Per a report from Ron Clements of CBSSports.com The Rams have requested permission to speak with Bengals offensive coordinator Jay Gruden for their open head coach position, according to Bernie Miklasz of 101ESPN and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Bengals had the NFL’s 20th-ranked offense this season under rookie QB Andy Dalton.

Not willing to be held hostage by Jeff Fisher the Rams area clearly doing more than just their due diligence. While Fisher is still their first choice the Rams are playing it smart, not sitting on their hands while other options catch on elsewhere. This would also mark a move in the opposite direction and from Spagnuolo’s defensive first mentality.

With QB of the future already in place and a couple of years left in Steven Jackson’s legs it would be wise to utilize both resources while you have them together. Also with A.J Green in Cincinnati it is likely that Gruden understands how important it is to arm a young QB with weapons. An idea pleasing to Bradford and Rams fans alike.

A former QB himself, Gruden knows and understands what it takes to succeed at the position.  The 43-year-old Gruden was a quarterback at Louisville, throwing for more than 7,000 yards and 44 touchdowns from 1985 to 1988. He also was a quarterback in the AFL, guiding the Tampa Bay Storm to four titles between 1991 and 1996. He also played for the Predators, resigning as coach to return to the field. In the league's 20th anniversary, Gruden was named No. 4 on the AFL's list of its top 20 greatest players.

Gruden is one of the hottest coordinators in the NFL these days after his success with rookie quarterback Andy Dalton. Perhaps the Rams think he could do the same with quarterback Sam Bradford who struggled mightily in his second NFL season.

Having done a superb job in his first season has offensive coordinator for the Bengals, Gruden has every right to seize this opportunity to become a head coach of an NFL team.  Nobody expected much from Cincinnati this season, but Gruden helped Andy Dalton have a successful season, finishing 9-7 and earning a wild-card spot.

Gruden's ties to football area are strong. He spent seven seasons on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers coaching staff under his brother Jon, who was the head coach. Jay Gruden also served as head coach of the Arena League's Orlando team and UFL's Florida franchise before joining Cincinnati this season.

He coached the Virginia Destroyers of the United Football League in 2010 after leading the UFL's Florida Tuskers in 2009. He also has coached in the Arena Football League, winning AFL titles with the Orlando Predators in 1998 and 2000.

Jeff Fisher is at the point in his career where doesn't do job interviews in the conventional sense. He is the proven commodity, the best available guy not named Bill Cowher. (And only a true marquee job will move Cowher off his mountain of TV money.) Unlike the rest of us, Fisher doesn't have to sweat his resume, or worry about his references, and he doesn't have to worry about what questions he might be asked by his future employer. 

When Jeff Fisher visits your team for a five-hour interview, you aren't interviewing him; he is interviewing you. He knows, and we know, that it isn't about what he brings to the table; it's about your ability to set the table for him, and keep piling good things on top of it. Talent. Money. Freedom to run the football team the way he sees fit. And not necessarily in that order. 

Fisher has now spent the same amount of time "interviewing" in Miami and in St Louis. He's gotten a good look at each organization, or what's left of them after housecleaning. He met with Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and GM Jeff Ireland. He met with Stan Kroenke (in Denver) and Rams money man Kevin Demoff. 

Perhaps most importantly, he spent a good chunk of time sitting down with Sam Bradford, this franchise's Franchise.

ESPN's Mike Sando talked about the choice that Fisher faces earlier this week, and suggests that the decision might be an easy one, if he follows Jim Harbaugh's path. After all, last year's hot coaching prospect "took one look at Stephen Ross' organization and hired on with the San Francisco 49ers." 

The decision won't be quite that simple, but I believe St Louis will be the choice, and Bradford will be the reason why.

While I was manning the Twitter helm at @ThisGivenSunday yesterday afternoon, during the Houston-Cincinnati playoff matchup, I couldn't help but draw parallels between the 2011 Bengals and the 2010 Rams. And that makes me wonder if they might be heading down a similar path of disappointment next season, like the 2011 Rams did.

