Thrown for a loss
As people around the NFL ponder whether the New England Patriots will ever lose a game this season, another question has bubbled to the surface:
Will the St. Louis Rams and Miami Dolphins ever win one?
Both teams are 0-6 and have matched the worst-ever starts in the history of their franchises. The 2004 Dolphins lost their first six games before beating -- in a coincidental twist -- St. Louis. In 1962, the Los Angeles Rams ended their six-game slide with a victory over San Francisco.
Today, St. Louis stands a better chance of winning than Miami. The injury-riddled Rams play at Seattle, which is coming off consecutive defeats -- among them a loss last Sunday to then-winless New Orleans. Although Seattle has swept the Rams each of the last two years, both meetings last season were decided by only two points.
Meanwhile, the Dolphins play host to the mighty Patriots, who lead the league with a 38.3-point scoring average. New England quarterback Tom Brady is by far the leading most-valuable-player candidate, and, as if that weren’t enough, the Patriots have the league’s second-ranked defense.
However, the last time these teams met, in Week 14 last season, the Dolphins blanked the visiting Patriots, 21-0. It was only the second time in Brady’s career he was on the losing end of a shutout.
In St. Louis and Miami, the stress of losing is starting to show. At practice Thursday, Rams Coach Scott Linehan, who’s normally very even-keel, erupted and tore into his players.
“Right now our guys are hungry for a win,” he explained to reporters later. “It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re happy. . . . I can tell you, it ain’t good to lose and nobody feels good about it. Everybody is focused on getting a win. Team spirit will be much better once we start winning.”
At least the Rams have a legitimate excuse for their troubles. Because of injuries, they’ve missed three of their best players: quarterback Marc Bulger, running back Steven Jackson and left tackle Orlando Pace.
But the Rams have also gotten too old at some key positions, and they haven’t made the right personnel moves to improve their lackluster defense.
In Miami, the years also have caught up with the defense, which is loaded with 30-somethings such as Keith Traylor, 38, Zach Thomas, 34, Jason Taylor, 33, and Vonnie Holliday, 31.
The Dolphins have made some bad decisions in the draft too, and the current roster has no players selected by the team between 1998 and 2003. The Dolphins last week traded one of their best players, receiver Chris Chambers, to the San Diego Chargers.
The Dolphins raised eyebrows in April when they passed on Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn and instead took Ohio State receiver Ted Ginn Jr., a player many experts considered a reach as a top-10 pick. So far, Ginn has done little to suggest those experts were wrong.
The Dolphins did choose a quarterback in the second round, Brigham Young’s John Beck, and a lot of scouts viewed him as one of the draft’s hidden gems. Interestingly, the Rams had targeted him too.
On top of all the losing, there was some additional friction in Miami last week because of an HBO report saying Taylor, last season’s defensive player of the year, was disappointed the trade deadline passed without his being dealt to another team. Taylor later denied saying that.
However, in a conference call with New England reporters last week, Taylor didn’t rule out the possibility this could be his last season with Miami.
“In the off-season, I don’t know what direction the team is going to go, and there may come a time when they’re done with me,” he said. “At that point, I’ll have to address that and look elsewhere.”
First-year Dolphins Coach Cam Cameron, whose team is a 16-point underdog to the Patriots, compared the current situation to San Diego’s 0-5 start in 2003, when he was the Chargers’ offensive coordinator. That team went on to finish 4-12, then went 12-4 the following season.
But Troy Aikman, the former Dallas quarterback turned Fox broadcaster, said it’s easy for a culture of losing to spread in a locker room and for players to essentially give up on a season. The Cowboys were 1-15 his rookie season in 1989, before going on to win three Super Bowls in the 1990s.
“It’s a tremendous mountain for a coaching staff to overcome,” Aikman said. “You start off the year 0-6, and just the pure math of it says you have to win 10 in a row just to get into the playoffs. That’s not realistic. So you’ve got teams at 0-6 that are already saying, ‘Well, what are we playing for?’
“It’s easy to say, ‘That’s their job. That’s what they’re paid to do,’ and that’s true. But I’ve been on teams that have been knocked out of the playoffs, and it’s hard to get great efforts during practice, it’s hard to get great efforts during the games. As much as you want it to be, it’s just not the same.”
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Ram not-so-tough
Without three of their best players on offense, the St. Louis Rams are averaging only 12.2 points a game. The Rams’ lowest-scoring seasons:
*--* Year Points Six-game rec. Final rec. 1937 40 1-5-0 1-10-0 2007 73 0-6-0 -- 1963 73 1-5-0 5-9-0 1941 76 2-4-0 2-9-0 1940 82 2-4-0 4-6-1 *--*
The Rams have been held to 16 points or fewer in a league-worst five of six games:
*--* St. Louis 5 Kansas City 4 N.Y. Jets 4 Atlanta 4 New Orleans 4 Philadelphia 4 *--*
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Source: Stats LLC
