It may suprise some people to know this, but I am old enough to remember when the Rams played in the Los Angeles Colesium. I've been a Ram fan for just about 30 years now, since 1979. The 2009 seasons has not yet begun, so it is difficult to say 30 just yet. Many people are shocked when I tell them that I am a Ram fan. None of them doubt it is true. Who would claim to be that, if you aren't? I would qualify that by saying "these days".
As you know, my team has officially been the 2nd worst team in professional footbal the last two years running. We have been #31 out of 32 teams. We are about to draft #2 overall for the second straight year. With just 5 days left to go before the NFL Draft, I think it is a good time to run down the short list of reasons why my team sucks. We need to bear this in mind during our draft. Accuracy of perspective is terribly important as we invest these megar draft picks next Saturday & Sunday in New York.
#1 Reason: Scott Linehan.
Folks, lets be perfectly honest: Scott Linehan was an abject failure as a head coach. He took over a team that was pretty well loaded and had recently had good quality years. It took him just 1 years to run us into the ground completely. I bear the man no personal malice, but then again I didn't know him. Many of the players despised him fearcely. Torry Holt, generally considered a good citizen and a non-diva, utterly detested the man. There were serious confligrations with Steven Jackson and Marc Bulger. Many thought he was a back-biting worm. He wasn't 2 faced, he was 5 faced... or so they said of him. Linehan never motivated anybody. Linehan, never got the men to buy into his system. Speaking of system, Linehan never implemented his system. When Linehan came in, he promised to implement a 49er style, Bill Walsh style West Coast Offense. I can only remember 1 game during his tenure when we manifested that style of offense. Ironically, it was against the 49ers in 2006. The game was in St. Louis. In the final 2 minutes of the game, we were trailing by a point or two. On 5 consecutive pass plays, we ran go routes. Issac Bruce and Torry Holt sprinted for the end zone. On 5 consecutive plays, Bulger checked down to Steven Jackson. These passes hardly covered 8 yards of distance from Buldger's throwing arm to Jackson's hands. Jackson ran for 10 or 15 yards each time. We kicked a field goal and won the game. I have bitter memories of Joe Montana and Roger Craig doing this to my Rams many times during the 1980s. It was bitter revenge. I never saw this happen again during Linehan's tenure. This was the first and the last we saw of the West Coast offense in Ram country.
As we draft on Saturday and Sunday, we need to be mindful of the fact that the players quit on Linehan because he was regarded as incompetent and two-faced. This means we had a bad coach, and it means we have quitters on the team. Be mindful of this, and think about how best to repair it. Character is a huge issue. Spagnolo knows this, and he said it is going to be priority #1 in his tenure as coach.
#2 Reason: Jim Hasslet
Speaking of Linehan never implementing his system, how about this? When Linehan first came to Rams, he said we were going to run a minimum-risk, conservative, flexible, multiple-front defense. That never happen. We hired Jim Hasslet. This is going to be difficult to write, because I liked Jim Haslet a lot. I like his gambler style. I liked his high risk defense. I now realize that this is a form of gambling addiction, and I need a 12 step program. The first step on the road to life recovery is to recognize that I have a problem with defensive gambling. In retrospect, Jim Hasslet's defense was a catastrophy in St. Louis. As Boomer Eisaison said several times last season, speaking of my Ram's getting wasted 42-0 in the first half, "DISASTER! IT'S A DISASTER!" The Eagles, the Giants, and several others read Jim Hasslet like a book, and burned us like a holocost special.
As we draft on Saturday and Sunday, we need to be mindful of the fact that Steve Spagnolo is now our head coach. He is not Jim Hasslet. His defensive mindset is nothing like Jim Hasslet's mindset. Philosophically, these are two radically different coaches. Spagnolo is a very careful and thoughtful Chess player. He likes to blitz, but he almost never gambles. We can expect the defense to get a lot better without major additions or subtractions. A simple change in philosophy will be enough to make a big difference in St. Louis. Defense should not be a priority in this year's draft.