Why would I want to rain on the Bengals' parade ilke this? Not out of hate or spite, I assure you. Andy Dalton impressed the hell out of me in the first half, playing with composure and accuracy while the Houston Texans' home crowd was busy losing their minds at their first home playoff game in 18 years. AJ Green is the real deal, and defensive lineman Geno Atkins is a force to be reckoned with.

But that said, there are some disturbing parallels between the Bengals' rise this season and the Rams' rise of 2010:

• An easy schedule that gets a lot harder next season.
• An offensive coordinator (Jay Gruden) getting a lot of pub as a possible head coaching candidate.
• An offensive system predicated on an aging running back (Cedric Benson just turned 29).
• A defense that's strong up front but particularly weak in the secondary.
• A defensive-minded head coach (Marvin Lewis) who struggles badly in game-management situations.

A nugget on the Bengals' 9-7 season: all nine wins came against teams that failed to make the playoffs. All seven losses came against teams that did make the playoffs. Eerily reminiscent of the Rams' inability to beat better teams, even in their resurgent season. 

While everyone was focused on the Rams' injury madness and their at-times inexplicable coaching decisions, the much tougher schedule remains the most obvious factor in their downfall from last year to this. We just assumed that they would be ready to play with the big boys, and we were wrong.

And after rotating through the two easiest divisions in football -- the NFC West and AFC South -- the Bengals now get matched up against the highly competitive NFC East and AFC West in 2012. They have only four away games against teams with losing records in 2011, and of course they have to compete against the toughest division opponents in football in Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

With that in mind, Mike Brown should do everything in his power to make sure that Jay Gruden sticks around. Because as any Rams fan can tell you, the nightmare begins with that loss of offensive continuity.

How much time will Josh McDaniels spend looking back on his time as a Ram? 30 seconds, give or take.

Well, that was quick.

For a few days, Josh McDaniels was the lone member of the St Louis Rams coaching staff, after all of his bosses and co-workers were relieved of their duties. For the embattled offensive coordinator, that could have been a blessing or a curse. After all, any incoming head coach would want to have their choice of coordinators, and the last thing McD needed was another year of struggling with a team that was simply unprepared to play offense the way he envisioned.

Kevin Demoff, the last remaining member of the Rams' brain trust, decided to play the nice guy, letting McDaniels know that the team would not hold him to his contract, if he wanted to look elsewhere for work.

I guess you could say he managed to land on his feet.

Pro Football Talk reports that the Patriots are expected to hire McDaniels right away, and put him to work alongside Bill O'Brien while the team prepares for its playoff run. It's not too often you see the architect of the lowest-scoring offense in the NFL hired away and given the play-calling duties for a perennial Super Bowl contender. But that's just a reflection of the Bizarro world that the Rams are apparently living in.

Will the move work out for the Patriots? It's a desperation play, with O'Brien ready to accept the head coaching job at Penn State. The Pats under O'Brien have shifted to a dynamic two-TE offense, one that McDaniels admired but never replicated here. And for Belichick, this recidivism is unusual - seldom have any of the withered fruits of his coaching tree come back to the branch. He never established much of a play-calling groove here with the Rams. We'll get to see how much of that was a reflection on the coach, or the team he was working with. 

But the swiftness and sureness of the Pats move - preempting the Chiefs, Jets, or any other team about to develop an interest in McDaniels - makes one thing clear: somebody still believes in the young offensive mind. And that somebody is willing to bet a Super Bowl on it. 

The Rams have not fired offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels as of Monday. This point was emphasized by Rams COO Kevin Demoff and has since sparked both curiosity and debate.

NFL Network's Jason LaCanfora confirms that the Rams "would like to retain" Josh McDaniels as offensive coordinator.

Owner Stan Kroenke is a prominent McDaniels backer and wants to maintain stability in Sam Bradford's development even if the 2010 first-rounder took a step back in 2011.  However, with a new GM and head coach on the way in McDaniels is no lock to remain in St. Louis.

Jeff Fisher would probably look in a different direction if hired as the Rams' next head coach, but McDaniels is sticking around for now. It's no secret that owner Stan Kroenke is a big McDaniels supporter and personally pushed for his hiring this past offseason. Strongly working against McDaniels, of course, is the fact that the Rams had the NFL's 31st-ranked offense in terms of yardage this season. They were dead last in points scored.

