The pregame narrative was laid out as a story of princes and paupers. The Cardinals were crowned NFC West champions the Sunday previous, while the Rams have not won a divisional game since November 18, 2007. The Cardinals start two Pro Bowl talents at wide receiver, and their quarterback is the most-sainted St Louis athlete […]

Bill Coats’ latest dispatch from Around the Horns contained this tiny nugget that sounds innocuous enough by itself, but when considered in context, continues to round out our portrait of Coach Spags in his first year with the Rams: At the quarterback position, Spagnuolo said he wanted to wait until Wednesday — when the team […]

Keith Null’s debut as a starting quarterback opened up a can of worms that we seldom see in football, but one that has so thoroughly infested baseball that is has changed — ruined? — the very language of the sport. I’m speaking of the clash between “Stats vs Scouts” as an evaluation of talent. The […]

I give the Rams credit for their fight today — they brought more to this game than either the Texans or the 30,000 or so fans in the half-filled Edward Jones Dome expected. Fans walked into the stadium talking about Christmas shopping, and left talking about a play here, a play there, and a win […]

Twitter is the best thing to hit sports since the invention of the internet. How else could we have heard, first hand and unfiltered, honest reactions like the one Buffalo Bills linebacker Kawika Mitchell (

In a way, this was inevitable. Richie put Coach Spagnuolo in a no-win situation in this last weekend’s games, refusing to play “team first” football. And after numerous voices in the media calling to make the move, the Rams have released Incognito. In the fallout of this move comes a notable comment from ESPN’s NFC […]

Coach Spagnuolo, Let me start by saying that I don’t envy the situation you find yourself in, but I admire your determination to face it head on without complaining, without making excuses. Watching the Rams crumble apart at the very foundations over the past several years has been painful, more painful than this 1-12 start […]

The baseline argument, among Rams fans, for playing Null is that the Rams have to “see what they have” in their 6th round pick. And the oft-cited corollary to this argument is “hey, it couldn’t be much worse.” In this 47-7 thrashing in Tennessee, the Rams can’t help but see what they have in Null: […]

There’s a particularly troubling quote (emphasis mine) from Coach Spagnuolo about Jason Smith’s status in yesterday’s Around the Horns: St. Louis Rams offensive tackle Jason Smith didn’t even watch practice Thursday, staying off his feet until the final minutes of the team’s indoor workout at Rams Park. “We just decided to go a different way,” […]

There have been people clamoring for Null since draft day — Bulger-haters, mostly, or magical thinkers who see first chapter of the Kurt Warner story reborn in the sixth-round pick from the back woods of football. And the noise has only gotten louder as the Rams’ offense has seemingly run out of gas. But few […]

The obvious problem facing the Rams’ offense? 8- and 9-man fronts. Teams are so unafraid of our passing game that they’re throwing defensive playbooks out the window and just sending every able-bodied man straight up our gut. The natural reaction would be to start moving into more shotgun sets, get your quarterback away from the […]

Last week, I wrote that the Rams looked like a team in identity crisis: gone was the aggressive defense, and the team took a huge number of unnecessary risks in the passing game, inviting pressure to try and open up deep passing plays. That week had none of the hallmarks of the Spagnuolo identity we […]

This week’s matchup is a great one for all Twittering Rams fans, because our hosts at Bears Hibernation are mad with tweets. Feel free to look up the tags #RamsAtBears or #4thPhase (referring to Bears fans as the fourth element after offense, defense, and special teams) for in-game chatter. Meanwhile,

The Rams and Bears meet this weekend on what is supposed to be a 40 degree windy day — classic grind-it-out football weather for two teams who are ingloriously grinding out the rest of the season. The teams arrive at this miserable place from two different directions. While little was expected of the Rams this […]

The news of Tim Ruskell’s departure from Seattle makes plainly obvious what many Seahawks fans have refused to admit: their team is in a full-scale rebuilding mode. In fact, if those insufferable Seahawks fans have any superiority complex left, it’s all the fault of our sorry-ass Rams. Consider the teams’ record over the past two […]