Rams Offensive Line More Like a 'Sack Fest'

Standing behind the Rams offensive line in 2006 for Marc Bulger was similar to taking your life into your hands, with 49 sacks on the season, it was the second highest total sacks allowed in franchise history. Somehow though, Bulger was able to withstand the punishment under the new offensive scheme of Scott Linehan.

Sure, we can blame some of it on the fact that starters such as Pace, McCollum, Timmerman were injured and left gaping holes to be filled with their absence and add the fact that Alex Barron played the last third of the season with a knee injury, which will require surgery in the off season. None of this helped the offensive lines cause. If we look back we can see that in 1999 five of the starters combined for 78 starts out of a possible 80 and in 2001 they combined for 77 starts out of a possible 80, but in 2006 those numbers dropped dramatically to 54 combined starts out of a possible 80.

But still, taking that into account simply does not justify the outrageous amount of sacks allowed and far too many stupid penalties, many attributed to Alex Barron's inability to stay put long enough for the play to develop, killing potential scoring drives.

In the last few weeks of the season we did see glimpses of the offensive line's future. Richie Incognito, a fierce player, Brett Romberg a player with lots of savvy and rookie Mark Setterstrom a strong and impressive rookie, all showed in the end, that with a little discipline these three, along with Pace and Barron could eventually shore up a very potent offensive line and give both Bulger and Jackson hope that the line will be there to depend upon and to help make their jobs easier.

For now though, this unit simply can't be given a grade higher than a C-.

Tomorrow: The Defense.