PS: Fears, Knowns, Hopes

Just a word about where I stand right now. Please recall that, as I've done through the off season, I try to distinguish between what we fear, we know, and we hope.

I think that 2 PS games allow us to KNOW that this is a competent football team. The defense is demonstrably effective without its best 2 players. And the offense is PROVING that it is a competent, productive unit.

I think this neutralizes a lot of the worst fears I have seen expressed on the board. This is not going to be a bust team. It is, demonstrably, NOT a 4-12 team.

However, this does not mean we won't go 4-12. Anything can happen in the NFL, and I am making no W/L predictions. I am just saying that the team we've seen the last 2 weeks is a competent, competitive bunch that is capable of winning games. I think we KNOW that.

But how competent? How good can we be? What is our ceiling? How far shall we let our hopes flourish?

Some posters are all in and predicting glory. Others are cautioning that a team can only get so much better in a short period of time, especially with inexperience in key places.

Well, I remain uncomfortable with both responses, because here we get into the "don't know" realm. We STILL don't know how far, for example, this new offense can take us in actual games that count. All the preliminaries are looking good. But the bullets have not yet been live. WE DO NOT KNOW!

And I mean that in TWO directions. Not one.

I am NOT ready to predict actual glory: playoffs and beyond. We do not know enough to make claims like that.

But I also dispute the generic assumption that we can only go so far in one year. There are indicators of special possibilities that have not YET hit a ceiling. To take an obvious example, we don't know that Kupp will immediately prove to be as effective as we hope in actual games. Yet he is showing such promising signs that it would be silly to think we know that he can't.

In the end, my take is probably irritatingly evasive. I think we KNOW that our Rams are emerging as a solid, competitive team. I don't think we need to fear that much. Even injury seems a manageable danger, as we have depth in most places, except perhaps for LOT.

But we do NOT KNOW enough to legitimately EXPECT glory AND we do not know enough to try to place a limit on what we can accomplish. We could rise to the middle of the league. Or we could blow past the middle and do something astonishing.

After all the years of misery, I expect a fun and inspiring year. I think I know enough to bet on that.