Bulger's rough start is cause for concern

By Bernie Miklasz
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS — I don't want to pile on Marc Bulger. Really. He's already been taken down on too many sacks and beaten down by too many hits to the body.

The San Diego Chargers thumped Bulger pretty good a few times Saturday night. Look at it this way: At least the St. Louis Rams are in midseason form. If Bulger is getting rag-dolled, then it must be football season.

Bulger's performance in the first two exhibitions has been alarming: 10 completions in 23 attempts, three interceptions and a passer rating of 14.3. He did connect on some solid throws against the Chargers in the second quarter, so perhaps that will get him going. But the interceptions on the first two series were disturbing. His body language continued to be troubling.

Bulger offered no excuses after the latest dud.

"Nights like this are not acceptable for whatever reason," Bulger told reporters late Saturday. "There are a million reasons that I could tell you for why things happened, but this is a bottom line business.

"They made some plays, but with a little more game planning, things might not have gone like that. What I learned in trying to get through these little ruts is to keep throwing. I promise you, if I came out in the second half, I would have kept throwing. I might have had 10 picks, but I would have kept throwing it down the field."

As a gesture of peace to the Rams-Bulger apologists, please allow me to contribute a few lines to the defense argument:

—It's only the preseason.

—The Rams are running a scaled-down offense.

—Bulger is getting acclimated to the Al Saunders system and his timing is way off.

— Torry Holt and Steven Jackson didn't play Saturday.

—The offensive line ain't exactly the Great Wall of China.

—The receivers dropped some passes again Saturday. Or ran the wrong routes. Or something.

Every point has merit.

But here's the deal for NFL quarterbacks: You complete passes, or you don't. You direct successful drives, or you don't. And it doesn't take long for the wolfpack to form.

It isn't always fair, but then again, that's why Bulger and his QB pals demand, and receive, the big money. Bulger cashed in for a six-year, $65 million deal before the 2007 season, then regressed terribly. With defensive linemen and blitzers zeroing in on his torso, the life soon disappeared from Bulger's game. By the end of the season, the dude was a silhouette of a quarterback a police chalk line.

We're into a new cycle, a fresh start, but does Bulger look right to you? There's a reason the Rams aggressively pursued Trent Green to be a relief pitcher. It isn't just because Green is a respected pro, or that he functioned successfully with Saunders in Kansas City. It's natural to have concerns about Bulger.

Since the start of the 2003 season, Bulger has been sacked 190 times, more than any other NFL quarterback. And that doesn't begin to account for the battering he received while in the act of releasing a throw.

If you've followed the NFL long enough, you've seen quarterbacks take a whipping and really suffer for it. Los Angeles Rams fans will tell you all about Jim Everett. I saw it happen to a faded Danny White in Dallas.

And I've seen this twice before in St. Louis. It took Neil Lomax more than a year to recover from getting sacked 61 times in 1985; he didn't really bounce back until 1987. Kurt Warner, who bravely stood exposed in the pocket to make connections for the "Greatest Show" Rams, absorbed vicious body blows that ultimately reduced his effectiveness. Warner wasn't the same QB for a few years. It took him a long time to heal.

That's why I worry about Bulger. Right now, it's the preseason, and some will insist that we can't truly judge his form until the real games begin. I do not disagree. We'll know soon enough.

And I can only imagine the diabolical blitzes being concocted by antagonistic Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Johnson in anticipation of the Rams' opener Sept. 7 in Philadelphia.

After ugly loss, Saturday’s home game looms large

By Bill Coats

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

MEQUON, Wis. (Camp Day 18/early report)

After stumbling through their preseason opener at Tennessee, the Rams meet the Chargers on Saturday night at the Edward Jones Dome. After seeing his troops pummeled 34-13 by the Titans, coach Scott Linehan is placing considerable importance on the outcome. Enough so that he plans to “play a significant amount with our starting unit.”

“I don’t know what that means; when we’re done, we’re done,” Linehan said. “But we want to play a great game on Saturday.”

Emerging victorious in St. Louis, where ticket sales are lagging, “is very important,” Linehan added. “I don’t discount the importance of any game, preseason or not. There’s not a whole lot of good that comes out of losing a game.”

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That said, here are a couple of unsolicited suggestions:

Since the first-team offense hasn’t produced a touchdown in a preseson game since 2005, keep Marc Bulger & Co. in Saturday until they do. If it takes them until the fourth quarter, against the Chargers’ scrubs, so be it.

