Football Outsiders Present Favorable Projection for 2017 Rams

It’s that time of year again, where teams are beginning to meet for OTAs, the draft is right around the corner, and when Football Outsiders release their early win projections for the upcoming season. These projections are to be taken with a grain of salt of course because the draft, injuries, and other factors haven’t come into play yet but its worth noting that for once the Rams weren’t projected to stink. According to their win projections the Rams are slated to come in third place in the NFC West with a record of 8-8.

That would obviously double the amount of wins the Rams were able to get last year and as ridiculous as it might seem, 8-8 is very doable. Their reasoning comes from the idea that Wade Phillips alone is worth a few extra wins. When Wade Phillips is hired as a defensive coordinator the team’s DVOA always rises significantly.

When the Broncos hired Wade in 2014 they were already 4th in the league in defensive DVOA and in 2015 they were a historically great defense. His defenses always play good enough football to drag a team to a win or two when the offense sputters.

Football Outsiders believes that the Wade Phillips effect will remain intact due to the talent that exists along the front seven of the defense.

They also add that Sean McVay’s offense need not be record breaking but simply garden variety bad rather than the Jeff Fisher coached apocalypse it was a year ago. Not to splash the proverbial cold water in all of this because as borderline unimpeachable as Football Outsiders is, the odds of a 4-12 team jumping that much are not particularly great especially when the incumbent starter is 0-7 lifetime.

That being said, it is interesting that Wade Phillips is being acknowledged by the advanced stats community as someone who can singularly swing a team’s fortunes. There’s little doubt that the defense will be significantly better in 2017 but as with every story from now until the season starts, Jared Goff will be responsible for how well the team actually does. If they are able to pull themselves to reach 8-8, then expect a lot of people to suddenly start buying the Los Angeles Rams as a playoff team in 2018. Its a long way until that time but the early data suggests that at the very least 2017 won’t be the ugly slog that 2016 turned out to be. Fingers crossed!