LA Rams: Three ways the team’s playoff hopes could derail in 2021

It’s June 2021, and the LA Rams are girding their loins for the upcoming NFL season. This is a year where the LA Rams are once more expected to play very well. Many analysts are predicting the Rams to win the NFC West, and some are already on record claiming that the team will represent the NFC  in Super Bowl LVI. Whew! Pretty lofty expectations before a single NFL snap. How do you feel about all of that?

Okay, if you have bothered to look at the calendar, you’ll notice that we are in the dog days of the NFL season. The only news to report right now are first-blush impressions out of a few days of OTAs. If you expect some hard-hitting news at this time of year, you’ve set your sights way too high. There is a limit over what we can report as facts. Instead, this is a time of year to measure out expectations, get a feel of the team’s potential, and layout the reasons for these projections.

With newly refurbished rosters, plenty of practices, preseason games, and training camp sessions between now and the NFL season, it’s a time of hope and optimism. It’s a time to condense the difficult arduous career path of rookies and point to the distant finish line of success, sharing that tale now without the struggles, stumbles, and stymied efforts along the way.

It’s that time of year where anticipation is the order of the day, and the nature of football fans is to presume the most optimistic of outlooks when facing hard data of historic trends. Analysts feed that desire to anticipate what might happen.  But there are two sides to the coin here. The Rams face a double-edged sword, a path of fortune or failure. So let’s pause a moment to discuss three ways that this team’s playoff hopes might derail.