St. Louis Rams Can’t Give Up On Austin Davis Yet

Ever since an impressive 28-26 victory over the Seattle Seahawks two weeks ago, quarterback Austin Davis has been everything but stellar for the St. Louis Rams. After becoming the first Rams quarterback since Kurt Warner to throw for 300 yards and three touchdowns in back to back weeks, Davis has looked every bit of the third string quarterback that he was at the beginning of the season.

In the last three weeks Davis has failed to throw for over 200 yards and after throwing his second interception against the 49ers and third in two weeks, many fans were calling for Jeff Fisher to pull Davis and put in Shaun Hill. While the move would have been called for as Davis has played rattled and hasn’t been seeing the whole field, coach Jeff Fisher stuck with his guy.

It’s obvious that Davis hasn’t performed well over the past couple of weeks. He has looked rattled and hasn’t been seeing the whole field like he did earlier in the season. However, to say he’s regressed “back to his third string form” and to be overly critical of him is completely unfair to the third year quarterback making only his seventh career start.

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Davis is basically a rookie and over the past couple of weeks it has shown, he has looked every bit like a young quarterback making his seventh career start.

Taking a quick look at what the highly praised Sam Bradford did in his first seven starts, Davis has actually outperformed Bradford in his offensive rookie of the year performance, throwing for  1,593 yards, 11 touchdowns, and only six interceptions compared to Bradford’s 1,483 yards, nine touchdowns and eight interceptions. Not to mention Davis has completed 65.1% of his passes compared to Bradford’s 55% and had gone 2-1 thus far in the NFC West compared to Bradford’s 1-2. What makes these stats even more impressive is that Davis is arguably going up against far more difficult opponents.

In no way is Davis better than Bradford, have more ability than Bradford, or is the future of this team. However, Davis is statistically doing better than the highly praised Bradford did in his first seven starts, but yet Davis continually gets criticized for making rookie-like mistakes while Bradford made some of the same rookie mistakes back in 2010. It’s a double standard and hypocritical.

Many have forgotten that Davis has only made seven career starts and have got caught up in the Brett Favre and Drew Brees talk. Although Davis has by far exceeded expectations, to expect him to throw for 300 yards and three touchdowns like he did against the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys is simply unrealistic.

The last three weeks Davis has gone up against the first, third, and sixth ranked pass defenses, and although Davis hasn’t played his best football, he has gone 2-1 in that stretch, the two wins being against NFC West opponents. Although Davis didnt put up record breaking numbers in those two wins, he made the throws when he needed to and got the win, and at the end of the day, thats all that matters.

At the end of the day the Rams are only two games out of a wild card spot, and are playing competitive football, a lot of which has to do with the play of Davis. He may not be the future of this team, but don’t give up on the young quarterback starting in his first season just yet.