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Wrapping Up: Grading the 2006 St. Louis Rams

And so, for the second year in a row, we meet the end of a largely disappointing season for the St. Louis Rams. They played well for much of the first five games; they played well for the last three games, and in between…hmmm, not so much. With lockers already cleaned out and players heading home for the off-season, before we turn our focus to the twelve remaining teams in the NFL’s second season, it is time to break out the good ol’-fashioned Team Report Card for the 2006 edition of the Rams. Let’s do this.

Offense: Given the state of the defense (not to mention the fact that the offense was legitimately pretty solid), the Rams have nothing to be ashamed of on this end of the ball, as the offense played an entire season sans starting center Andy McCollum as well as much of the season without all-world left tackle Orlando Pace, and yet it still managed to rank sixth in the league in yardage (360.4 yards per game) and tenth in scoring (22.9 points per). Further, the offense produced Pro Bowlers at three skill positions in quarterback Marc Bulger, running back Steven Jackson, and wideout Torry Holt, which is a testament to the success of the unit on the whole. However, the offense did struggle finishing the job and punching the ball into the end zone at times this season. Given that they did an excellent job taking care of the ball (18 giveaways was good for second least in the NFC) and were fourth in the league in yardage, the fact that the boys from the Lou only put up 22.9 points per game is something to wonder at – something that can be explained by the six-field-goals-and-no-touchdowns victory over Denver in the season opener and other similar games over the course of the season. Being able to punch the ball into the end zone and get seven instead of three with more regularity will be a key goal for next year’s squad, but on the whole, the offense had a very good showing in 2006 and was easily the strongest part of the team. Grade: A-

Defense: Not so much. Really. Not so much. An utter train wreck in every capacity. How the Rams finished the season with thirty takeaways (good for fourth in the NFC) is beyond the casual observer, because they certainly did not make too many stops this year. After an off-season of acquisitions and draft picks, such as linebacker Will Witherspoon and corner back Tye Hill respectively (as well as then-newly installed defensive coordinator Jim Haslett), designed to bolster the defense, the Rams failed to show a truly marked improvement in this area. In addition to ranking just 23rd in total defense and an abominable 28th in scoring defense (23.8 points allowed per game), worst of all was the fact that the Rams got absolutely hammered on the ground, to the tune of allowing 145.4 yards per game, good for second to last in the league. The deductive reasoning expert will note this statistic and realize that running the ball – especially as effectively as teams did against the Rams this year – keeps the Rams’ potent offense off the field as well as keeping the clock moving, thus minimizing the time the Rams have to get the points back next time down to the field, which could have been another factor contributing to the problem described above regarding the power of the St. Louis offense but its disparity between being fourth in yardage but just tenth in scoring. Particularly disturbing were subpar efforts against offenses led by such esteemed and proven individuals in this league as Seneca Wallace and Jason Campbell (a game they actually won, although there is still no excuse for the 31 points allowed), and the absolute debacle that was the 34 points allowed in a home loss to the lowly Cardinals. Yikes. Grade: D

Special Teams: The special teams strikes perhaps the perfect middle ground between the excellent offense and the atrocious defense, representing the very good, the fairly useless, and the median. The return game was utterly abysmal, netting zero trips to the paint and falling in the bottom quarter of the league on both kick-off and punt return averages. Matt Turk’s punt team had a definitively modest year, doing its job well enough to qualify for twelfth in the league in net punt yardage at 39.7 yards per punt, although it was notably burned on Nate Burleson’s game-changing score in a season-defining 24-22 loss to Seattle on November 12th. On the other hand, Jeff Wilkins was an absolute rock for the Rams, as he kicked the lights out, hitting on every extra-point attempt and going 32-for-37 on field goals, good for third in the league in points scored among kickers. Kicking, returning, punting: the good, the bad, and something somewhere in the middle. Grade: B

Coaching: This is still probably meritorious of its own column – and we may yet get to that before the off-season heads into full swing – but an abbreviated Linehan rant will have to do for now. For all the talk about how different this team would be from those of years past, very little seems to have changed. The Rams were just two tenths of a point per game better in scoring offense than they were last year – and that is with Marc Bulger healthy for sixteen games whereas he only played eight last year. After all the promises to commit to the run game, while the Rams did improve their output on the ground, Bulger set a career high in passes attempted this season (588), as well as, interestingly, a career low in completion percentage. Further, after years of Mike Martz serving as a whipping boy for pundits around the league regarding the Rams deficiencies in terms of defense, special teams, and discipline, none of those three areas seems to have witnessed quantum leaps forward. Though the Rams improved by three points per game in scoring defense, they were even worse against the rush than they were last year, which, again, would counteract the alleged run-and-eat-clock philosophy of the Rams. Perhaps the reason they never employed that strategy as much as they wanted to was because of how much clock was being eaten up by the opposing teams merely pounding away at the Rams’ Swiss cheese “run defense.� The special teams were workmanlike (and two crushing kick returns by Devin Hester effectively ended the Rams season in a 15-point loss to the Bears at home in Week 14), and the Rams continued to take backbreaking penalties with alarming regularity. Frankly, in its inaugural year, the new coaching regime fell far short of what it was cracked up to be. Grade: C-

And there you have it, folks: in assessing the 2006 St. Louis Rams, the letters don’t lie. There is no overall grade needed, because an excellent offense, ineffective defense, modest special teams, and poor coaching along with, most significantly, an 8-8 record, scream one word: mediocre. Which is exactly what this Rams team was. An exciting 4-1 start was great (albeit misleading as they played a fair degree of substandard competition), a 1-7 stretch in the heart of the season destroyed hopes for greater successes this year, and a season-ending three-game winning streak bred a small degree of momentum and hope for next year. So yes, mediocrity is indeed the order of the day.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 7th, 2007 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.