Thanks for the conversation here you & I often see things differently from time to time which is fine & good for me makes me think. OK lets go deep here into some weeds on your thoughts with mainly on your first sentence saying same basic lineup in games?
So you are claiming that Rob Havenstein had weeks and weeks of practice and games with the same basic lineup? How can that be when Rob was totally absent period with the exception on 1 early series in the last preseason game & Rob had to come off due to the pain he was experiencing & did not return. Until August 30th Havenstein was officially on the PUP list & was never healthy to be involved in any part of OL activities until middle of the week for the final 4th pre season game. Its my position that if Rob had not show'd Boudreau he could play with pain he was a bonafide IR candidate for 2016. OK can we agree that's one starter here solidly backing my positon?
Once again are you claiming that Rodger Saffold had weeks & weeks of practice & games with the same basis lineup? How can that be because Saffold never saw the Left OG post in any of the four pre season games period. Rodger Saffold was totally cemented in at starting Right OT post from beginning to the end of the pre season. OK can we agree that's another starter #2 here solidly backing my position.
The Rams starting OG Cody Wichmann who has started 10 of the 11 Ram games @ Right OG is sure to have lined up @ ORG in OTA's & TC so you have merit in this area but here is the list of OL'ers who started & played Right OG post in the 4 pre season games. They would be Rhaney, Kush, Donnal, Reynolds, Brown & Arkin & Folkerts there is a missing OG in that list its Cody Wichmann. Ok can we agree that's a third starter who is not as solid as Havenstein & Saffold but very close to backing my view? That's 3 of the 5 starters who did not see much of any action in pre season games in the posts they began the regular season in.
Of all the different units NFL teams have its the OL that needs to have five players working together on the same page constantly. So when you go into the first week of practice in regular season still making major changes to 3 of 5 post starting posts ....flipping OLers from right to left & left to right & expecting a smooth running operation??? Don't think we going to get a strong fully functioning OL early if ever.
We should include current starting left OG Jamon Brown in this conversation here with you. I can not find Jamon Brown lining up in the Left OG post in any pre season game. Now its possible but I can not find it. Brown was the starting Right OG in all the four pre season games. He was even listed as the starter in the first regular season game, but when the offense ran out onto the field in the regular season game with the 9ers it was Cody Wichmann took up the Right OG post not Brown who was on the sideline. It should be said here that Brown & Cody did rotate a lot in the first half but by the end of the game Cody played more.
I also would disagree with your premise on your last two sentences. The pre season time is super critical to offensive line. Of all the NFL units none is as important as it is for the OL to get it together. As I pointed out above it would be very hard to find that when your OL is mainly different from pre season to regular season.
Rams have had some injuries in 2016 too ...as pointed out had one very early & it was to starter Havenstein. Later in pre season injuries to another starter Garrett Reynolds & to our top reserve OT Darrell Williams. So we did have some....currently we do have two ongoing injuries to our starters Barnes, who was badly injured two weeks ago & now this past Sunday, Saffold. In conclusion in our discussion I clearly observed a different pre season starting OL from the regular season starting OL, not even close.
My point is, from week 1 up to and through the Jets game, at least 4 guys - GRob, Saffold, Barnes and Havenstein started every game. That's 9 games with mostly the same lineup in 4 of 5 spots, 9 weeks of those guys practicing together during the week and then playing together on game days. I know there has been some playing around with the RG spot between Wichman and Brown, but that kind of shuffling is nothing compared to what we have been used to around here in the past several years, where in-season injuries necessitated shuffling on a near-weekly basis during stretches of the season. We haven't seen nearly as much of that this year.
In short, we have had continuity on the OL in a much greater degree than we have had here for several years, and still these guys aren't getting it done. In years past you could always point to injuries ruining continuity as a factor in OL play, but this year it's a harder case to make when you spent the first 9 weeks with a lineup of GRob, Saffold, Barnes, Havenstein and (insert RG here). You would think after about 4 of 5 weeks of that lineup, the light would have gone on and they would have played well together, would have shown some improvement. But instead ... nothing.
I won't dispute your point about getting these guys to gel in the preseason, but that doesn't explain things this far into the season. And a good OL can overcome the usual preseason shuffling. Back in the early 00's, Orlando Pace missed two training camps in a row due to holdouts, causing line shuffling, but once he came into the lineup, everything clicked back to normal. But one difference we had between now and then cuts to my theory as to why the Rams OL is in the situation it's in - coaching. Back then we had Jim Hanifan, who if not the best in the biz, was close to it. Now we have Boudreau, who, while having had success in the past (including with the Rams), seems to have lost his touch.
I don't think it totally falls on Bourdreau though. I think a big portion of it falls on Boras and the blocking schemes he wants to implement, which I simply don't think fit the type of players we have at all. His scheme is some twisted hybrid of power blocking and a ZBS, and in the hands of an inexperienced coordinator like himself, someone with no past success to build in, it's been a disaster. To me that says Boras is unsure of himself, he doesn't know which scheme to implement, so he tries to take the best from both but ends up with the best from neither.
Furthermore, I don't think most of our OLinemen have the necessary agility to be good at any sort of ZBS. They are just not that type of athlete at all. Trying to implement a hybrid power/ZBS scheme has probably added a significant amount of confusion and made every OLineman less effective overall than if we would just stick with one or the other (although, to repeat, I don't think these guys would do well in a ZBS). When you watch our OL play, they often look very confused, and I think this has a lot to do with it.
So in summation, irrespective of what we think about individual players on this OL, the fact that as a unit, they are all playing worse than they have in prior years, and that didn't happen because they stopped giving a damn. The coaching staff is trying to do something with them that is both confusing and a poor fit for the guys we have. That in turn makes any evaluation of them as individuals much more dicey, IMO anyway.
