After the team's miserable showing last year, incoming Rams coach Scott Linehan pretty much gets a free pass for '06-'07. But if fans aren't expecting a first-year miracle out of the new head coach, they are looking for tailback Steven Jackson to stand and deliver in his third pro season. Jackson's a big man, and the Rams' 2004 first-round pick out of Oregon State matched that late last year with a big mouth, complaining that outgoing head coach Mike Martz's game plan had given him short shrift. The six-foot-two, 231-pound Jackson finished the season with 1,046 yards rushing on 254 carries, for an average of 4.1 yards per; he carried the ball twenty times or more in only three games. This year, with Linehan's love of the running game and Marshall Faulk's absence from the picture probably for good Jackson is projected to get plenty more touches. If the top running back from the draft class of '04 can live up to his promise, the Rams' 2006-'07 record may well reflect the upgrade. We're betting that he can, and that it will.