This sounds familar

[ChiefsCountry]

From across the state, read these articles about the Lambs. Sounds like the Chiefs of the last few years.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/spo...C?OpenDocument

Rams can't write off troubles as rebuilding
By Bryan Burwell

SEATTLE — This was the worst sort of athletic misery of them all. Utter
hopelessness.

As he stood in front of his locker stall in the Qwest Field visitors' locker
room after yet another Sunday afternoon massacre — this one a 37-13 romp by the
Seattle Seahawks — Rams tackle Orlando Pace slowly shook his head and let out a
sad and dispirited sigh. "Man, I don't know, I just don't know," Pace said as
he grabbed a dress shirt off a coat hook. "This is the worst situation I have
ever been around."

He shrugged those broad shoulders, rolled his sad eyes and frowned with the
helpless expression of someone who had been asked to extract all the sand from
the Sahara with a plastic spoon. Of course the task was much tougher than that.
Someone had just asked him if he knew the solution to the biggest mystery of
all: How do you fix what ails this moribund franchise?

"In all my years (in football) I've never been through something like this,"
Pace said. "This is all new territory to me."

Just a few feet away from Pace was a large, black suede bag from one of the
seven Pro Bowls he has played in. It was a distant remnant of the glory days of
this franchise, when people were talking about the Rams as if they were on the
verge of becoming the NFL's newest dynasty. When someone asked him if he could
still remember those days, Pace frowned again and let out another exasperated
sigh.

"Those years? Those great years?" he said. "That was light-years ago, man.
Light-years."

I wish Chip Rosenbloom could have seen this locker room Sunday. The new owner
should have been there to understand how bad things have gotten. He should have
been there to hear the helplessness in the voices of all those players, who
wish that things have hit rock bottom but know the team is still in free fall.

Today, the only conversation in knowledgeable NFL circles about the Rams is how
really bad this team is, and how it has no chance to get better any time soon.
The 0-3 Rams have won only seven of their last 30 games, and you wish you could
write it off as a franchise in a brief rebuilding downturn.

But if Rosenbloom were here, he'd have to know that there's no amount of
squinting that can distort the uncomfortable truth that this sagging
organization is suffering from a deep football depression.

The more Rosenbloom closely examines this, the more I'm certain he will realize
that the men who have been left in charge — John Shaw and Jay Zygmunt — are
guilty of so much amateur-hour bungling. Shaw's absentee-management
indifference to the day-to-day operations and Zygmunt's unknowledgeable
hands-on meddling in the football side of the business were the lethal
combination that has conspired to leave so many of these players and coaches in
a wretched football hell, forced Scott Linehan into a fate he doesn't deserve
and set the franchise back at least five years.

The company line from the top of the Rams food chain is that this is a
rebuilding process. That of course is a crock, since this is one of the
league's oldest rosters. There are too many older players on the wrong side of
the career arch playing meaningful minutes and not enough talented young ones
being carefully indoctrinated into the system.

If this was a rebuilding situation, why were two of the team's most recent
second-round picks (Brian Leonard and Joe Klopfenstein) on the sidelines almost
the entire game?

If this was a rebuilding situation, why were none of the second- or third-round
picks from 2006 and 2007 on the field Sunday getting significant playing time?
The so-called future of the Rams is a total waste, just one bad draft pick
after another. Klopfenstein doesn't play. Leonard doesn't play. Jon Alston is
long gone. So are Claude Wroten, Dominque Byrd, Jimmy Kennedy, Robert Thomas,
Travis Fisher, Kevin Curtis, Damione Lewis, Anthony Hargrove, Eric Crouch,
Travis Scott and Shaun McDonald.

This is why there are no short-term answers to the Rams' losing ways. The
future never developed because the people who were supposed to be astute judges
of talent failed at their jobs.

Imagine how much different things could have been for the Rams if in 2006, they
had made just two smart, franchise-shifting moves. Instead of taking cornerback
Tye Hill in the first round and tight end Klopfenstein in the second, they
should have snatched up both Antonio Cromartie and Marcus McNeil.

Four picks after Hill was selected by the Rams, Cromartie was snatched up by
the San Diego Chargers. Four picks after Klopfenstein was taken, the Chargers
grabbed offensive tackle McNeil. Cromartie and McNeil are now Pro Bowl players,
while Hill and Klopfenstein are looking like major mistakes.

This is why it's so bad, and why it can and will get worse. And I just wish
Rosenbloom had been here to see just how bad it really is.