Pro Football Articles Opinion & Fantasy – Football Diner

The Football Diner All-Time Draft
Pick # 2 – St. Louis Rams
by Sam Monson
17/6/2008
 
The second instalment of our players from your past draft sees the St Louis Rams delve into their history books looking for a player to shore up a team that was blighted by injuries last season.
 
The Rams have a storied history that can boast some serious Hall of Fame players at key positions of need for them, and this might be one of the toughest choices in the entire draft.
 
It must be tempting for the Rams to bring back a guy like Marshall Faulk, perhaps the most complete back ever to play the game, and arguably the real fuel in the fire of the Greatest Show on Turf, but when the Rams drafted his replacement in Steven Jackson, they did it well. Jackson is a top runner, and a much better weapon out of the backfield than he is given credit for. The only knocks on him are a possible durability worry, and the fact that he’s coming up on Free Agency. Even so, the Rams have bigger holes to fill.
 
They need help in the trenches. Both O and D lines for the Rams could do with a top quality player to help things along the way. Interestingly, the Rams are a franchise that has been known in the past both for a brutal defense, and a record setting, high-octane offense, though never at the same time. In fact, they might be the only franchise (I’m already braced for corrections) to have a unit nicknamed on both sides of the ball, with the ‘Fearsome Foursome’ of the 1960s, and the ‘Greatest Show on Turf’ at the turn of the millennium.
 
So do we try and restore the explosion to the offense, or steel the defense?
 
Orlando Pace was slowed heavily by injuries in 2007, but the Rams remain confident he can be an anchor for the O-line in 2008, and protect QB Marc Bulger. Jackie Slater could come in and excel at left tackle in all areas of the game solving that future worry, but if Pace is as capable as the Rams think he’ll be in 2008 then they might be able to get some passable play from their O-line.
 
The D-line has its choice of Hall of Fame, dominant, players. Deacon Jones (pictured right) and Merlin Olsen teamed up on the Fearsome Foursome defensive line of the 1960s to form one of the most devastating line tandems in NFL history. Olsen dominated the trenches like few have ever done, and went to an NFL record 14 consecutive Pro Bowls. The only year that he failed to make it was his final season in the league.
 
Jones exploited the dominance of Olsen to wreak havoc in the backfields of the opposition, employing his patented head-slap move to devastating effect (so much so that they banned it), and was the man who first coined the term ‘sack’. He claims to have recorded 213.5 sacks over his career (they weren’t recorded or an official stat until much later), which is a figure that, if accurate, would place him #1 on the all-time sack list. In 1967 he notched up 26 sacks unofficially, which would be the single season record, if official (by a clear 3.5). In short, Jones might have been the single most devastating pass rusher the league has ever seen, and you need only look at the New York Giants of 2007 to see what impact a quality pass rush can have. Everybody needs pass rushers, but the very best can single handedly mess up a game plan and shut down an offense. Jones was that good.
 
The only question is whether Jones would have been as dominant without Olsen beside him controlling the trenches. Olsen ranks up there with Mean Joe Greene as players that were simply unstoppable. They could disrupt the entire offense by the chaos they caused up the middle, and would need to be accounted for on every play in a major way. Pro Bowls might be a meaningless statistic, but 14 consecutive is one hell of an achievement, and it takes some ignoring, especially back in the day before the internet fan vote and the hype machine. In the middle of the Rams line at the moment they have former #1 pick Adam Carricker, along with the ageing LaRoi Glover. Olsen would certainly provide an upgrade in the middle, and allow this year’s #1 pick, Chris Long, to fully exploit the edge. On the other hand, imagine teaming Chris Long up with Deacon Jones and letting them both loose on opposing quarterbacks
 
One other player who deserves a solid mention is Jack Youngblood. Also a defensive end, Youngblood was a 9 time All-Pro, and member of the NFL’s All-Decade team for the 1970s. He was the very embodiment of a football player. He famously played the entire 1979-80 playoffs with a fractured left fibula, including the Superbowl, telling the trainer in the locker room to tape it up, he was going back out. Mercifully, Youngblood played the rest of the playoffs with a brace, not merely tape, holding his leg together. He even played in that year’s Pro Bowl with the leg still broken. Hubert Mizel of the St Pete Times in Florida described Youngblood best when he said “Jack Youngblood of the Rams was something beyond heroic. Bordering on maniacal”.
 
Despite numerous injuries during his career, Youngblood played in 201 consecutive games, recording an unofficial 151.5 sacks during his career, first in a run-first defense, and later in a 3-4 scheme. Even Merlin Olsen, who had played alongside Deacon Jones termed Youngblood the perfect defensive end.
 
In the end, the Rams have an embarrassment of riches in their history at positions of need, which makes this decision all the more tough. The NFL being the copycat league that it is, the Rams decide to ignore the big defensive tackles and add one of the league’s greatest ever pass rushers to their defense. Youngblood might be one of the toughest football players of all time, and today he’d be termed a ‘high-motor guy’, but the Rams just drafted a kid like that in Chris Long, so they take the other end, the Secretary of Defense, Deacon Jones (pictured left).
 
With the #2 pick in the ‘The Football Diner 2008 All-Time Draft’, the St. Louis Rams select: