FanHouse LeonardLittle

Steve Spagnuolo is going through a rough season in his first as an NFL head coach. He had the unenviable task of taking over a roster which was left in disarray by the previous administration. No real effort had been done to bridge the gap from The Greatest Show on Turf to the next wave of players, with the notable exception of drafting studly running back Steven Jackson before Marshall Faulk was retired.

The results to this point have hardly been surprising. Poor Spags and his troops endured seven losses, including several blowouts, before finally earning their first victory this past Sunday against the Lions. While he's cherishing this first win, Spagnuolo realizes it's the first step of many.

Despite what MIchael Vick told a judge in bankruptcy court last week, there's no way he plays another "10 to 12 years" in the NFL. In fact, there's a chance he never plays again if commissioner Roger Goodell chooses not to reinstate him.

That decision won't come till summer, but if Vick, who is nearing the end of a 23-month prison sentence in connection with dog-fighting, is allowed to return to the league, he'll almost certainly have suitors. And the Oakland Tribune's Jerry McDonald thinks that, under the right circumstances, he could be a good fit for the Raiders.

Training camps are underway, the NFL season is right around the corner, and to get you ready for 2008, FanHouse previews all 32 teams, "heat index" style. We'll rate each club in 10 categories on a scale of 1 to 10, high score wins.

Quarterbacks: Marc Bulger is coming off an injury-riddled, subpar at best, season. For the first time in his career he threw more picks than touchdowns, and his yards per attempt were nearly a yard lower than his previous career-low. Much of this can be attributed to the brutal offensive line play in front of him, but that may not change if Orlando Pace isn't completely healthy. Overall, though, Bulger will have a much better season and Trent Green is a fine backup. Heat Index: 6

For the past 10 years, I've hated Leonard Little. I've questioned why he was allowed to continue playing in the NFL. I've seen him as another (unprintable adjective) athlete who committed horror and got away with it. Sure enough, if it were Roger Goodell's NFL in 1998, he probably wouldn't be playing. Now, quite honestly, I'm not sure what I think.

Little has finally addressed for the first time what happened then, when he killed a woman while driving drunk, and the aftermath he's dealt with personally at a school in St. Louis.

"A few weeks later, I tried to kill myself," ... "I had gone back home to my mom's house outside Knoxville (Tenn.), and the first thing I did was just go down in her basement. It had no windows, just a bathroom, a sink and a television. I stayed in the dark for days. All I did was cry. I couldn't deal with what I'd done."

Little intentionally drives past the spot of the accident on the way to Edward Jones Dome to remind himself, and refuses to celebrate his birthday because it's also the anniversary of the worst day of his life ("What's there to celebrate? It's an annual reminder of what I did"). He tells the children at the school, "I killed someone and I constantly think about the hurt I caused that family. ... I made a bad decision, and it cost someone her life and ruined her family's lives. You don't want that burden on you."

This touches on two matters.

For all intents and purposes, the Rams were going to use their second overall pick on Glenn Dorsey last weekend. All of the pre-draft hype indicated an interest and, though all of the zany behavior every April has me doubting everything everyone says, it was apparently genuine. All of the teams' scouts and coaches wanted Dorsey.

But team president John Shaw wanted Chris Long. So when he arrived at headquarters the Thursday before the draft, he decreed it so -- Long would be the pick. Even if Shaw was stepping down from his ivory tower to get involved in football matters that are better left to, you know, football people, I agree with him.

The best teams find a way to merge the two divergent draft philosophies -- need vs. best player available. Even if Dorsey was the Rams' top-rated player, they already have a good, young pair of tackles in Adam Carriker and Clifton Ryan. On the outside? The ancient, brittle Leonard Little and the ancient, um, average (to be kind) James Hall. I know a push up the middle helps your ends, but the only thing that would help these ends at this point is the Career Kevorkian.

So it makes sense to draft Long. If the team wants to win now (ie, if Scott Linehan wants to provide his family hot food every night), they need to spread talent across as many positions as possible. What good is clogging the middle if teams can just attack the outside? Right?

With each pick of the FanHouse mock draft, we get into the head of an NFL general manager and let you know who he'll pick and why.

A lot of people feel like Glenn Dorsey has to be the guy the Rams take in this spot, especially after a good workout that eased concerns about his knees. Others recognize the Rams' woes at pass rush -- no matter how hard Leonard Little tries to convince all his career isn't in the tank -- and think they should look at Vernon Gholston.

In this instance, the Rams are taking Jake Long.

