My Favorite Team, the Worst in the NFL

As I write this, I'm watching an incredibly entertaining game of Monday Night Football between the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets. The kind of game my team used to be involved in regularly. However, they are now about as watchable as those educational programs that help you with your homework. You know, the ones with the middle-aged women speaking incredibly slowly, repeating themselves over and over again, changing the color they write with for every line, just to explain how to multiply a positive number by a negative number?
Yeah, except I actually watched this program for a couple minutes. That's how bad my team is. Allow me to explain, from the beginning:

I love watching football. Ever since I was little, I've been watching football (although, i've been watching everything since I was little, so yeah). The only problem with that is, I live in Los Angeles. There was a time when we had 2 (TWO!!!) teams in LA, both relatively popular. Then, before I really started watching football, before I could really attach myself to one of them (the only player I knew was Jeff Hostetler, for crying out loud), they were gone. One to Oakland (and good riddance, Al), and the other to St. Louis. What to do. Well, I still wasn't watching that much football (I only knew of Hostetler, remember). Actually, the first Super Bowl I remember watching was XXIX, in which the 49ers put a historic shellacking on the Chargers. The next year, I watched Larry Brown lead the Cowboys to their 3rd title of the 90's, over the Neil O'Donnell-led Steelers. Then, watched Desmond Howard of the Packers run through the Patriots. So now I was really watching football, but still wasn't attached to a team. Then it hit me:

BE A FAN OF THE BEST TEAM!

Nowadays, we call that "front-running" or "bandwagoning." Back then, I called it being a fan of the Denver Broncos. John Elway, Terrell Davis, Rod Smith, Ed McCaffrey, Bill Romanowski, Steve Atwater (watch this). Now that was a team I could get behind. Then, Elway retired. They were now led by Brian Griese and Olandis Gary. Who? Exactly. 6 wins + 10 losses = losing me as a fan. It's now 1999, and here I am in fan limbo again. What do I do? Wouldn't you know it, those darn Rams, who had left my lovely city only 4 years ago, had begun doing something with themselves. They were 4-12 in 1998, with Tony Banks quarterbacking and June Henley (even I've never heard of June Henley, but read this) leading the team in rushing (with a remarkably atrocious 313 yards). Of course no one saw what they did in 1999 coming. How could we? Here's what happened, in no particular order. All equally important, not sure what happened chronologically:

1. Signed Trent Green to a 4-year, $16.5 million dollar contract. Injured knee in the preseason, out for the season. Plays a total of 8 games (5 starts) with the Rams before being traded to the Chiefs in the offseason following the 2000 season. Kurt Warner (fresh off stints with the Arena Football League and a Hy-Vee grocery store) would step in and proceed to win two MVP awards and a Super Bowl MVP.
2. Completed one of the most lopsided trades in NFL history when they acquire Marshall Faulk from the Colts for only 2nd- and 5th-round draft picks in the 1999 draft. Faulk goes on to become one of the greatest running backs of all-time. No big deal.
3. Draft Torry Holt with the 6th pick in the '99 draft. He goes on to be the only receiver in NFL history to have 6 straight seasons of at least 1,300 yards and the only receiver to have 6 straight seasons of at least 90 receptions.
4. Grant Wistrom and London Fletcher become full-time starters. While Fletcher only plays 3 seasons with the Rams, he remains one of my favorite players, and Wistrom starts his reign as one of the best defensive ends in the league.

I could go on, but those are the ones that matter. At any rate, 1999 is basically when I started playing fantasy football. The numbers that Warner and Faulk started putting up could not be ignored. And any time a team starts 6-0 (as the Rams would do 3 years in a row, '99-'01), they start to get noticed by the league. And me. All of a sudden, one of the teams who abandoned my hometown (okay, I'm from Long Beach, but still), was looking like a team that I could finally get behind! So, I did it. Proclaimed myself a Rams fan right then and there. And boy was I sitting pretty. They finish '99 with a 13-3 record, beating teams by an average score of 32.9-15.1. That's ridiculous. They are dubbed "The Greatest Show on Turf" (here's why) and proceed to roll through the playoffs and become Super Bowl XXXIV Champions. Ok, "roll" is a stretch. Awesome NFC Championship game vs. Tampa Bay (thank you Ricky Proehl), though you wouldn't know it with the score being 11-6. Then the Super Bowl itself had one of the best endings ever (THANK YOU MIKE JONES!!!). I finally have a team!





















Now that we know why I'm a Rams fan, quickly review 2000-2006.

