But the course was doomed to begin with because this regime failed to draft and sign effective, long term offensive linemen. I say effective because the offensive linemen they did draft either are not difference makers (Rok Watkins, Barrett Jones, Demetrius Rhaney) or a project whose career trajectory is plummeting alarmingly fast.
My gut agrees with you, but it's interesting to look at the OLs in recent drafts, here's the possible Pro Bowlers we could have had:
2010- Pouncey instead of Quinn
2011- Kelce (6th round)
2012- none
2013- K.Long instead of Tavon, T.Frederick instead of Ogletree
2014- Z.Martin instead of Grob or Donald
Not sure which of those I would have done. It's kind of been a weird deal for this franchise, when we needed a #1 QB and got the #1 pick, we got the Bradford luck. When we needed franchise WRs to go with him, there was Alshon Jeffery and nothing else in that draft class. We needed to draft tons of quality OL but they just haven't existed in the draft for several years now. There's been many articles written on the woeful state of the OL in the NFL, with factoids like:
"from 2012-2014, there were 18 offensive linemen taken in the first round, including eight in the top 10 of those drafts. None of those players taken in the top 10 has been to a Pro Bowl, and only three of the 18 have played in one. Moreover, many of those top-10 tackles have struggled, including Minnesota's
Matt Kalil, Kansas City's
Eric Fisher and Jacksonville's
Luke Joeckel. It used to be a top-10 tackle was a pretty sure thing. Not anymore.
It's not like teams can just replace a starter with a backup. They're even worse. 'The biggest drop-off of all position, maybe in all of sports, between starter and backup is at offensive line' ... "
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/writer...e-quality-of-o-line-play-in-the-nfl-is-putrid
"'I've been harping on that for two years," said Matt Williamson, who scouts the NFL for ESPN. "I don't think the average fan realizes what an O-line shortage there is now. There are very few teams with lines that have had continuity, and there's certainly less Hall of Fame-level guys playing right now. You don't look around and see many of the Jonathan Ogden, Orlando Pace and Walter Jones types anymore."
http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/181904/nfls-o-line-epidemic-threatens-its-qb-star-system
I believe in holding people accountable so I'm quick to blame the regime for the state of the OL, but there's a lot of circumstances involved here in unearthing quality OL play. Honestly, I don't know why a team like Pittsburgh can grab Villanueva off the scrap heap because of his size and convert him to a useful LT while the Rams can't get a #2 pick to play even to the level of "not suck". And the Rams even tried to play the size game by flirting with that 400 lb. dude, I forget his name now. The more you look, the more you see the Rams desperately trying things to get quality OL that just don't pan out (see the C "open competition" etc.). So the try was there, I just can't decide if the fail was bad regime or bad luck.
Given this OL backdrop, I don't think I can just flat-out blame the Rams for "not drafting good OL". They just rarely existed, and I can't "blame" a regime for not being perfect in the draft that's a crapshoot. Can I blame someone for not succeeding on a 16.7% chance on drafting a decent OL in the first round?
The other solution when you can't get talent is to at least create an OL that jells as a unit, and maybe some teams are luckily able to avoid injury and at least get some coherency in their OL. Injuries decimated the Rams chances of doing this of course, too.
Still, many of the Rams OL choices were just bad and illogical along the way. Investing in frail old vets, flip-flopping positions, keeping useless chumps like Wells around for way too long, etc. So I still find myself quick to blame, I hate excuses. But I can't ignore them either.
