Shutdown Corner is previewing all 32 teams as we get ready for the NFL season, counting down the teams one per weekday in reverse order of our initial 2017 power rankings. No. 1 will be revealed on Aug. 2, the day before the Hall of Fame Game kicks off the preseason.

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Los Angeles won’t stand for boring, and no team in the NFL last season was more boring than the Los Angeles Rams.

The Rams’ first season wasn’t a smash hit. They were bad on the field, and fans didn’t go out of their way to watch. Nor should they have. Their games were mostly awful, including a pair of games in which neither team reached 10 points. Los Angeles had the worst offense in football and it wasn’t close.

The Rams’ strange, blind loyalty to Jeff Fisher had to end, and it finally did. None of Fisher’s five Rams teams finished .500 or better, and none of them ranked higher than No. 23 in the NFL in points scored. He was fired during last season.

Two men will determine if the Rams can actually move the needle in L.A. over the next few years: new coach Sean McVay and quarterback Jared Goff.

Hiring McVay is the kind of bold move the Rams needed to make. He’s just 31, the youngest head coach in modern NFL history. He’s young, but he has already drawn praise for his acumen as an offensive coach. With McVay as their offensive coordinator last season, the Redskins finished third in the NFL in yardage and 12th in points scored. The last time the Rams finished higher than No. 21 in points scored or No. 24 in yardage was 2006.

A competent offensive coaching staff will help 2016 No. 1 overall pick Goff, but he comes into his second season with serious questions. Goff sitting behind Case Keenum for the first nine games of last season, or being third-string behind Sean Mannion out of the preseason, can be explained away by coaching incompetence. But it’s not like Goff did much when he got the chance. The Rams went 0-7 in his starts. Goff had a 63.6 rating. He was sacked an astonishing 11.3 percent of the time, and a quarterback does have some control over his sack rate. It shows that Goff had trouble identifying where to go with the ball and getting rid of it. The game seemed like it was going too fast for him.

Goff was playing behind a bad offensive line, with a lackluster set of receivers, under a coaching staff that had no idea how to generate an offense. The only thing the Rams can do is blame the outside factors and let Goff start 2017 with a clean slate. After giving up so much last season to trade up and draft him, it’s not like they have a choice.

If the Rams could be simply decent on offense with McVay calling plays, Goff looking like the first overall pick and Todd Gurley running like he did as a rookie, the Rams might not be bad. The defense is talented, and new coordinator Wade Phillips is one of the best in the NFL. His track record in his first year with a new team is impressive. There are some reasons to be optimistic. It’s just hard to set aside how bad the Rams – who were 0-2 against the 2-14 San Francisco 49ers – looked most of last season. They lost 11 of their last 12 games after a good start.

It’s not like Los Angeles was clamoring for its own NFL team (and it definitely didn’t want a second team … good luck with that, Chargers). The NFL has tried pushing the notion that everyone is excited about football being back in L.A., but that wasn’t the case last season. Then again, the product the Rams put out for their fans in the ancient Los Angeles Coliseum wasn’t worth watching.

If McVay can make the Rams watchable and get L.A. excited – and that’s even more important with the new Inglewood stadium delayed a year – that would be a great first step.

View photos Jared Goff is still waiting to experience his first NFL win as a starter. (AP) More

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