Angry words alone won't get Rams back on course

[RamWraith]

By Bryan Burwell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
10/21/2007



SEATTLE — As Scott Linehan stood in the middle of the Rams Park practice field Thursday afternoon filling the windy autumn air with angry profanities and righteous indignation, you had to wonder what to make of it.

Should we give the man a standing ovation for at long last showing some much-needed anger and overdue exasperation with the infuriating condition of his St. Louis Rams? Do we celebrate it as the moment when someone finally plucked the last nerve of the embattled Rams coach, a nascent event that could trigger some much-needed life in this otherwise lifeless 0-6 football season?

Or should we instead do what we've been doing most of the season, which is shrugging our shoulders, rolling our eyes and considering this tirade a symbolic portrait of Captain Ahab defiantly standing watch over a doomed-from-the-start mission to football oblivion?

Has Linehan set sail on the Pequod into the gloomy Pacific Northwest this afternoon for another ill-fated adventure, or are his Rams about to embark on a slow but sure rebirth against the Seattle Seahawks at Qwest Field? It's difficult watching Linehan try to dig out of this mess. In so many ways, he's not the Ahab in this tale. Linehan's more the innocent bystander in a nightmare of a season that he may have helped to produce, but ultimately did not create. For that, look no further than Georgia Frontiere's crack "football men" who are the real navigators of this sinking ship: the defiant Ahab is team president-general manager Jay Zygmunt, his "Flask" is third mate (director of football operations) Samir Suleiman, and of course, there is team President John Shaw (you can call him "Ishmael"), the man who observes the ill-fated journey but does nothing to stop it from its doomed course.

We'll get back to them in a minute. But that angry moment on the practice field Thursday afternoon does symbolize everything that is wrong with the Rams, and why fixing it is a mission Linehan can't possibly navigate all alone.

The cause of the tirade was offensive guard Claude Terrell, a repeat-offender knucklehead who had the audacity to curse his head coach on the practice field. If I were Linehan, I'd have cut Terrell the moment the underachieving coach killer mouthed off. He should have stood in the middle of that practice field and told Terrell to not only get off his field, but out of his building. He should have said that even on a bad, injury-plagued 0-6 football team, there is no place for a slacker who has consistently aggravated coaches and teammates with his uninspired work. A lot of people inside Rams Park probably wish he had done it, too. But they say privately that the injuries to the offensive line handcuffed Linehan. He was forced to keep Terrell to field a representative team for Sunday.

Wait a minute. How much worse could it get without Terrell? With him, the Rams are perhaps the worst team in the NFL. Knuckleheads like Terrell don't change. They infect and influence others with their lack of discipline and unprofessional habits. Cutting him is going to do what to the Rams? Make them worse? With or without misfits like this guy, the Rams aren't going anywhere soon. So if you're going to be damned if you do cut him or damned if you don't, I'd rather be damned if I do.

I'd cut him tomorrow if I could.

But the reason Linehan didn't cut him speaks of the larger problem with the Rams. Why are they saddled with guys like Terrell anyway? Who's responsible for the procurement of these cancerous clowns and why is the roster so thin with talent that Linehan is forced to hold on to Terrell when the entire world knows he should have been unloaded a long time ago?

Great organizations plug holes and move on. Injuries, free agent defections, age — the Big Three that can wreck unprepared franchises — don't slow down the better organizations in the NFL. They react and recover. The bad ones recoil and retreat.

Much to the displeasure of the entire Rams Nation, Georgia's "football men" are proving more and more as time goes on that they are definitely the recoil and retreat kind of organization.

[IsaacBruceFan80]

I'm usually not a fan of Bryans writing...but he nailed it on this one.

[dgr828]

It seems that Linehan has gotten a late start in trying to command respect. Angry words and discipline should have been developed in training camp. One can only imagen a team with a lacks attitude during traing camp that carried over into the preseason and now rolling out of control, half way through the regular season, only now does the head coach becomes vocal and angry.
Maybe these are lessons to be learned by a young inexperienced HC.
the front office is more behind the sceens, their faces seldom seen, criticism has no target when throwing her darts. Head coach Scott Linehan by contrast is a big 'bullseye', exposed out in the open, now who is on the Hot Seat with the Saint Louis Rams.
It maybe a little too late, but Linehan is 'Mad as Hell and he's not going to take it anymore!'

[keith m. klink]

this guy hit the target with the first shot , and i couldn't agree more . for years i have been so unimpressed with this ownweship and front office , and it all starts with an owner that is so upside down and a bit of a airhead/ mental case that the ram's will be( the slow cousin riding the little bus ) that no one talks about . and until georgia is 6-feet under , and new ownership take the team in a direction it needs to go , the ram's and their fan's will continue to pay the price of a half-arsed team.

[UtterBlitz]

I hear that Georgia is not doing well healthwise....maybe changes will come sooner than we expect.

[HUbison]

Burwell read Moby Dick.......who knew?

[laram0]

Linehan, losing his cool did us alot of good. Spanked 33-6!

[BrokenWing]

Hey, that's 3 whole extra points!