Since the Rams’ most recent first-round draftees, defensive tackle Adam Carriker (2007) and defensive end Chris Long (2008), had zero tackles between them vs. the Titans (according the unofficial press-box stats), same thing: keep them in the game until they start to make some plays.

Rams' offense returns to a fast and furious era

By Bryan Burwell

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

07/27/2008

MEQUON, WIS.

After only two days and three practices, this Rams camp has a distinctive retro feel to it. When the ball kept leaving Marc Bulger's right hand, it snapped like cattails on the tip of a whip. Everything he threw zipped across the field in perfect tight spirals. Every pass play he called was executed with that familiar urgency that not so long ago was the offensive signature of the fast and furious Rams.

Wide receivers were flying down the sidelines, tight ends were flashing up the seam, running backs were darting into creases, and everything was happening at warp speeds. "We're not going to be doing any (throwing to the) back shoulder stuff," Bugler said. "We have to run and our receivers have to know that we are going to make them go get the ball. It's not going to be a guessing game. They're going to have to go get the ball, don't slow down. … We go 100 miles an hour every play, it's as simple as that."

Funny how things work out, huh? The conservative offensive style that was the signature of the first two Scott Linehan years has been replaced by a bold and beautiful up-tempo Greatest Show on Turf revival. Linehan and his more deliberate offensive approach were supposed to be the perfect tonic for the "Mad Mike" Martz hangover, and for a while they were.

Two years ago, Linehan's offense was good enough to help Bulger and Steven Jackson produce career seasons. Yet one year later, in the midst of a 3-13 season, and with his veteran stars publicly and privately grumbling about it, Linehan's approach became obsolete. So Al Saunders, who like Martz comes off the flamboyant Air Coryell coaching tree, was hired as offensive coordinator to reinstall the Greatest Show, help reignite the energy in the Edward Jones Dome and make the Rams a dazzling offensive threat again.

"It feels good," said Torry Holt, one of the last remaining holdovers from the original Greatest Show era. "Al's a terrific teacher. He is a tremendous motivator and demands excellence. (Saunders' style is) a vertical game, it's fast. The tempo is good and it is exciting. I think everybody on the offensive side is enjoying it right now."

Good or bad, whatever course the 2008 season takes, it will be the Rams' offense that will blaze the trail. If all the parts are in play — and that means a healthy offensive line, a fully recovered Holt (knee), a well-protected Bulger and a financially flush Jackson — Saunders will not only re-create the fast and furious style that Mad Mike made famous, it's a guarantee that he'll add a few wrinkles of his own.

"I've been lucky to be in the same system with different coordinators and everyone puts their own spin on it," said No. 2 quarterback Trent Green. "When (Martz) and I came from Washington, his coaching personality was vastly different from the way Norv (Turner) did it, and with Al in Kansas City, it was different from Mike and Norv, and with all of them, those changes were facilitated by the talent we had. When Al and I went to KC, he had the Tony Gonzalez factor, a Pro Bowl tight end who could get deep, and he immediately tweaked his offense to take advantage of that. And now here in St. Louis, we have all sorts of interesting talents that Al will be able to utilize that will make this offense different from the one in KC and even the one we used in St. Louis originally."

What will this version of the Air Coryell offense look like? That depends on how quickly the speedy rookie receivers Donnie Avery and Keenan Burton develop, how much pass-catching tight end Randy McMichael can absorb, how much a clever veteran Pro Bowl pass catcher like Holt still has left after an injury-plagued '07 season, and whether Bulger can recapture his Pro Bowl form from '06.

The fun at this training camp will be watching as Saunders learns how best to utilize everyone. "Al wants to see what we can do well," Bulger said. "If we are not hitting on something, he's not going to call it. It's up to us to prove what we can hit."

But the bulk of this offense's success will ride on the broad shoulders of Jackson, who remained a camp holdout after two days at Concordia University. All was quiet on the holdout front Saturday, and even if he misses a week of training camp, veteran running backs with his talent can usually jump right in without a hitch. The only thing that his holdout is hurting right now is his pocketbook with those hefty $15,000-a-day fines.

"Getting 39 in here and getting healthy is going to be big," Holt said. "Steven is the guy. He's our horse. And like I told him, we will go as far as he takes us. I'm sure that I'm going to jump on his shoulders and ride him for a bit. I know business is business, so I wish him well and hope to see him soon, because once he gets back in, it's on."