Quote
RockRam
You make my point for me.
Injuries can deplete otherwise very good teams and injuries at key positions especially.
Look what happened when Gurley got the injury that left him never the same again. It affected the Rams deeply.
The Niners can't seem to stay healthy, and so they're a .500 team. Saints 5-7. Fully healthy these teams are much better than those records.
You can blow off the Rams injuries and constant churn of OCs and DC's and losses to FA, etc., if you want to. You can dismiss losing a rising star RB in Akers or a #1 WR in Woods. But that's not realistic imo. There aren't guys just standing around ready to step in at their level.
The Rams have to rebuild the coaching staff every year. And, they have to find replacements for really good players that get big bucks contracts in FA every year. Usually 2 or more.
This isn't "next man up". It is very hard to do and few teams have been able to overcome it the way Snead and McVay have. So let's give some credit where it's due and not just find stuff to criticize.... and always after the fact.
What also matters is the quality of the injuries. Losing a role player is one thing. But losing a key guy is another. You can lose 5 or 6 role players and it looks terrible on the injury report but one key player can be far more impacting to a gameplan.
Akers was a key guy. So was Woody. In previous playoff years losing Kupp was enormous. That stuff definitely matters and plays a big role in who wins it all in this league. Some teams may have key depth behind the big loss too, like the '99 Rams sitting on Warner. But generally if you lose key guys you're gonna feel it and it's likely to keep you out of the elite teams.
What is kind of cool here for us is we picked up Odell and he looks pretty good so far so maybe they can make up for Woody's loss. Also the same with Michel, assuming he can stay healthy maybe he helps overcome that terrible loss of our feature back. People want to talk up Hendy but he's simply not in Akers' class and never will be. He's just a guy and a change of pace guy at that and some of our struggles have been due to the team trying once again where they have failed so many times before, in using him as a featured back.
If McVay feeds Michel in this game I think the Rams give the Cards all they can handle. And what this team has overcome to just be 8-4 given the turnover in coaching and the injuries I agree is impressive. There's a reason why McVay is a rock star. The dude is great at what he does.
