Breaking Bad in St. Louis

The Rams have thoroughly under performed so far this season. By Eugene Lanzoni

The Rams should be better. They have all the pieces to be better. Before the season began they had amassed a large contingent of followers who believed that they would be better. Yet somehow they’ve only managed to go from bad to worse. Their objective was far from lofty and very much within reach: win the deplorable NFC West. But unfortunately the W’s have proven impossible to come by this season in St Louis, and the team has become a phenomenal embarrassment. They are winless on the season and their closest margin of failure was a seven point loss against the Redskins in week four. In their last four outings the Rams have only managed a measly 27 points. That is less than a touchdown per game. To put that in perspective, their upcoming opponents from the Big Easy dropped an unprecedented 62 point bomb on the Peytonless Painters in this week’s Sunday Night game. St Louis has dropped a 56 point stink bomb for this season’s cumulative offensive output…..

Needless to say, this Sunday is going to feature a Rams evisceration of Biblical proportions likely ending in some sort of major PETA involvement. But don’t pity these young talented players like Sam Bradford, Chris Long, or James Laurinaitis because there’s plenty of time for them to bury this nightmare of a season underneath future accomplishments. Don’t even pity some of the more veteran guys like Brandon Lloyd because every ounce of sympathy, compassion, and empathy should be saved for Steven Jackson.

Yes, for all of you out there scratching your heads, believe it or not Jackson is still alive and still playing football in the NFL. But many football fans have either dismissed him or entirely forgotten his existence because his horse has been hitched to an extremely unsuccessful wagon. The Rams drafted Jackson in 2004 and in 2006 he enjoyed a breakout year where he made the Pro Bowl for the first time and was named Offensive Player of the Year. Then in 2008 he signed a six year deal with St Louis to become the highest paid running back in the NFL. Clearly his wallet doesn’t need anyone’s sympathy, but his legacy does.

Steven Jackson is a marvelous aberration in this era of flash-in-the pan running backs. The man has shone with a constant brilliance year after year, and meanwhile superstars like Shawn Alexander, Ladanian Tomlinson, and now Chris Johnson (possibly) have exploded like supernovas only to fizzle out and die within a season or two. And yet even with as great as Jackson has been, his career could have been so much more if he’d only had better teams on which to play. He is the football equivalent of Breaking Bad’s Walter White: a man whose immense talent was never able to flourish and exhibit its full potential due to unfortunate circumstances. Soon Jackson will have to consider the imminent conclusion of his football lifecycle and he’ll have to come to terms with the legacy he is leaving behind. And while the brilliant chemist Walter White chose to break bad and become a drug dealer in order to secure financial security for the family he’ll leave behind after he dies, Jackson has yet to take any such drastic measures involving his legacy. Will he be content with instead allowing the Rams to literally break bad and in the process squander his talent on a winless team? Or will he find a way to snatch that elusive championship ring from the jaws of failure and retirement? For all the underachievers of the world, I hope the latter.