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JamesJM
because nearly everyone on this board says this: "OL'men take time to develop"... and we have some young OL'men.
I don't know what the 'average' age might be of OL'men throughout the league but it 'seems' to me we're on the 'young' side.... and I'm not sure we, (in general), are sufficiently factoring that in... player development with OL'men already on the roster. If the Ram's drafted, acquired, OL'men that are NOT going to develop, or can't.. then our problems are much deeper, I think, than finding a 'proven' replacement will be in remedying the situation. I think they WILL get better, btw.
There is a fine line between them needing development and just not being good enough. It's probably hard for the coaches to know that and nearly impossible for us.
But the other thing that we have to keep in mind is that, at it's best, not all draft picks will work out. At any position or draft round especially the mid rounds. And that in itself is not an indictment on the Rams ability to draft olinemen. I think some of them will get better but it's probably unrealistic to expect all of them to.
So for example between the Rams recent young OL picks of Noteboom, Allen, Evans, Edwards, and Corbett, we're doing really good if two of them amount to anything especially since they were all mid round picks. Two starters from that group is really good, three is phenomenal.
So... do NB, Corbett, and Allen need more development time or should we be looking to replace them. That's the coaches guess. But what I've observed from the Rams is that they don't get crazy impatient. I.e. they don't replace a young player after only one year of not playing much. What is yet to be seen is what do they do when we've had two years of few snaps or bad production?
This entire line of reasoning btw is why I'm for injecting a top performing, vet presence into the interior OL mix.
