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9er8er
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Rams43
Based on most camp reports I've seen, including this one by Merlin, it sounds like we did very well on O this offseason. VERY well.
Goff (just a matter of time)
Groh (sounds like he's working wonders on the fundamentals of his WR's)
Higbee (a steal)
Cooper (possible steal)
Thomas (another possible steal)
To that we can add the following:
Tavon sounds like he's taken a giant step forward with his routes and hands. A scary thought for opponents, indeed.
Quick seems "reborn".
Williams is surging.
Spruce gets open and has flypaper hands.
That's a helluva lot of improvement in one offseason, if you ask me.
By mid season when they've gelled together, I see a dangerous and playoff worthy O for these '16 Rams. A worthy complement to our D and ST.
Hot Damn!
It's really difficult for a fan in the bleachers to tell much of anything in training camp. I was at Colts camp this week and thought Scott Tolzien looked better running the offense than Luck did. Now, I've always kind of liked Tolzien just because he understands how to play the position even if he doesn't possess great physical tools, but the reality is, skill position players all tend to look pretty good in camp. They're not really hitting, they're not touching the QB, they don't play much real football.
I think you can count on the Rams offense being a rather boring, run oriented attack this year. Hopefully one or two of the rookies, primarily Goff, will impress enough to make us optimistic about their future, but morphing into some kind of playoff caliber offense this year? That would be a major but pleasant surprise.
I'm not exactly expecting a playoff caliber offense this year but I'm expecting quite a bit of offensive improvement. And the major places I'm expecting it to come from are not the rookies.
Given history and reports to date, I'm expecting improvement in three areas/positions/players that seem reasonable to me and don't require many leaps of faith:
OL - Historically, O'linemen have a big improvement from year 1 to year 2 and an even bigger improvement from year 2 to year 3. It's a position where seasoning is required. GRob improved from year 1 to year 2; I'm expecting a similar and possibly even greater jump in improvement from him this year.
I'm also expecting several of last years rookie linemen, and maybe even the class as a whole, to be much improved. An across the board improvement from the OL will be huge for the offense.
Gurley - #30 was a rookie last year coming off of a major injury. I'm expecting the typical improvement that comes with having played a season plus improvement that comes from him being even healthier and stronger than he was last year.
Austin - TA has been improving quite a bit from year to year. When he first came into the league he was raw and ran a severely limited route tree. Last year he improved in that regard. Reports are this year that he has had even more improvement and they now have him running a fuller route tree. TC reports are also saying that he's looking really good, nearly unstoppable, this year. I don't recall reading that about him last year.
Given those reports and the fact that he already demonstrated major improvement last year, I'm expecting a clear breakout year from him.
I'm not sure that we get playoff caliber play from the QB position with Keenum/Goff this year but it would hard for it to be worse than Foles. Without even factoring that in, if we get the improvement I project in the three areas above, the offense will be much, much better. I don't know if it will be non-boring, and don't think that's even necessary, but it will be more efficient. And if Goff does produce anything, a playoff caliber O wouldn't surprise me in the least.
Any standout performance we get from rookies such as Higbee, Thomas, and Cooper is an added bonus.