Gholston is an absolute freak, and he'd do very good things for the Rams defense. But the Rams have contracts of $65 million and $42 million tied into Marc Bulger and Torry Holt, respectively, and will be making Steven Jackson probably the highest-paid running back of all-time in the near future. With that much money and talent on offense, we saw how little of a return they got without Orlando Pace in the lineup last year.

Usually the first day of free agency doesn't see such a big kicker story (relatively speaking). The Rams saw their longtime kicker, Jeff Wilkins, retire on Friday. Wilkins informed the team in the morning that he was taking his K-ball and going home.

Wilkins declined to meet with reporters Friday, instead issuing a statement: "Throughout my 11 years with the Rams, everybody in the organization has been fantastic - from the top to the bottom," he said. "But my retirement is best for me, my family, and the Rams."

Wilkins' retirement has as much to do with health issues as anything.

Nagging leg and back injuries, which could be nerve-related, have spread, and treatments have been unsuccessful.

No biggie. The Rams then go out and sign free agent kicker Josh Brown to a five-year deal later in the evening. Brown, who spent his first five seasons with the Seahawks, has been a Rams killer during his career. Last year, he kicked two game winning field goals over St. Louis that directly affected the outcome of the NFC West. So, not only do they find a capable replacement, they hurt a division rival.

With Wilkins retiring and Issac Bruce getting released, there are only three Rams left from their Super Bowl XXXIV championship team: Torry Holt, Leonard Little and Orlando Pace.

The Rams saved themselves some cash earlier today by restructuring Leonard Little's contract. The plan was to get Isaac Bruce -- you know ... future Hall of Famer, third in all-time receiving yards, sixth in all-time receptions ... yeah, that Isaac Bruce -- to take a pay cut. Bruce wasn't too receptive to that idea.

So the Rams cut loose the 35-year-old former second-rounder who has spent all 14 of his seasons in St. Louis rather unceremoniously. The dispute was a $2 million roster bonus. The Rams wanted Bruce to forget about that and just play for his $3 million salary.

Bruce had game last year, putting up solid numbers in a terrible offense, but he's obviously at the age where each season is one season closer to a plummet in ability. He'll find work -- and probably pretty quickly -- from someone willing to believe he has another year, and he's a great locker room presence for young receivers. An amateur connect-the-dots places him in San Francisco, where the 49ers need receivers badly and Mike Martz will probably make a push for him. But who knows.

The Rams, meanwhile, better take some of the money they're creating to go find another receiver. If they're planning on going into the season with Torry Holt and his deteriorating joints, the remarkably below-average Drew Bennett (where for art thou, Billy Volek), and that collection of backups ... Chip Rosenbloom's not going to enjoy his first season.

Leonard Little and his massive $9.5 million cap hit were expected to find themselves in PFT's dumpster with the rest of the league's discarded talent. But Little has restructured his deal to lessen his cap hit and afford the Rams more room to tweak the roster.

The issue was a pesky $7.17 roster bonus due this year. But that has been converted to a signing bonus, meaning instead of being charged for all of that up front it will spread amongst the remaining two years of Little's deal. For you non-capologists, Little's cap hit is a little under $6 million this year and the Rams get an extra $3.585 million to work with.

But you know what? That's still too much money to invest in Little this year. And the Rams know it. They'd have been better served cutting him, and I'm sure that's what they'd have preferred, but doing so would have put them in a precarious position at defensive end depth. Little is hardly a factor at this point in his career, but he's at least a body. The Rams have to bite the bullet this year while they prepare to overhaul the position next year.

NFL Offseason Roadmap is a series focused on the needs of NFL teams as they begin the offseason.

1. Offensive Tackle. The Rams have been lucky to have an incredible franchise left tackle for the last 11 seasons, and his play did as much for The Greatest Show on Turf as anyone else. But Orlando Pace has been ludicrously brittle the last two years and, at 32, can't really be depended on anymore. The drop-off in production without Pace has been glaring. On the other side, Alex Barron has been disappointing as a first-round pick; there's so much yellow cloth at Barron's feet on gameday that you'd think he stuffed his jersey with Terrible Towels. In the last four years, Barron ranks behind just Robert Gallery in penalties. On top of the starters, after all of the injuries the Rams endured on the line last year, depth should be considered critical. The easy and obvious answer is Jake Long, who should be available when the Rams pick second. Long can play both sides, which certainly helps, and he can immediately take over for Pace should something happen. If the team needs further depth, Kwame Harris or Damien Woody could be affordable options, and Woody triples as a possible guard and center.