Mack, and
@CoachO, I try to be positive in most things in life but I have always been a critical thinker. When something is broke I instinctively look to fix it. I am not a man of faith. After watching last years Oline, I don't see how anyone has faith in what is already there. I can only go off of what I see. None of us spend time with the coaches, or I assume not. Maybe CoachO actually is friends with one of them. It is possible. He lives in the same city, and I would not blame anyone for protecting their sources, especially sources of that magnitude. But short of any inside information we cannot know anything beyond what we see. I told you what I see.
Assuming that Jones will be a mirror of what he was in college is wishful thinking at this point. How many years have we waited for injured players to reach their full potential? A Lis Franc injury is in the foot. A weak foot can cause a person to favor that foot. It can negatively affect their balance, which can lead to a serious back injury. A football player with a back injury is not a good thing. If you consider an Olineman bends over and pushes against DTs, it is easy to see that it is a bad situation. The exact same thing happened to my father in law but he was not fighting with three hundred pound men, he was washing his RV.
Barnes has been on the roster for more than a year and Wells has been bad for the last two. Can he develop?
Is he a highly sought commodity? Any team could have signed him but didn't, so....
Rhaney on the otherhand reportedly impressed coaches. So we dont really know anything about him. I hope that the praise was not typical, motivational coach talk. Either way he was a bit raw coming in so if he can start at Center this year, it would be a miracle for this team. I hope God is feeling generous here because the Rams need some good fortune on the Oline for a change. But the only way to make good fortune is by being proactive and drafting some durable non injured players that have already played at the top level, and played well. I know it is the easy fix but as a fanatic that is what I want because the time is now.
Barnes let the Rams know from the outset he wanted to return. The Rams stayed in constant communication with him throughout the process. When they came to an agreement, Tim Barnes was in the middle of taking his physical for the Kansas City Chiefs. Who by the way, happens to be the team in HIS hometown. He received an offer from them, but it wasn't enough to sway him from remaining a St. Louis Ram. So, to say he wasn't sought after, or didn't have other options, as was the case with Rodney McLeod, who you referenced in a previous post....... just isn't accurate.
You continue to make comments, while painting with a broad brush.... "
Barnes has been on the roster for more than a year, and Wells has been bad for the last two" just isn't accurate. Its quite subjective to say that Wells has been bad for the last two years, when in fact, he was pretty good when healthy. There in lies the biggest issue with Scott Wells. When he came back from the broken foot in 2012, he played quite well, as did the entire unit at that point. When he was on the field in 2013, he played "well enough". He missed the last 4 games, and Barnes stepped in. Admittedly, at the time, Tim Barnes was not "ready".
Physically, he wasn't strong enough. But that all changed when he came back to training camp LAST YEAR. I have posted this in a few other threads, all the talk was about how Barrett Jones had reshaped his body, and gotten stronger. But, the more noticeable change, was in Tim Barnes. The day he stepped onto the practice field, he "looked" the part of a legitimate NFL Lineman. He had a very good training camp. But being the last man standing , so to speak, (Wells recovering from the tick bite, Jones having back surgery, and Rhaney being a raw rookie), Barnes took 2 out of every 3 reps in camp for the first 3 weeks. As he became more dinged up, (pinched nerve in his neck), and with the return of a now undersized Scott Wells, they moved forward with the plan was to have the veteran presence on the field.
The "plan" was to have Wells and Jake Long on opposite sides of a young, raw rookie G. Robinson. Made perfect sense. But when Robinson didn't pick things up as quickly as hoped, they felt the better solution was to move Saffold, and play Joseph. Just when things started to fall into place with Robinson at LG, and moving Saffold back to RG, J. Long goes down. So, say what you want about last year, and the failure to produce..... They actually had a sound plan in place, that was completely derailed by injuries.
If they would have stayed healthy, having Long, Robinson, Wells, Saffold Barksdale would have been a very sound unit. With Barnes, Jones, Person and yes, even Davin Joseph as your DEPTH, would have been a very good and versatile unit.
So here we are. They release Long, Wells, and Joseph. They lose Mike Person. They bring back Barnes, Washington, Rhaney, Jones and Travis Bond, along with Saffold and Robinson. They go out and get Garrett Reynolds. While most fans tend to under value guys they don't know much about, IMO, if this coaching staff wasn't comfortable with guys that are still here, it would have been very easy to let them go as well. At some point, guys who they have chosen to keep around for the 3rd and 4th year, will show why. As I said in an earlier post, I think one can make an argument that there are a whole lot more cases of players such as Barnes, who entering his 4th year, develop into a solid NFL player, than can be made when talking about the "plug and play" success stories.
That being said, one has to assume they will add someone early in the draft to throw in the mix, and round out the unit heading into the OTAs and Training Camp. And until Barksdale and/or Blaylock sign elsewhere, I would think they remain part of the equation moving forward.
