Before I get to the list... a disclaimer. I am NOT trying to argue that Martz is flawless or even that he is a "great" coach. Frankly, I go back and forth on my support of Martz as much as anyone else. That said, I think that there are a few things that fans and the media criticize Martz for unjustly, and here are the top 3:
1. "Martz can't draft": There are two reasons why this criticism is unfair. First, Martz is hardly solely responsible for the Rams selections. While he clearly has had a couple of "pet" picks that have not worked out (Canidate, Crouch), it is also likely that some of the picks that missed were favorites of Armey and, possibly, Lovie Smith. Second, the Rams have made some real quality picks under Martz, including real "finds" like Jeremetrius Butler, Travis Fisher, Anthony Hargrove and even a guy like Chris Massey. Is Martz a draft "genius"? No. Is he totally inept? Again, no.
2. "Martz needlessly burns timeouts and challenges": I've heard this one so many times, particularly from the morons on ESPN. But ask yourself this question: how many times have the Rams scored on drives when Martz slowed things down with a timeout or a challenge, as compared to the number of times the Rams were truly burned by the lack of timeouts or challenges at the end of a half or game. Frankly, I can only think of one example of the latter - when the Rams would have benefitted against Tampa had they saved a challenge. Just because something is unorthodox, doesn't mean its wrong.
3. "Martz is going to play a QB at WR...": A lot of teams change the positions of players. While converting a QB to another position is unusual, it has worked. Look at Antuan Randel-El (who the Rams were high on, but missed out on taking, when they took Eric Crouch). Heck, Nolan Cromwell was a converted QB.
So, if you want to say Martz sometimes abandons the run... I'm with you (though, interestingly, he does so no more than they do in Indianapolis, and you never hear anyone calling their coaches "Mad"). If you want to say that he sometimes says too much publicly when he should just pull a Bill Parcells "no comment," no argument there.
But some of the stereotypical Martz-bashing themes are simply not warranted.
-03-28-2005, 10:37 AM
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