All along, whenever the subject has come up, I've been vehemently opposed. I don't care if the team is bad at the moment; you don't trade away a franchise back when you're trying to take steps toward respectability. Trading away the team's best player at this point would be completely asinine and would quite likely alienate even more of the fans whose posteriors you're attempting to fill your seats with. 

Well, I have an admission to make. Recent events have conspired to force me to reconsider my position. I'm not quite ready to say I've switched sides yet, but I do think the idea merits at least a little bit of discussion. 

I said when this story first surfaced that no matter the result, it's a bad deal for all involved. I stand by that. I also said at the time a man's reputation has been irrevocably harmed no matter the outcome. I stand by that, too. 

Steven Jackson has been accused of beating his former girlfriend, one Supriya Harris, when she was nine months pregnant. That's right. Nine months pregnant. As in, ready to pop any day pregnant. 

So, big strong football player, tossing his girlfriend around when she's less than two weeks away from giving birth. Apparently enraged enough his nephew had to intercede and stop the beating said big strong football player was putting on the woman. Not a particularly pleasant image, is it? 

No, this the Rams most definitely did not need. 

Yep, you heard me. The trainer was the reason the Rams only won a single game in the 2009-2010 season. Not the impotent offense, not the porous defense, not the coaching, not the players. It was the trainer. 

After his first season as head coach of the St. Louis Rams, Steve Spagnuolo looks to return most of his staff for his sophomore campaign, with just that one really notable exception. And I for one am relieved. Something clearly needed to be done about the guy responsible for taping ankles. 

I guess none of us ever thought this day would really come, and now that it's here, I wonder if the city will be able to handle it. The final straw came Sunday, when Richie received two, count 'em, two penalties for head-butting opponents. 

I have to say, it didn't surprise me to see the Rams' offense struggle. Let's face it, folks: anyone surprised by seeing the Rams play poorly on the offensive side of the ball just isn't paying attention. They're short on talent and short on experience, and it's going to take at least another year of buildup before the offense has enough of either one to be considered much of a threat. That's just the nature of the beast when you're talking about a team so far down. 

But that's not what I'm really worried about at the moment. After watching the Rams play, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe the talent level isn't the only thing wrong with the offense. I'm beginning to wonder if maybe there's something else dragging this team down. 

Now, before you get all upset, thinking I'm getting ready to bust on Marc Bulger, I promise that's not what this is about. There will be plenty of time for that the rest of the season, when Bulger is throwing picks or holding onto the ball too long and taking a loss of seventeen yards. 

In fact, I'll go so far as to say this about Marc Bulger: he's actually been pretty good lately. He was pretty good against Detroit, though Steven Jackson did the heavy lifting. Bulger was actually a little better than pretty good against New Orleans, though he did contribute to the collapse of that last gasp drive the Rams put together at the end of the game. He was pretty good this past Sunday, as well, putting up some fairly solid numbers against Arizona. (Of course, he did also fail when it came to crunch time again, doing absolutely nothing at the end of the game, when the Rams had the chance to tie it up, but we'll just kind of let that go, kay?) 

No, I don't mean the Rams need to make a change at quarterback. What I mean is the Rams desperately need to figure out who their next quarterback is going to be, and that means the draft. You look at the Rams, and they aren't a good team yet, by any means, but you can see the outline of what a good Rams team might look like. What they need now is to find the guy who will pull all that together. 

Two weeks ago, after the Rams beat the Detroit Lions for their first victory in over a year, I played the role of buzzkill, trying to explain why it wasn't all that encouraging the Rams won. Sure, it was nice to finally erase that big ugly zero from the win column, but there wasn't really anything in the game which made me think the Rams were really starting to turn it around. The Lions are one of the worst teams in football; the Rams are essentially their peers. Of course the Rams should be able to beat a team that bad at times. Play a real team, look good, and get back to me was the message. 

This, though, this was.. something else entirely. 

On Sunday, the Rams took on one of the best teams in all of football, the New Orleans Saints, who look like the reincarnation of the Greatest Show on Turf most weeks, and guess what? They gave the Saints everything they could handle and had a chance to win the game on the final drive. 

Maybe this thing really is headed in the right direction. 

Now let me tell you why I'm not excited about it, and why you shouldn't be either. 

Okay, wait. You know what? That's too quick. I should probably take a second to properly celebrate this victory. After all, whether it was pretty or not, a good game or not, or even watchable football or not, the Rams are not going to go 0-16 this year. That is pretty awesome. 

Steven Jackson is the fucking man. That's really all there is to it. He's a goddamned beast. If he were a Marvel character, he would be Juggernaut. If he were a DC character, he'd probably be Doomsday. If he were a creature in Dungeons and Dragons, he would be the Tarrasque. 

That's right, folks. You just read the single nerdiest reference ever made in a sports column. It followed two other painfully nerdy references, and immediately made them completely obsolete with its off-the-charts geek resonance. I'm proud of myself. 

So three cheers for Steven Jackson and the Rams. They finally won a game. 

There. Now that that's out of the way, on to the downer portion of today's column.