Doomster v Hopester--My Issue

Some interesting threads the last couple of days as Doomsters and Hopesters pitch their perspectives against each other. I'll simply state what bothers me:

Affecting to know what simply is not known.

Now, I endorse affirming what can be known, even when it's negative. Give a coach or player a few years and it becomes known what they can do and not do. I was pretty sure we knew who and what Fisher was 2, maybe 3 years ago. His track record told us. And I am not in general a fan of finding excuses mitigating circumstances to explain away poor performance.

But, I also believe it's pretty important to recognize the limits of what is known. E.g. McVay is a complete unknown as a HC. He wants TEs to execute his vision. OK. Sounds interesting. Maybe it will work and maybe it won't. I dunno. Doomsters don't know that he is wrong about prioritizing mid-to-late round picks for receivers over OL. (I struggle to see how he could have tried to do both in the draft.) And Hopesters don't know that he is right. We'll see.

By contrast, Wade Phillips has a track record. We KNOW that he can run defenses. I think that we can have some confidence in personnel decisions on defense because we can assume he is involved in shaping the sort of unit he can have success with. The 2 cases are very different.

I won't yet again argue the case regarding Goff. I will simply say that the evidence for him being a bust seems very tenuous to me, while the evidence for him being a good QB is more or less non-existent. We simply don't know. IMO, of course.

As for the FO, that's tricky. The FO has screwed up a lot of campaigns over 3+ decades. Are they screwing up now?

Well, the upper level of the FO seems competent at handling contracts and they have hired a proven DC and a promising but rookie HC. We'll see about McVay, I don't see what else they are really doing, one way or another.

Except, of course, for retaining Snead. Snead has a track record. It sure as hell isn't great, but I don't see it as abysmal, either. I think what we do know is that he adapts the personnel to the HC's vision. Consider the Lance K issue. Lance made a lot of sense in Fisher's offense, and Snead kept him. He makes no sense in McVay's scheme, so he was dropped and Snead picked TEs. I think Snead's track record is that he is at least decent in trying to match a roster to the coach's vision. He is probably not the sort of GM who can transcend the current coach and build a roster to his own standards.

Which means that the current off season really comes down to McVay. And we don't know about McVay. We've heard tales of his energy and enthusiasm and his new regime and blah, blah, blah. And Hopesters get excited about those not very revealing accounts. Well, to me, they don't mean much. We will only see if his charm and energy and vision mean anything when the team plays games.

Meanwhile, the doomsters look at all of this and draw dire conclusions. My old friend Billy T tried to argue that history supported that view. And I just don't get that. I don't see what history has to do with the situation, apart from players who have been part of that history. And of those players, several key guys have little authentically indicative history. Will a really capable offensive coaching staff lift not only Goff but some of those 2nd year receivers who showed promise but languished in a culture of shoddy, lazy, indolent performance? I don't see why it couldn't. For most of these guys, again, we haven't seen enough to know.

We do know that the Rams are stuck in a losing culture. That is very hard to overcome. If one feels that, in a general way, the odds are against breaking through, well, OK. But neither doubt nor hope are reasons to evaluate individual roster choices, especially priority choices between improving 2 units that will be difficult to upgrade simultaneously.

UNTIL we SEE this team on the field in competition WE WON'T KNOW whether this draft and other personnel decisions are good or bad. We don't know enough about our HC or about some key players, especially on offense. We won't know how to evaluate Draft 2017 until we know whether Goff was worth the sacrifice of a 1st rounder.

Of course, some of you will say that we DO KNOW more about certain parts of the equation. OK. I live in Minny and didn't spend any money on watching the team last year. I don't/can't follow things as closely as some of you do.

But for me, a poster gains credibility by recognizing the limits of what is known, by being open and honest about it. Go ahead--make a cogent argument for what you think you see and know. For example, I think we DO KNOW that Tavon Austin is nothing more than a marginally valuable gadget and is unlikely to be worth much more we have years of track record behind saying that. But be honest about the limits of what you know. Do you think Goff is a bust? OK. But be honest about all the reasons that make that judgment difficult given the chaos of last year.

We know some things. And we really don't know a lot of other things. Let's be honest about both.