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LMU93
Regarding 2007 and 2011- those were very flawed teams of course. And going into 2007 they came off a year when they were 5-8 but rattled off three wins at the end against bad teams to reach 8-8. But anyway, in both 2007 and 2011 they were devastated by injuries, in particular on the OL in 2007 which just killed the offense as a whole and in the secondary (plus QB ) in 2011. Part of what the Rams do need to hope for is a repeat in their health from 2016.
To develop this a little further. In 2007 the OL lost 10 players, including 4 for the season and 6 more for extended periods. They had 8 different OL combinations that season and most times a change from one combo to another involved 2-3 different positions (including position shifts and replacements). That year they started 13 guys: Pace, Setterstrom, Romberg, M.Brown, Barron, Terrelk, Goldberg, McCollum, Incognito, Lecky, Gorin, Steussie, and Petitti. The result was predictable, including Bulger playing with hurt ribs (which saps strength from throws even if you take a local to keep the pain down).
2011 was a disaster on so many levels it's hard to keep count. It included learning a new offensive system without an off-season, so they started behind the 8-ball right away and it showed. They then had, according to Football Outsiders, the single most injured offense in the league since 2002. It included linemen right and left, Jackson, Amendola, and 3 qbs. Actually toward the end of the season they signed Clemens and 11 days later he was starting...and got injured. That's leaving out the fact that 10 CBs got injured that year...heck most teams don't carry 10 CBs in training camp.
No matter who the coach is, McVay or anyone else, they will have similar results if they experience injuries like that. For example, if they have a repeat of 2007, that would mean losing Whitworth, Saffold, Sullivan and Hav for the season plus seeing Robinson, Wichmann, Donnal, Rhaney, and Murphy miss several games each on top of it, plus having one more in-season injury replacement signing miss time, and moving Brown to LOT for most of the season starting in game one.
2016 was a completely different story. I have yet to see an account of 2016 that lists ALL the things that went wrong. Usually what happens is guys focus on one or 2 things and just don't get around to the rest of them. So IMO the real 2016 story is yet to be told. A lot of what happened in 2016, though, was unique to 2016 and will not be repeated (in fact in a couple of cases it would be impossible to repeat them).
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