Ricky Proehl, Greatest Show on Turf champion receiver, was in St. Louis two months ago for an Isaac Bruce charity event.
There has been No Show on Turf in the Show Me State since the Stan Kroenke Rams up and left for Hollywood following the 2015 season, and it is a long way from when Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, Bruce, Torry Holt and Proehl stole whatever piece of the city’s heart that did not belong to its beloved baseball Cardinals.
So from afar, some will root for this Los Angeles Rams Dream Team that has electrified the NFL and chases a Super Bowl, many say they don’t care anymore, others have the St. Louis blues.
“They’re almost boycotting the NFL, to be honest with you, the way it was handled,” Proehl told Serby Says. “They’re upset still, it’s still in its early stages. Time heals all wounds, and I’m sure they’ll get back to rooting for the Rams or the Cardinals, Chiefs even. … But they’re still upset right now.”
The ones who are upset lament the fact that the city has suffered football heartbreak twice: the Cardinals saw an oasis in Phoenix in 1988, and the Rams deserted because there wasn’t nearly enough in the coffers for Kroenke’s lust for a new stadium.
“I feel sick for ’em, because they’re some of the greatest fans that I got an opportunity to play in front of,” Proehl said by phone. “St. Louis is a great sports town. The five years I was there[ 1998-2002], they were as supportive a fan base as you have in the NFL. No place got louder than that dome [Trans World Dome then later changed to Edward Jones Dome] when we were doing what we were doing, it was amazing, and I just feel sad, these guys have been stripped twice of an NFL franchise. I just feel awful.
“The Rams started in L.A., so obviously they were stripped as well, and now they got ’em back. But I just feel sorry for the fan base there because they were very supportive.”
Hall of Fame defensive end Jack Youngblood played on a broken leg for the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl XIV. He can feel the pain of St. Louis football fans … after all, the Rams left Los Angeles in 1994 for St. Louis.
“At first, when they moved, I was mad at ’em, and I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, I didn’t think it was gonna work,” Youngblood told Serby Says. “And when they moved to St. Louis, they lost all relationships with the alumni from my era, and that kind of bothered me a little bit. We had no relationship when they were in St. Louis for about six or eight years. Maybe more than that.”
Youngblood is not without empathy for fans who felt abandoned again.
“I understand the fact that they lost two teams,” Youngblood said. “They lost the Cardinals and then they lose the Rams. I can understand their position. It’s like a divorce.” He laughed and added, “That might be an exaggeration there.”
The 2018 Rams are a team built for Hollywood, with an emerging young quarterback with Hollywood good looks (Jared Goff), a young genius head coach (Sean McVay) orchestrating a 32.7 ppg machine, the best running back in the game (Todd Gurley) and the best defensive lineman in the game (Aaron Donald).
“They got the blueprint with a quarterback that’s growing, that gets better and really playing well,” Proehl said. “Gurley’s a home run hitter, he’s great out of the backfield, he’s a great runner and then you got the guys like Cooper [Kupp] and [Brandin] Cooks and [Robert] Woods, you got a plethora of receivers that can make big plays, inside and out. And I think the biggest thing is the man running it, and he’s putting it all together.”
Kind of like the way Mike Martz, his old offensive coordinator, did back in the day.
“He’s really exposed some defenses, and it’s a lot of fun to watch,” Proehl said.
Youngblood couldn’t agree more.
“Don’t take anything away from [former Rams coach] Jeff Fisher, he was an old teammate of mine and all that, but now we’ve got a playcaller who understands the players that he has there and the weapons that he has, and he uses them,” Youngblood said.
The way Gurley cuts reminds Youngblood of former Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett.
“He’s gonna be an All-Pro for a long time,” Youngblood said. “He should be over 100 yards every ballgame.”
Goff? “We finally got one that can get it done,” Youngblood said.
Donald? “I wish he was on my team,” Youngblood said. “He reminds me of [defensive tackle teammate] Larry Brooks. The way he gets off the ball, the way he controls that guard or center — whoever is unfortunate to have to block him.”
Youngblood remembers from the 1979 season Super Bowl run how rabid the L.A. fan base can be.
“They were absolutely nuts,”he said. “That was the year that it was in Pasadena. We were just inundated with people. I had family coming out of the woodwork I didn’t know I had.”
The love affair is back on.
“You gotta win their trust, and once you win their trust, then they’ll be there come hell or high water,” Youngblood said. “I think they’re very pleased what they’re experiencing now.”
Proehl remembers a similar love affair in St. Louis when Warner wrote his rags-to-riches story under Dick Vermeil.
“Three-quarters of the season we really started to believe, and it was just lightning in a bottle, and for the next three, four years, it was a lot of fun,” Proehl said.
But now, it is tale of two cities.
“We appreciated the fan base that we had there,” Youngblood said. “They were genuine and they were there. You have to understand that there’s other reasons why the Rams had to make that move.”
One St. Louis bar offered this promotion two years ago: Join us every Sunday and hate-watch the Rams with us all season long. Their losses are your gains as we will offer Hotshots customers $1 Off all domestic pitchers for every TD against the Rams, every week! The more they give up (which will be a lot), the more you can win while we root on literally anyone else. We have not forgotten what Stan and his cronies did to our city, so we will have your shot to take a few jabs at them each week as well.
A man named Bill Mohler was at Friendly’s Sports Bar & Grill on Friday night.
“There’s no Rams fans here per se,” he said.
Because of Kroenke? “Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. He was a Missouri native, Walmart guy, and he really badmouthed St. Louis, and he didn’t give us a good product. He wanted to move and I hope … I hope he fails,” Mahler said, and then laughed.
Dream Team in Los Angeles, no team in St. Louis.
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