Some people are fans of the St. Louis Rams. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the St. Louis Rams. This 2012 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read the other Why Your Team Sucks 2012 previews here.


1. The Rams are the WNBA team of the NFL. Outside of the Staph Infection R&D Lab that is the Cleveland Browns, there isn't a worse team in football at keeping players healthy than the Rams. A Rams player is 50% more likely than any other NFL player to break his arm WHILE tearing his ACL. They didn't need a new coach. They needed a fucking trainer.

Because Sam Bradford could very well die this season. I think it's very nice that the Rams managed to fleece Dan Snyder and the Shanahans for three first rounders. That's what the Redskins are there for. But the Rams had one of the shittiest o-lines in football last season, and they only spent one measly fifth round pick on a linemen in the draft. Bradford was sacked an average of three-and-a-half times a game last season, and the only thing the Rams did to fix the problem was sign center Scott Wells away from the Packers. That's not enough. By Week 6, Bradford will have his clavicle broken in fourteen different places and it'll be Kellen Clemens time. Because who the fuck is Bradford gonna throw to? Steve Smith? Steve Smith is a bucket of ass. And anyone who tells me that Lance Kendricks could be a sleeper at TE this season should be forced to drink hydrochloric acid. I've done the whole "draft Kendricks late because you think he's a sleeper" thing. It doesn't work. This is arguably the worst roster in football.


Drew Magary writes for Deadspin and Gawker. He's also a correspondent for GQ. Follow him on Twitter @drewmagary and email him at drew@deadspin.com.

2. They still don't have a defensive coordinator. Now that Greggggg Williams has been suspended for 500 years, who will help Rams pit crew chief Jeff Fisher craft bizarre Powerpoint slides that look like Whitlock's Twitter page? I think you Rams fans will be heartened to know that the answer is... like, whatever:

Fisher believes if the game plan is sound, it doesn't matter who makes the calls.

What's that? Organizing a sound chain of communication so that nothing gets fucked up come gameday? MEH. Unimportant. We'll just, like, figure it out and shit. I'm crazy excited for the Rams to take three defensive timeouts every first and third quarter.

3. They are the scourge of the Red Zone Channel. There's nothing more depressing than watching the Red Zone Channel and being taken from the excitement of an intense NFC East matchup and dropped into the fucking funeral parlor of a Rams home game. None of those fans want to be at a Rams game. Those are people who were hoping to get into a Cardinals game that day so that they could clap lustily for the other team (so classy!) and eat nothing but the salt part of the giant pretzel. But they missed on tickets, and now they're stuck at the Junior Kingdome. You can hear the trace of guilt in Andrew Siciliano's voice when he says, "Let's take you to St. Louis," because he knows that you know that he's cutting to the Rams game because every other game happened to be breaking to commercial at the same time. I don't even need to look at the screen to know it's a Rams game. All I have to do is listen for Ron Pitts. If the Rams were contracted (or mercifully shipped back to Los Angeles), the Red Zone Channel would never have any lulls.


4. I saw the best years of Steven Jackson's life wasted. Poor bastard. He'll be forced to touch the ball 40 times a game before falling apart Bluesmobile-style by midseason. I'm so sorry this happened to you, Steven. If it's any consolation, I hear that Bradford is quite the cutup in the team whirlpool.

There is a conspicuous feeling when you watch the Rams that their best days are now long behind them. They're on their fourth coach since Dick Vermeil was overthrown by Mike Martz, and 1999 seems decades away with each passing year. They're never gonna be that good again. Ever. They got three very nice years, and now it's all but forgotten. And I'd feel bad for St. Louis, except for the fact that St. Louis is a shitty town and you get what you deserve if you're dumb enough to hang out there. Even Matt Vasgersian knows that downtown St. Louis is a hole in the ground.


5. Hear it from Rams fans:

Spencer:

Long-time Rams fan here who has been to 80% of our games since they moved to STL. In the past 5 years, we have amassed a horribly putrid total of 15 wins, which is worse than any 5-year total in NFL history, including even the Matt Millen era Lions. All of this because the powers that be couldn't control their massive fucking egos back when things were going good. Since then, we have just made mistake after mistake in the draft (zero players from our '06 and '07 drafts remained on our roster by 2010), personnel moves ($34 million for Drew Bennett??) and coaching hires. Hopefully things will change with an actual proven GM-head coach combo but I'll believe it when I see it.


Chris:

Point 1 - They are actively terrible. The Rams were not only the worst team in the league last year, they were comically non-competitive. The talent level in the NFL shouldn't ever be so one-sided that one team looks like an NFL team and the other looks like a collection of recently aborted fetuses. Point 2 - The lame-duckery. Stupid fuckhead Florio makes it a personal point to turn any Rams-related news into a definite sign that they're on the next moving truck to LA. He's the worst, and any post drags me into the PFT message boards, home of the ever charming masses of racists and steakheads that populate that mosh pit of jackassery. Regardless of the fact that LA doesn't even have a shovel in the fucking dirt yet. I hate him. Point 3 - Our owner's moustache. Pronounced Moo-Stash, Stanley Kroenke has a Wannstedt level lip fungus. Where we could have had Shahid Khan's beautiful, Iron-Sheikiness, instead, we get the watered down Ron Jeremy look. Point 4 - The Edward Jones Dome. Outdated as soon as it was finished, the Ed (as we call it here) is dark and depressing. It can be stupid-fucking loud when the team puts out a tiny bit of effort, but the team has underperformed to the point of comedy for 5 years, and it's hard to cheer for terrible. The nachos are tasty, though.


Wanna be part of the Deadspin NFL previews? It's simple. Just email me and give me ample evidence of why your team sucks. I'll throw any good material into the post and give you proper credit. Next team up: THE SEAHAWKS.