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Retroram52
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Hello everyone. On a day of mistakes and missed opportunities, this team took the next step in the emergence from the krap of a decade of weakness, lame football, and FO incompetence by opening the season with a win. The Rams overcame some sloppy play on defense, penalties on both sides of the ball, and missed offensive opportunities to come up big with a win against an immensely improved divisional foe.
The game was one of ebb and flow of momemtum with both teams grasping it from the other. The Rams should have had three additional touchdowns. They failed to capitalize on when the Rams defense provided the offense opportunities twice and they had a freak defensive play that robbed us from yet a third score when a Cardinals defender knocked the ball out of Jared Cook's grasp from behind on a sure score as he was just 6 yards away from the goal line.
The other two opportunities were on an interception return by J. Johnson to the four where the offense gained -4 yards in three plays and the second was a sack/fumble recovery by C. Long on the Cardinal's thirty or so where the offense faltered again and failed to score. Whoever stated that the Rams overall are faster and bigger was absolutely dead-on as that speed was evident today on both sides of the ball.
On offense. Sammie finished the day with 2 TDs and 1 INT which was a blocked pass by a Cardinal's D-Lineman who caught the deflection and scored. Sammie was 27/38 for 299 yards to Palmer's 26/40, 327 yards, 2 TD's and 1 INT. The Rams WRs had the ball distributed evenly among the many except for Jared Cook who was the high man today. This was indeed a great FA pick-up because he is such a big target with great speed. He is going to be a beast for us. After some early jitterbug penalties between the two tackles, the O-line performed flawlessly in pass protection and to a improved level in the run game. Richardson finished the day 20 carries for 63 yards. The offense started the year way better than any year to date. This is a good sign!!
On defense. This bunch started out slowly with some krappy play by the secondary and Olgetree missing a couple of coverages but began to pick it up in the second quarter and the second half where the front 8 defensive lineman simply started playing smashmouth football and they are bad-ass. Long, Langford, Brockers, Quinn, as well as the second unit of Hayes, Conrath, Cudjo, and Sims are excellent on both tiers. There is no drop-off in play from those 8 guys. The linebackers especially Laurinaitus and Olgetree are simply bad-ass studs. Great plays by Larinaitus and Will Witherspoon had astick today that demonstrated he still has a lot in teh tak left. In the secondary, T.J. McDonald will flat out hit you like no tomorrow. Ronnie Lott comes to mind. He is a keeper. McCleod needs more playing time as he and Finnegan got hammered a bit today and Finnegan got called with some bad decisions but I'll take his fiestiness any day!
The two stars on defense today? Robert Quinn and Janoris Jenkins. Quinn had three sacks and two forced fumbles and was everywhere. JQuinn got to Palmer more times than Palmer would like to admit and it usally resulted in something very good. Jenkins had some great plays on D all game long. Kudos to Jermaine Johnson for a pick and he was around the ball all day too. If this defense clears up their sloppy play, they are going to be too bad-ass just like the Rams defenses of old. I got so stoked I almost went out to the garage and threw a few forearm shivers into the wall!!
On special teams. Kudos to Matt Giodano for causing a late-game fumble that we failed to recover on a kick-off return. The other stalwart is none other than Zuerlein. 4/4 on FG's including the game-winner and he allowed just two run backs by putting the ball out of the end-zone on KOs.
Well, after a llllloooonnnnggggg wait, Fisher has put together a very nasty bunch of young tough football players and we are in for some good things this year. I say BRING IT!!!!
The game was one of ebb and flow of momemtum with both teams grasping it from the other. The Rams should have had three additional touchdowns. They failed to capitalize on when the Rams defense provided the offense opportunities twice and they had a freak defensive play that robbed us from yet a third score when a Cardinals defender knocked the ball out of Jared Cook's grasp from behind on a sure score as he was just 6 yards away from the goal line.
The other two opportunities were on an interception return by J. Johnson to the four where the offense gained -4 yards in three plays and the second was a sack/fumble recovery by C. Long on the Cardinal's thirty or so where the offense faltered again and failed to score. Whoever stated that the Rams overall are faster and bigger was absolutely dead-on as that speed was evident today on both sides of the ball.
On offense. Sammie finished the day with 2 TDs and 1 INT which was a blocked pass by a Cardinal's D-Lineman who caught the deflection and scored. Sammie was 27/38 for 299 yards to Palmer's 26/40, 327 yards, 2 TD's and 1 INT. The Rams WRs had the ball distributed evenly among the many except for Jared Cook who was the high man today. This was indeed a great FA pick-up because he is such a big target with great speed. He is going to be a beast for us. After some early jitterbug penalties between the two tackles, the O-line performed flawlessly in pass protection and to a improved level in the run game. Richardson finished the day 20 carries for 63 yards. The offense started the year way better than any year to date. This is a good sign!!
On defense. This bunch started out slowly with some krappy play by the secondary and Olgetree missing a couple of coverages but began to pick it up in the second quarter and the second half where the front 8 defensive lineman simply started playing smashmouth football and they are bad-ass. Long, Langford, Brockers, Quinn, as well as the second unit of Hayes, Conrath, Cudjo, and Sims are excellent on both tiers. There is no drop-off in play from those 8 guys. The linebackers especially Laurinaitus and Olgetree are simply bad-ass studs. Great plays by Larinaitus and Will Witherspoon had astick today that demonstrated he still has a lot in teh tak left. In the secondary, T.J. McDonald will flat out hit you like no tomorrow. Ronnie Lott comes to mind. He is a keeper. McCleod needs more playing time as he and Finnegan got hammered a bit today and Finnegan got called with some bad decisions but I'll take his fiestiness any day!
The two stars on defense today? Robert Quinn and Janoris Jenkins. Quinn had three sacks and two forced fumbles and was everywhere. JQuinn got to Palmer more times than Palmer would like to admit and it usally resulted in something very good. Jenkins had some great plays on D all game long. Kudos to Jermaine Johnson for a pick and he was around the ball all day too. If this defense clears up their sloppy play, they are going to be too bad-ass just like the Rams defenses of old. I got so stoked I almost went out to the garage and threw a few forearm shivers into the wall!!
On special teams. Kudos to Matt Giodano for causing a late-game fumble that we failed to recover on a kick-off return. The other stalwart is none other than Zuerlein. 4/4 on FG's including the game-winner and he allowed just two run backs by putting the ball out of the end-zone on KOs.
Well, after a llllloooonnnnggggg wait, Fisher has put together a very nasty bunch of young tough football players and we are in for some good things this year. I say BRING IT!!!!