Welcome to ASFN Fan Forums! We're glad to have you here. Please feel free to browse the forum. We'd like to invite you to join our community; doing so will enable you to view additional forums and post with our other members.
Registered Members don't see these ads. Register now it's free!
__________________
I.D. badges are long overdue. Security in this office park is a joke. Last year, I came to work with my spud gun in a duffel bag. I sat at my desk all day, with a rifle that shoots potatoes at 60 pounds per square inch. Can you imagine if I was deranged? - Dwight K. Schrute
Thank you for not only ruining the Rams during your time there but for also making sure they wouldn't be competitive for years to come.
Today:
Warner 23/34 342 yards 2 TD 0 int 119 QB rating.
Bulger 16/33 186 2 TD 2 int 60 QB rating.
The Rams last winning season was 2003.
Eh... it's not quite that simple. While he was one of the worst game managers I've ever seen, he was also responsible for a number of very smart, very good moves while he was head coach. The Rams have fallen a lot farther since he left than they did while he was coach.
Eh... it's not quite that simple. While he was one of the worst game managers I've ever seen, he was also responsible for a number of very smart, very good moves while he was head coach. The Rams have fallen a lot farther since he left than they did while he was coach.
Not that I'm saying I want him back.
Although you have to admit, what he leaves in his wake isn't very pretty.
Although you have to admit, what he leaves in his wake isn't very pretty.
What he left in his wake in St. Louis wasn't really so bad, I don't think. Martz wasn't responsible for Marc Bulger going from competent and accurate passer to mechanical mess who can't string two good passes together. He wasn't responsible for Torry Holt's knee falling apart. He wasn't responsible for giving a pile of cash to Drew "Completely Worthless" Bennett, or Isaac Bruce getting old and being forced into a system that didn't fit his abilities. All that happened after he left.
Linehan had plenty of time to take what was there and make it better, and instead, he made things much, much worse. Martz, for all his problems, had things he did very well as a head coach. Linehan was just a complete disaster.
What he left in his wake in St. Louis wasn't really so bad, I don't think. Martz wasn't responsible for Marc Bulger going from competent and accurate passer to mechanical mess who can't string two good passes together. He wasn't responsible for Torry Holt's knee falling apart. He wasn't responsible for giving a pile of cash to Drew "Completely Worthless" Bennett, or Isaac Bruce getting old and being forced into a system that didn't fit his abilities. All that happened after he left.
Linehan had plenty of time to take what was there and make it better, and instead, he made things much, much worse. Martz, for all his problems, had things he did very well as a head coach. Linehan was just a complete disaster.
Again, not that I want him back.
All fair points, in my mind I was talking about Detroit and what's going on with the 49ers.
Since you're a resident-expert on the matter, mind if I ask how much of the SB-era Rams started with Vermeil and where did Martz take it? As a snap reaction I'd always though Dick was too quickly forgotten when it came to the Rams' success. Am I mistaken?
If the Rams (and Lovie) didn't totally bomb every draft since Martz took over, that organization really wouldn't be as bad as they are. Linehan and age didn't help things when he got there. Martz overall had a positive term in St. Louis IMO.
__________________
Fitzgerald makes memorable plays so routinely that they stop being so memorable. - Mike Sando
Since you're a resident-expert on the matter, mind if I ask how much of the SB-era Rams started with Vermeil and where did Martz take it? As a snap reaction I'd always though Dick was too quickly forgotten when it came to the Rams' success. Am I mistaken?
Personally, I think it very much started with Vermeil, though that's somewhat mixed. The foundation for the Greatest Show teams was the player acquisition from 1997-1999. With Vermeil having the final say in the FO, they drafted Orlando Pace, Dexter McCleon and Ryan Tucker in '97, Grant Wistrom, Robert Holcombe, Leonard Little, Az Hakim and Roland Williams in '98, and Torry Holt and Dre Bly in '99. They also added Warner, of course, and signed London Fletcher. All those guys were starters in Super Bowls, and Vermeil deserves a lot of credit for those decisions, and having the right guys in place to help him make those decisions.
On the field was a bit different. Vermeil made some mistakes with the team early, and had to make a lot of adjustments. He started to lose the team towards the end of '98, and things had to be shaken up. Thus, Mike Martz becoming the OC, and some more good player acquisitions in Trent Green and Marshall Faulk. '99 was a perfect storm resulting from the adjustments made after '98 being good ones, and a lot of the moves made before that hadn't paid off yet coming due as well. As soon as some of those things became apparent, the players bought back in very quickly.
Also, Vermeil was an excellent gameday coach. He managed the clock, kept things under control on the sidelines, and the Rams always seemed to make halftime adjustments that worked. He kept things calm and under control, and the players were disciplined.
When he retired, two key members of the coaching staff immediately quit because they couldn't get along with Martz, including the co-DC. It became obvious pretty quickly that another thing Vermeil had been doing was keeping the tendencies of his coordinators under control, as Martz started going insane with his offensive risk-taking, and the former co-DC now full DC started adding so many layers of complexity to the defense that nobody had any idea what was going on.
Martz was more brilliant than Vermeil, but far more erratic. He's one of the worst gameday head coaches ever. He often refused to make adjustments that were obvious, he blew timeouts and made weird decisions with challenges, and often took so long to get plays in that he eventually had to give up the primary playcalling duties, which was originally his strength.
He was an enormous part of the success under Vermeil, but he just wasn't suited to being a head coach, and managing a staff of different personalities, or evaluating players.
If the Rams (and Lovie) didn't totally bomb every draft since Martz took over, that organization really wouldn't be as bad as they are. Linehan and age didn't help things when he got there. Martz overall had a positive term in St. Louis IMO.
Yeah, but Martz had final say over the draft and all the FO decisions. Lovie influenced some really dumb moves, and of course Martz != the scouting department, but he's gotta take a good bit of blame because he was the guy with the final authority.
Linear Mode
