OK, Browns fans, this is a a story about the LOS ANGELES Rams and the impact they will have on you and your team in just 12 days.
This is a story about a team going back to the future to recapture Hollywood after abandoning the region over 20 years before.
If the Rams had remained in St. Louis, would they still have made the blockbuster deal with the Tennessee Titans to get the No. 1 overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft?
Perhaps yes, and perhaps no.
Ah, heck, let’s be real. Definitely no, not in St. Louis.
If the Rams had won 10 Super Bowls while they were in St. Louis, they still would have been second fiddle to Cardinals – for that matter, even third fiddle behind the Gateway Arch as well. St. Louis is the best baseball town in America. It always has been, and it always will be. In St. Louis, it was never a big deal who the quarterback of the Rams was. All that mattered was who was going to be delivering the ball – that is, pitching — for the Cardinals.
All that changed – in more ways than one – when they became the LOS ANGELES Rams several months ago. The Rams now have to have a great player – and a name player, too – at quarterback. Quarterback is the most important – and the most high-profile – position in team sports. That’s never more more true than for Hollywood’s Team.
When the Rams moved to Los Angeles the first time – from Cleveland, mind you – in 1946, their quarterback was Bob Waterfield, who, as a rookie in 1945, was the NFL MVP and led them to the league title. And oh, by the way, his wife was none other than Jane Russell, the ultimate pin-up girl of the time.
Yes, even way back when, you had to be a real star in more ways than one to make it in Los Angeles. Waterfield and Russell were made for Los Angeles, and, in the same way, so were the Rams.
The current Rams knew they couldn’t trot out at quarterback any of the guys they used last season in St. Louis. None of those men could start for Lake Erie College. The Rams would lose a lot of games and look bad doing it by having any of them under center, or even on the roster.
Knowing that, as they say, first impressions last, the Rams needed to come back to Los Angeles not with a whimper, but with a bang, accompanied by all the pomp and circumstance that comes with being Hollywood’s Team. By making the deal with the Titans, the Rams can get the young franchise quarterback they want, and with that and him, they can start, in theory at least, closing the gap on the teams ahead of them in the NFC West, the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals, both of whom have franchise quarterbacks in Russell Wilson and Carson Palmer, respectively.
Now let’s look at this a little further, again keeping in mind that these are the LOS ANGELES Rams we’re talking about here.
The Rams and Titans apparently consummated their big trade on Wednesday night, just as some guy named Kobe Bryant of the Lakers was laying 60 on the Utah Jazz nearby at the Staples Center in the final game of his career.
The Rams, with Tennessee’s consent, of course, held off announcing the deal that night and instead decided to do it on Thursday morning. There were two reasons for that, and both concern the spotlight, which is the case with just about everything in Los Angeles that means anything.
First of all, by announcing the deal Wednesday night, the Rams would have been stealing some of Kobe’s thunder. That would have been a horrible PR move – a real black eye — for the new team in town that’s trying to make everybody happy for as long as they can. It’s called marketing.
Secondly, the Rams would have been stealing their own thunder. They wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much play in both Los Angeles and nationally on Wednesday night as they did when they waited about 12 hours, when people were still drunk on the Kobe news but were at least receptive to hearing about something different if it were big enough and newsy enough – and yeah, this trade was indeed big enough and newsy enough.
Let us continue.
Jared Goff and Carson Wentz are, of course, the two top-rated quarterbacks in the draft. No one else is even close. So the Rams are going to choose one of them.
But which one? They seem to be one in the same, rated dead-heat even by just about all of the so-called “experts.” Indeed, do you like chocolate ice cream, or vanilla? Both are great. It all depends on your tastes.
With all that having been said, then – and Browns fans, this is where you need to really perk up and listen – could it be that the Rams will take Goff on Day 1 of the draft on April 28?
After all, Goff is a known commodity. He played at Cal, located in Berkeley just several hours up the road. He also played his high school ball there in the San Francisco area. So he’s a “local” guy. Culture-wise, he would fit right in, in Los Angeles.
Having the No. 1 pick be a quarterback – and having him be from California, the only state that matters in California – is like a made-for-TV movie. It’s right up Hollywood’s alley, which bodes oh, so well for the Rams in terms of that marketing to which we just made reference.
Wentz, on the other hand, played at North Dakota State and was born in Bismarck, N.D. He might as well have played on the moon. There are probably about 10 people in Los Angeles who are aware that North Dakota is even one of the 50 states, and only two or three of them could pick it out on a map.
“Isn’t North Dakota next to Northern Ireland?”
In this case, yes, it is.
To draft Wentz would be like putting Jed Clampett into the front seat of an old, beat-up truck and having him amble into town like some country bumpkin.
So, with everything else being equal – and I truly think that everything else is equal concerning these quarterbacks – I think the Rams will draft Goff.
If Goff is a bust, he will be a “legitimate” bust – a legitimate, forgivable error – because of his background.
If Wentz is a bust, even Mr. Drysdale and Miss Hathaway will be among those in the tar-and-feather brigade. In terms of PR, it would be a sin worse than death.
And, again in more ways than one, the Rams can’t afford that
That, of course, would leave Wentz for the Browns at No. 2 overall. In working-class Cleveland, which is as far removed from Los Angeles as a city can be – and that’s a good thing – Wentz would fit like a glove.
But would he do so from a football sense in the mind of head coach/quarterback guru Hue Jackson, whose evaluation of Wentz – and Goff, for that matter – will be the ultimate determining factor in what the Browns do?
That remains to be seen.
If all this seems goofy, like a Hollywood script, maybe that’s because we’re dealing with well … Hollywood, where all that stuff is real. It counts. Honest.
After all, as we said at the top, these are the LOS ANGELES Rams we’re talking about here.
And because they’re the LOS ANGELES Rams now, it has a great impact on your Cleveland Browns.
