The Rams are still very much a bad football team, but they are no longer an unredeemable disaster. If you are looking for some grain of glass-is-half-full optimism to extract from the mistake-riddled remains of Sunday's 36-17 loss to the Green Bay Packers, that's pretty much it.

Bad, but not hopeless. Losing, but working on it. As the 0-3 Rams now step into the void left by the Detroit Lions as the new owners of the NFL's current longest losing streak (unlucky 13 and climbing), this is what passes for consolation. They are unbelievably positive that they won't be this bad much longer, even if most of us don't quite see it that way.

"I know you don't want to hear it, but it's true," said center Jason Brown. "True, it's not going as fast as people would like. It's not going as fast as we would like. But we are taking steps in the right direction. You could see that today."

But bad teams like the Rams can be fueled only so far by the power of positive thinking. And while Sunday was another day that highlighted the incremental steps toward respectability the Rams are making, it also was a glaring display of how far away they still are from winning on a consistent basis again.

There is a reason the Rams are 0-3 and winless for nearly 12 months. Too many self-destructive mistakes. Week after week, the most disappointing thing about the early days of the Steve Spagnuolo Era is that his Rams continue to commit the same self-destructive sins of the final days of the Scott Linehan Error.

And it doesn't look any better now than it did then.

When you are as thin on talent as the Rams are, working hard, playing tough and fighting hard from start to finish are all wonderful qualities to cling to. But cutting down on mistakes is just as important. And so far Spags' Rams haven't been able to do that. No matter how scrappy, gritty and gutsy you may be, when you're not good enough physically, you better be darned sharp mentally.

For the third consecutive week, the Rams continued with an old familiar theme: Great effort. Insurmountable mistakes.

"I thought we battled with Green Bay tooth and nail down to the end," said Steven Jackson. "But turnovers are killing us."

Turnovers and untimely penalties, actually.

Here's their latest Sunday laundry list, a dizzy and destructive nine-minute span in the first quarter that put the Rams in a bad hole:

— Mistake No. 1: Protection breakdown leads to a block of Josh Brown's field-goal attempt on the first drive of the game.

— Mistake No. 2: Right tackle Adam Goldberg is caught holding on the Rams' second possession of the game, wiping out a 19-yard run by Jackson.

— Mistake No. 3: Three plays later, Goldberg is beaten on a pass rush by Packers linebacker Aaron Kampman, who forces a fumble by Marc Bulger.

— Mistake No. 4: Linebacker Chris Chamberlain is called for holding on a kickoff. Rams lose 10 yards.

— Mistake No. 5: On their third possession, Jackson bursts through the line for 3 yards and has the ball stripped by the Packers.

By the end of the first quarter, the Rams were already down 9-0, which doesn't sound like much of a deficit to most NFL teams, but to this struggling offense, it was Mount Rushmore.

When you're competing against a star quarterback like Aaron Rodgers, who can make you pay for any foolish indiscretion (and often did), the Rams dug in too deep.

Randy McMichael sat in front of his locker stall long after his side of the locker room had cleared out, and if it is possible for a man to get dressed angry, this was getting dressed angry. He stuffed each foot into its sock like he was trying to stamp out a fire. He tugged on his shirtsleeves like they had hurt him. He stepped into his pants legs as if he was trying to stomp a hole in the floor.

McMichael knew he had another bad game. He has spent eight years in the NFL building a reputation as a glue-fingered tight end, but now he was searching for answers to why he suddenly was dropping too many balls that were settling into his hands.

"I've never done this before," he said.

"I feel like crap," he said.

McMichael has suffered through the worst of Linehan's days and knew full well how bad those days were. They were a spectacular, larger-than-life, wide-screen colossus, complete with a woebegone coach, lousy players and a dysfunctional, self-destructive organization that provided us with endless hours of gut-twisting frustration.

Hopelessness hung over the Edward Jones Dome every Sunday like a funeral pall, with seething fans lurching over the railings spitting out their vile displeasure.

These Rams don't feel that wretched anymore. And yet, they are still a bad team.

And no matter how many men in that Rams locker room continue to cling to the belief that this is a losing team now finally going in the right direction, the frustration that was all over McMichael's face spoke volumes as to why they have all made the journey far more difficult than it already is.

And as he spoke, McMichael was concentrating on his bad day, but he might as well have been talking about the entire team.

"I can't keep doing this," he said. "Our margin for error is too thin. Way too thin."