A Tale of Two Cities
St. Louis and Phoenix. One is Midwest, the other is Southwest. One has an arch that is shaped like a Gateway, the other has a few cacti shaped like an arch.
The St. Louis Rams and the Phoenix Cardinals. Both play in the West Division of the NFC. The Phoenix Cardinals used to be the St. Louis Cardinals. Before that, they used to be the Chicago Cardinals. The St. Louis Rams used to be the Los Angeles Rams. Before that, they were the Cleveland Rams. Meet me in St. Louis? Yes, they do meet each other at least once a year in St. Louis, as they play each other twice a year, home and away, in conference play.
Both teams in recent years have floundered somewhere between between the lower levels of the pro football hierarchy and utter mediocrity. The Rams of course had a few years of greatness with their late 1990’s, early 2000’s teams called the “Greatest Show on Turf,” while the Arizona Cardinals had one great post-season, following a mediocre 9 – 7 season in 2008 to get them into the 2009 Super Bowl. BOTH teams had one thing in common. Both Super Bowl teams had one key factor, and that is, they both had GREAT quarterback play from the same person, one Kurt Warner.
One of those squads is back amongst the elite teams in the NFL again. That would be the Phoenix Cardinals. They were 9 and 1 at one point last year before late season injuries to their first and second string quarterbacks derailed their stellar early season 2014 campaign and turned what probably would have, or at least could been a division championship or Super Bowl appearance into an early first round exit from the playoffs. This year, they are at almost the same point as they were last season, leading the West at 8 and 2, a full three games up on the two time Super Bowl appearing Seattle Seahawks. They are, in a word, a serious contender to play in this year’s Super Bowl.
The St. Louis Rams, on the other hand, are that perfect example of the team that is mired in the depths of their futility, with a team that has not even had a winning season since 2003. They totally exemplify the type of team that loses far too many more games than they should because of bad ownership, bad player personnel decisions and bad coaching, the unholiest of bad management trinities.
The St. Louis Rams have had a TON of high draft picks with all of their poor finishes over these last dozen or so years. When you have lousy player personnel people in charge, it doesn’t matter how high your picks are. If they don’t know how to assemble a team and or choose legitimate, solid professional football players, especially at the key positions, then you end up with teams that do things like go somewhere in the neighborhood of between about 2 – 14 and 6 – 10 every year.
One of the differences between good teams and bad teams is their effectiveness at finding players in the draft. A team HAS to find players that are going to be unquestioned starters in the early rounds of the draft and preferably gets its all pros on those times that that they get the high picks in the first rounds. Good teams find good players in the early rounds and in fact get them in all of the draft’s rounds. Bad teams draft players that bust.
In the last half dozen years, the Arizona Cardinals have been drafting some excellent players on both offense and defense. A team HAS to get a few things handled with draft picks, and that usually includes making sure they have offensive and defensive lines capable of competing with any and all of the other teams in the league. If you don’t have a good offensive line, other teams will stop your running game and pass rush the hell out of your quarterback
On the other hand, during their last dozen years worth of hapless drafting, the Rams have taken scores of first and second round draft choices that are either no longer on their team or no longer still in the league. If you look at some of the biggest name players effectively playing in the league right now, nearly every one of them was taken AFTER the Rams had taken their own “bust” players.
The Rams HAVE been drafting players much better in the last few years, especially on defense, where they have assembled a first class, high quality defense. They have had some recent good drafts and have at least pieced together the right ingredients in the front seven and in the secondary to get the defensive half of the equation right.
Here’s where the two teams differ though. They both have the pretty good defenses that probably rank in the top ten defenses in football. But the Cardinals have pieced together the highest scoring offense in football (at the 11 week mark of the season at this point), while the Rams are probably the worst offense in football.
And there’s one major reason why that has happened. The quarterback position. In this era of passing oriented football, thanks to the rules that favor receivers in their matchups against defensive backs, the Cardinals went out and got a top ten quarterback, while the Rams have floundered at the quarterback position pretty much every year since they let Kurt Warner go.
Carson Palmer was the number one draft choice in the entire draft when he came out, and, when he became available through trade, the Cardinals went out and grabbed him, while the Rams, who have consistently tried to win with
quarterback play that has to rank somewhere in the bottom 20% of all of the quarterbacks in football, they didn’t.
The Cardinals now have a great passing offense (some of that due to coaching, some due to a successful concentration of draft capital on wide receivers), while the Rams have a horrible pass offense (mostly due to poor passing offense coaching AND poor usage of draft capital on wide receivers). The Rams have a great rookie running back in Todd Gurley, but a good running game without a quality passing game is doomed to fail in this era of professional football.
You have two teams that USED to be in about the same lower to medium levels in terms of where they ranked in the NFL hierarchy. A smart team knows that it takes a quarterback to play at somewhere near a top ten level for a team to contend for a championship. A quarterback of that quality became available in Carson Palmer. The Cardinals only had to give up a low round draft pick to get Palmer while the Rams watched.
The Arizona (formerly St. Louis) Cardinals are now an elite power in the National Football League. The St. Louis Rams are still stuck somewhere in the lower to middle of the pack. Two teams, pretty much separated in quality by one having the better quarterback (and maybe coaching and talent evaluation). And with the Rams floundering in the standings once again, there is a good chance they might be leaving St. Louis to go back to play in Los Angeles.
This tale of two cities could end up with one of those two cities no longer even having a team. And all because one of those teams from one of those two cities doesn’t have a good quarterback.