#3 Reason: We have the worst offensive line in the NFL
There are many sayings about football. It is a game of inches. It is a game of bounces. It's all boils down to blocking & tackling. Nothing is more important that this saying: The game is won and lost in the trenches. You must control the line of scrimage. If you win the battle at the line of scrimage, you win the game. For two straight years now, our offensive line has utterly lost the battle at the line of scrimage. For two straight years we have been 2-14. Without Pace in 2007, we had the worst line in football. With Pace in 2008, we had the worst line in football. With him or without him, the results were similar. This is why he got the pink slip from HQ.
We have only two starters as I write this blog entry: Jason Brown who will snap center, and Alex Barron who is our right tackle. Alex Barron was declared a disapointment by the NFL Network in a recent Draft show. Let's qualify that. Alex Barron has not become a dominant all-pro, and a fixture at the right tackle in the NFC's Pro-Bowl roster. For this reason, he has not become the successor to Jackie Slater we had hoped he would be. On the other hand, he is the only man to start and play 32 out 32 games during the past 2 seasons. There have been pretty stupid penalties all the way along the line, but he has blocked pretty well. I would have cut Richie Icognito after the Washington game. He would have cleaned out his locker if I had been GM. Go back and watch the final two minutes of the game and see what I mean. The other bumbs are rotating and failing at various positions. Cut 'em all.
As we draft on Saturday and Sunday, we need to be mindful of the fact that our offensive line is our first, second and third priority in the 2009 draft. We have only two solid starters now. We have three holes. You might argue we are in a worse state now than ever before. If we don't get a lot better on draft day, we are in for one hell of a bad 2009 season. You might say we have lost the battle at the line of scrimage on defense. Let's leave that aside for the moment. It is not as bad as some say on defense. We must obtain two starting linemen on draft weekend. You can do it in the draft. You can do it by trade, but you have to do it. I suppose Icognito is going to stay at right guard. The team seems to like him for some reason I cannot understand.
#4 Reason: The legacy of Georgia
I recently caught the Raider's 1980 championship film on the NFL network. About 20 minutes into the show, I saw something that brought bitter tears to my eyes. I wept over the ruins of Jerusalem. The Raiders were boasting of how they were the winningest team in NFL history. They showed a chart which indicated that there winning percentage was better than both the Cowboys and Rams, who were the two closest teams to the Raiders in winning percentage in the year 1980. Yep, that's right, the Rams were #3 winningest team in NFL history as of the year 1980. Don't take my word for it. Take the Raider's word for it. They have no love for us, and no vested interest in our team. The Rams are also a much older football team than the Raiders and Cowboys. We were founded in 1937. The Raiders and Cowboys started life in the 1960s. We had been excelent over a much longer period of time than they.
The same cannot be said today. 29 years later, our winning percentage is nothing like what it was in 1980.
What happened? It should be noted that 1980 was the first full year of the Georgia administration. We went 11-5. It was good. It got real bad real soon. There were brief moments of excellence. We even won a Super Bowl. Nevertheless, the legacy of Georgia is terrible, and cannot be over-stated. She turned us into a Beer-league organization. We had several loosing season in the 1980s. We couldn't keep our team together in an era when most people did. We had 9 years of horror between 1990 and 1999. We had a brief moment in the sun, then it all fell appart. Now we have had 5 more years of horror.
In 28 years as owner of the Rams, Georgia had many more loosing seasons than winning seasons. Let's be frank and lets not mince words: She was the joke owner of the league. Much more so then Bill Bidwell or Al Davis. This wasn't entirely, or even primarily, because she was a woman. It was because she was one of the bad owners. There are tales of Georgia casting astrology charts on potential draft picks to determine who would be emotionally compadible with her, and ergo, a good player for the team. I apologize to Skip for talking about his mother this way, but I think Skip knows his mother should not have been running an NFL franchise.
As we draft on Saturday and Sunday, we need to be mindful of the fact that astrology charts have no bearing on football merits and demerits. We need great college football players. We need men with a proven track record of success in college. We don't need developmental projects. We don't need home-town heroes to fill the stands. Skip needs to be an owner like his Dad, not like his mom.
Draft well. Fill holes. Get better. Win. Live proud. Restore the traditions of old.
