Would keeping a "loser" actually help change the "losing culture" at Rams Park?

There's no doubting that the St Louis Rams have taken a disastrous step backwards in Coach Spagnuolo's third year. How can we possibly build an argument to keep him? Bear with me while I explore some thoughts. 

Wednesday, on his radio show, Bernie Miklasz outlined some very pragmatic reasons why Stan Kroenke might stick with Spagnuolo, including: 

• There's still a year left on his contract. 
• Replacing the GM might be the first move instead. 
• You may not be able to bring in anyone better next year. 

None of these are very satisfying, but they're all logical. But if Kroenke felt, as many angry Rams fans do, that there's just no chance of winning under Spagnuolo, then all of that logic gets blown out the window.

Reasons to say "Just fire the guy and move on."

To my mind the biggest reason to punt on Spagnuolo has nothing to do with his roster decisions or his record to date. The roster he has is playing hard, and with more talent or better luck with injuries, the record would be better by a certain measure. Neither of those are in his control.

“But wait!” you say. “He has final authority on the 53 man roster!” True, but talent acquisition is a slow process in the NFL, where you have three times as many competitors as in the fantasy football leagues we’re used to gaming. The Rams have more talent on their team now than they did three years ago, but not enough to compete with the Saints or Packers or even the Raiders in raw accumulation of skills.

The process is made slower by the fact that they have been drafting (John Greco, etc.) and signing (Ben Leber, etc.) system players that end up being poor fits for the system. Part of that failure is on the signing, and part is on the player. But those mistakes are made all over the NFL, not just here. (See: Haynesworth, Albert.)

Those mistakes are balanced by low-cost finds in Danny Amendola, Brandon Gibson, Darian Stewart and Josh Gordy that have blossomed in this system. Would I like to see them acquire more high-end talent? Yes. That was the approach in this year’s draft, which was much heavier on athletes (Quinn, Kendricks, Salas, Jabara) than in years past. That change is already underway. It has just been slow to pay off.

No, the biggest reason to doubt Spagnuolo, the biggest reason to believe that the Rams will never be able to win with him, is his appalling lack of gameday feel.

Aaron_Nagler
If (probably when) the Rams fire Spagnuolo, they will be making a huge mistake.

Whoa. Bold words, but let's get some perspective here.

There was a young guy in his first head coaching position, suffering through a dismal third season after having seemingly turned a corner with his team in year two. His young quarterback was getting mauled despite game plans that called for 6- and 7-man protections. He tried to reassure fans in his weekly press conferences that "We don't need wholesale change. We may need to adjust some things and that will be our focus."

His game management skills and use of the challenge flag produced head-scratching at best, howls of derision at worst. Most damning, he had the gall to take an active role in the dismantling of the team's old roster, and worked hand in glove with the GM to sign the guys who were now not producing, and ready to turn on him. Perhaps the low point was being called a thin-skinned control freak for firing one of the team's maintenance crew over a perceived slight.

Of course, I'm talking about Mike McCarthy, circa 2008. The same guy went on to coach his team to a 37-11 record over the last three seasons, won the last Super Bowl, and is currently managing the NFL's next best shot at perfection.

Perhaps that experience motivated Packers writer Aaron Nagler of Cheesehead TV, to say what he did on Twitter on Tuesday morning, and then spend the next hour vociferously defending his words to cranky Rams fans who just want to bury their heads. A bit more of that exchange, for those who missed it, after the break. 

There hasn't been much happy reading as regards the St Louis Rams' offensive line, unless you're in the shockingly lucrative business of sports rehab. (Growth opportunities abound in St Louis!) But today, buried in the nuggets of Pro Football Focus' analysis of last night's Rams-Seahawks game, there was this: 

- Harvey Dahl of the Rams had his third straight start at right tackle. He has allowed less pressure since making the move from right guard, and didn’t allow any pressure in this game.

Of course pass pressure flows, like water, around solid objects until it finds more porous ones. And there's little doubt that Harvey Dahl is the most solid entity on the front five at this point in time. But still, this is not only a positive note for today, it's potentially a very good one for next year.

Dahl is already signed for large dollars and long term as a right guard. But tackles come more expensively than guards, in general, and if Dahl can play well on the edge, it opens up a cheaper hole on the inside -- or a position for Jason Smith to potentially audition for, assuming he comes back next season. (Smith could follow the Robert Gallery career path and become a productive player at guard, without having to worry so much about his poor footwork.)

As far as the rest of the line, yeesh. It's a testament to Steve Loney's coaching (or complete lack of it) that the rebuilt-on-the-cheap offensive line is actually outperforming the $150 million dollar version when it comes to not getting Bradford completely creamed.

However, just because Bradford is getting hit a bit less doesn't mean that the line is playing that much better... he's just throwing the ball away earlier. The Rams made a point last night of calling a lot of quick timing-dependent passes to reduce Sam's time in the crosshairs.

The Seahawks hurried, hit or sacked Sam nine times in 37 dropbacks, pretty much keeping pace with their season-long trend of mayhem in the backfield. In terms of personnel groupings, the O-line's performance basically breaks down into these four-week chunks of performance:

For comparison's sake, Drew Brees gets pressure in his face 26% of the time. That first four weeks, though, caused a whole season's worth of harm to Bradford's development. No quarterback has been hit as he threw more times than Bradford (12), and ten of those hits came in those first four weeks.