A wild card in all of this is Brandon Lloyd. Coming over to the Rams from Denver midseason Lloyd lead the Rams in receptions (51), reception yards (683), and touchdown catches (five) despite the extra attention he gets from opposing defenses. Counting his time with the Broncos this season, Lloyd had 70 catches for 966 yards.

Steve Spagnuolo approached his job as head coach of the Rams with a simple mantra: do the little things right, and the rest (i.e. winning) will take care of itself.

Unfortunately for him, he didn't get the little things right. And the rest did not, in fact, take care of itself.

Bernie Miklasz wrote yesterday about the Rams and their culture of "Try," which was the first and most important brick that Spagnuolo had to build his team with. He and Billy Devaney inherited a team that was full of dead weight -- veteran players light on talent and lighter on effort. Guys who were physically or mentally battered to the point of uselessness.

Notable: Very few Rams from 2009's cuts went on to be productive elsewhere, unlike more recent ex-Rams like Laurent Robinson and Daniel Fells.

Spagnuolo and Devaney succeeded in restocking the roster with players that had a coherent work ethic, a visible hunger. Some of these were blue-collar players, low on the talent scale, special teamers upjumped to starting jobs (think Danny Amendola and Craig Dahl). Others were pedigreed veteran players with a known work ethic (think Na'il Diggs and Jason Brown). And a precious few (Sam Bradford, Robert Quinn) were young foundation players with elite potential.  

As far as little things go, getting the "Try" right is a big thing. A crucial foundation to everything else. But it's far from the only thing. Failings in several other "little things" turned out to have a huge impact on the team's regression.

Steve Spagnuolo walks the Rams sideline for the last time.

Ultimately, the particulars of this game will matter far less than this:

@mortreport
Rams will fire coach Steve Spagnuolo and GM Billy Devaney, per team source.

The first hatchet to fall in post-game action fell just hours after the St Louis Rams had finished adding a few cosmetic late scores to make a 34-27 finish over the San Francisco 49ers look a lot more competitive than perhaps it was. The Niners gave Rams-killer Frank Gore most of the day off, and still managed to rack up an arms-length 20-7 halftime lead. As the final 30 minutes ticked away, the Rams sideline came to a belated realization: Hey, maybe we should go for broke.

Suddenly, Spagnuolo and Josh McDaniels had Kellen Clemens and the offense swaggering all over the field, a half-comical "Don't let me get into my zone" moment. Clemens found Lloyd in the end zone on a beautiful deep fade, the Rams converted an onside kick then got Lloyd deep in the end zone again to draw a first-and-goal penalty that was actually converted into a score, thanks to Cadillac Williams.

The few thousand fans left in the building were finally getting a season's worth of entertainment. Too bad for next year's season ticket sales that none of these key players are necessarily coming back next year. 

• Devaney is out.
• Spagnuolo is out.
• McDaniels will twist in the wind until Stan Kroenke gets his front office sorted out, or until he's hired away by Scott Pioli.
• Wherever McDaniels goes, Brandon Lloyd will follow.
• Cadillac Williams is an unrestricted free agent, as is Kellen Clemens.
• Even special teams coach Tom McMahon, who got his unit to execute a final perfect onside kick opportunity to keep his team in the game, is likely to fall victim to the vagaries of the next regime. (Failing to notice or cover a camoflaged Michael Crabtree on a 49ers fake-punt-thruned-touchdown won't look good on the resume.)

As usual, the carryover of this team's identity falls on just a few players: Steven Jackson, James Laurinaitis, and Chris Long. Oh, and whatever is left of Sam Bradford's psyche after a ruinous sophomore season has completely depleted his Q Score. (Don't try calling Charter's customer service this week: they're all Photoshopping David Freese's face into their next ad pitch.)

These three players, and perhaps defensive coordinator Ken Flajole, are now the building blocks of the franchise. One day into 2012, and it's feeling a lot like 2009 all over again.