his extension will only add about $4-$5M to the cap in 2021.
It's going to be tight but certainly doable. It simply means they need to jettison overpaid guys like NRC and Hill and even Mathews and Weddle. Williams can replace both NRC and Hill and Ebukam is already better than Mathews. Eric and Clay alone will open over $7M in cap so with all 4 that clears almost $8M in cap space. My point is that these guys can be released, to clear cap without creating holes in the roster as their is already someone as good or better on the roster to fill the vacancies.
So all this hysteria over the not making the playoffs this year and the cap outlook makes no sense if you really bore down on the roster and the cap numbers. There is a lot of wasted space right now in both categories.