2000- Start 6-0, finish 10-6. Record a ridiculous amount of points and yards on offense, give up the same on defense, lose to the Saints in first round of playoffs (down 31-7 at one point in the 4th, game ends 31-28).
2001- Start 6-0 again, finish 14-2, best team in the league. Lovie Smith gives us one of the best defensive units in the league. Demolish the Packers in 2nd round of playoffs, beat Philly in the NFC Championship game, go into Super Bowl XXXVI as heavy favorites over the Patriots. Tom Brady owns us, I begin my hatred for the Patriots.
2002- Start 0-5 (how does that happen), Warner gets hurt, Marc Bulger steps in and we finish 7-9. Lame.
2003- Win 7 games in a row in Nov-Dec, finish 12-4. Lose to Panthers in Divisional round of playoffs because Bulger throws 3 picks and Steve Smith goes crazy (especially in OT).
2004 - Go 8-8 with Bulger leading the team, Warner left to NYG. Get absolutely destroyed by Vick and the Falcons in Divisional round of playoffs. Faulk's last season as full-time starter.
2005- Start 2-3, Martz gets fired. Joe Vitt takes over, finish 6-10. Steven Jackson proves to be a stud rookie.
2006- Scott Linehan takes over, start 4-1, then lose 7 of 8 before winning last 3 to finish 8-8. Bulger and Jackson are beasts, but defense is horrific. Miss playoffs for 2nd year in a row for first time since 98. Start of things to come.

The year is now 2007. The Rams are terrible. Linehan was suppoed to fix things, but he just makes them worse. Bulger and Jackson both miss time after Orlando Pace goes down in the first game of the season and is out for the whole year. When your team has to resort to Gus Frerotte and Brian Leonard, things aren't going well. They even bring in Dante Hall, The Human Joystick (as seen here), to spice up the return game. Career suicide by him as he drops from the best returner in the game to being completely out of the game a year later. The defense is in shambles after all of our franchise players (except Leonard Little) leave and are replaced by recycled players such as Will Witherspoon, Chris Draft, Corey Chavous and La'Roi Glover. All of this leads to a record of 3-13. The future does not look good. However, I have dedicated myself to this team, saw 7 years of something to be proud of, and I'm going to stick this out.

Going into 2008, things aren't looking much better. We draft Chris Long, Howie's boy, out of Virginia, hoping that he can spark the defensive line. He gets 4 sacks as a rookie, but it's not much of an impact. We'll see how he pans out. Bulger is sticking it out, but only throws for 11 TD's all year. We even bring Trent Green back! Bad idea. Start 0-4, Linehan gets fired and defensive coordinator Jim Haslett takes over. He wins his first 2 games, over the Redskins and Cowboys, and maybe we got something going now. Not. Lose the last 10 games of the year to finish 2-14, with the 3rd worst scoring offense and 2nd worst scoring defense. Tied with the Chiefs for 2nd-worst record in the league (thank goodness for the Lions and taking away the attention from us), get the 2nd pick in the draft and take Jason Smith, tackle from Baylor. Hopefully he can help our offensive line woes, which is what I'm going to attribute most of our offensive problems to.

We have finally reached this year, and the reason I write this. An analyst on ESPN is asked which team is the worst in the league. Choosing between the Chiefs, Browns, Rams, Raiders, Buccaneers, Lions and Titans, he picks the Raiders. I laugh. At least they have a win. They've scored 20 points in a game, and one of their losses was close. The Rams have one class game, a 9-7 loss to the Redskins. In the other games, they've been shut out twice, have given up AT LEAST 28 points, and have scored 10 and 17 points. If you were keeping track, that means we've been outscored 146-34 (avg. game of 29.2-6.8). The coach is Steve Spagnuolo, formerly the defensive coordinator of the New York Giants, including when they won the Super Bowl. I don't see him sticking around too long.

As recently as 2006 we had an offense, at least, that was in the top 10 in the league. The drop off is staggering. This used to be one of the most entertaining teams in the league to watch, if only to see what kind of craziness Mike Martz was going to spring on us week to week. Now that we've got defensive-minded coaches leading us, the offense is horrific, and the defense still isn't good. Screw good, the defense isn't even bad, it's pathetically miserable. I loathe every score-update text I get because with it brings the bad news of another fumble/interception return for touchdown by the other team, or the completion of a long scoring play. I am usually hoping that the text is just the merciful ending of a quarter, half or game to put me out of my misery. Alas, the season drags on, and the light at the end of the tunnel is probably just a train coming this direction. At least I have a Super Bowl championship and additional appearance to look back on, even if it's quite a ways back.

At least it's not Jeff Hostetler.