Donnie Avery: What To Expect When You’re Expecting Him And Mike Sims-Walker

If last week’s preseason-opening win over the Colts was the St. Louis Rams‘ (and their fans’) first chance to see Josh McDaniels’s new offense and Steven Jackson’s new backups, it was an unmitigated success; the Rams put 33 points on the Colts, and Cadillac Williams and Jerious Norwood looked perfectly solid without Jackson around to obscure their averageness. This week’s game, Saturday night against the Tennessee Titans, looks like it will revolve around the Rams’ new and new-old wide receivers, Mike Sims-Walker and Donnie Avery—back in action after a week stunted by injuries.

Avery, who missed a year after suffering a preseason knee injury at the dawn of the Sam Bradford Era, is the real potential prize, a downfield receiver who’s apparently as much a burner as ever despite the year-long layoff. The Rams don’t have any other downfield receiver/burners just sitting around, so that sounds pretty great—but he’s got to prove he’s still the player he was in 2009 if he’s going to even make an increasingly crowded team.

Mike Sims-Walker, a post-NFL-lockout acquisition, is less likely to miss the team entirely or revolutionize an offense that couldn’t do much better than dumping things off to Danny Amendola or Daniel Fells last year, but the Rams still need to see if he can stay healthy long enough to help the offense.