Which is why, when time comes for Stan Kroenke's axe to get bloody, Loney's head should be first on the block. Without question.

The Rams-Seahawks Monday Night Football battle reminded me of two beliefs I have come to accept with this Rams team. 1: The Rams are really, really bad. And not bad like a play or two away from winning a game. No bad like all-time reference type bad. 2: The Rams are downright wasting Steven Jackson.

Steven Jackson did is his part, he always does.  Jackson put up 123 yards rushing and receiving on 23 touches. He even scored a touchdown granted at that point the game was out of reach. Why is offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels so reluctant to call Jackson’s number in those crucial goal line situations? Steven’s level of frustration looks to have reached an all-time high -- and rightfully so.

The problem is the coaching staff is not doing theirs. On two goal line possessions the Rams ran 9 plays, excluding Josh Brown’s field goal. Steven Jackson touched the ball twice. TWICE. That’s right, offensive mastermind Josh McDaniels and renowned decision maker Steve Spagnuolo thought best to go away from their 240 lb beast of an ALL-Pro running back. It took Jackson yelling at the sideline in the 4^th quarter for them to call the play for him.

No, instead the plays went like this:

Yes, I would like some product placement with my weekly dose of shame and misery, thank you.

First of all, before I get to the gory details, I have to apologize to anyone on Twitter who was around when I said this:

RamsHerd
Not to blow sunshine up your ass, but there's a real chance that the Rams win tonight. Doesn't change the big picture, but would be nice.

Now, before you all stampede to the "unfollow" button, I offer these caveats: I was assuming that the Rams (a) played up to their potential, (b) didn't make any stupid mistakes to give Seattle easy points, (c) didn't lose any more cornerbacks to injury, and (d) had a Sam Bradford that had the eye of the tiger, or something like that.

Going 0-4 on my pre-game assumptions reminds me not to make any post-game assumptions. So for the time being, this will not be a forum on Spagnuolo's job security, how many quarterbacks the Rams should have on their draft board, or where the team will be playing in 2015. 

However, it's worth saying this. We, as a fan base, are a sorry, shell-shocked bunch. We've been visually force-fed more misery and horror this season than Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. It got so bad for the Rams in the red zone that the referees had to stop play on numerous occasions, call a foul on someone or other (penalty on ... that guy, the one closest to me), and nudge the offense back to the goal line. It took the Rams six plays to get one yard to score their one alloted touchdown of the game.

Being a fan of this team is like being a fan of senile dementia. Or Alzheimer's Disease. There's no happiness at the end of the day, there's only the release that comes in the knowledge that soon it will be over. 

TV watchers, Rams fans, you thought last week was bad? This game is going to suck. Big time. Even if Sam Bradford starts behind a completely rehashed offensive line, we're only a missed block and a few ankle ligaments away from the Kellen Clemens era. And we're in Seattle, where their stadium full of longshoremen and secessionists have been drinking Russian moonshine since Saturday morning in preparation for their slice of prime time. The "12th man," they call it.

Despite the crowd's antics, the Rams are awful and the Seahawks are irrelevant. There's no worse combination for a national broadcast. So what's a ratings-hungry cable giant to do? Anything it can to boost ratings, of course.

ESPN programmers, we invite you to consider these humble suggestions:

1. Three solid hours of Tim Tebow highlights. (Three more hours, I mean. I realize he's all you've talked about all day.)

2. During said highlight package, a fight to the death between Stephen A Smith and Skip Bayless. Neither survives.

3. More recycled crowd shots of Jacksonville. (Hey, it worked great before!)

4. Re-runs of Burn Notice. It's like McGuyver and the A-Team shacked up in Miami and had a sexy baby. Oh, and Bruce Campbell is on the show, but nobody knows why.

5. At halftime: TRUCKASAURUS!

This morning, Ryan from TurfShowTimes picked up on a thread of conversation linking Josh McDaniels to the Kansas City Chiefs. There's a good chance, say those with their ears to the walls, that McD will be heading that way in some capacity when the offseason makeover begins on the far side of the state. 

We knew this would be a factor at the beginning of the year, when the Rams brought McDaniels on board. He is a young and ambitious coach who will want a chance to become a head coach again, and sooner rather than later. This job, this chance to work with one of the more gifted young quarterbacks in the game, was to be his chance at redemption, a springboard to his next job opportunity. Whether he followed the Mike Martz path and took the head coaching job from within, or the Pat Shurmur path and used Sam Bradford's name as his calling card in job interviews elsewhere.

The hope here was that McDaniels could stay long enough -- two years, minimum -- and have such accelerated success establishing an offensive bedrock that the Rams woul be able to build a succession plan, and maintain that most precious of commodities for young quarterbacks: consistency.

Now, though the Rams' plan for offensive continuity for Bradford will be taking a slightly different tack: starting by divesting themselves of McDaniels as quickly as possible. If Kansas City wants him, let them have him.