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Spags' Rams show more toughness
Bryan Burwell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
09/14/2009
SEATTLE — The rowdy folks inside Qwest Field just wanted to party already. They had spent the better part of this flawless football Sunday turning their raucous stadium into a joyful and vulgar open-air madhouse — laughing and cursing and chanting and cheering all afternoon as their Seattle Seahawks dismantled the hated Rams in a 28-0 rout. And now all they wanted to do to was let the game clock tick down so they could dance in the aisles and spill out into the streets and party some more.
Only Steve Spagnuolo wouldn't let them.
There were less than two minutes left in his first regular-season game as Rams coach, and Spags kept calling timeouts as if it were the end of some skin-tight playoff game instead of the dying moments of garbage time in an ugly, one-sided shutout that had essentially been over since the third quarter.
Spags was still pacing the Rams sidelines, and his body language told you he didn't care what the score was. As long as there was time on that clock, he was going to work it.
The Seahawks ran a play.
Spags called a timeout.
Booooooooo!!!!
The Seahawks ran another play.
Spags looked at the ref and called another timeout.
Booooooooo!!!!!
Edgerrin James tried to barrel off-tackle, and he was swarmed by a pile of white Rams jerseys for a 1-yard loss, and now Spags was crouched near the 30-yard line, his head set tilted slightly, his hands cupped around his mouth.
"KEEP ON MAKIN' PLAYS MEN, KEEP ON MAKIN' PLAYS!" he shouted in a voice that pierced the din of this angry and impatient partisan Qwest Field mob.
And then he called another time out.
Booooooooo!!!!!
So maybe you're not looking for a pearl to cull out of this disastrous start to the 2009 regular season. Perhaps all you see is another rotten start to another season destined to be as horrible as the last two or three or four. Maybe all you see is the unsightly misadventure that seemed a whole lot like the last four trips to Seattle.
But I'm going to try to squint a little bit for you. I'm going to try to block out the blinding glare of this mistake-riddled, self-destructive loss to the Seahawks and try to tell you why the Steve Spagnuolo Era is still headed in the right direction even after going scoreless in Seattle.
It can all be summed up in the sight of Spags on the sidelines and in the voice of Spags after the game.
When he walked into his postgame interview room, Spags didn't spend a great deal of time fretting over the countless self-destructive miscues that wrecked what started out to be a fairly competitive ballgame. And surprisingly, he did not throw his emotional roller-coaster and ticking-time-bomb Richie Incognito under the bus after the starting guard ruined several potential scoring opportunities in the first half with two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties and a false-start violation as well.
While half of Rams Nation is probably forming angry mobs to run Incognito out of town, the coach surprisingly held Incognito up as an exemplar of the toughness and passion he is seeking from a team that for too long been thought of as one of the least intimidating football teams in the NFL.
"I told him I still have confidence in him," said Spagnuolo. "I'm not going to lose confidence in him after one game. I think Richie is one of our most passionate guys. He plays his butt off. Sometimes he has to temper that, is all."
I want you to sit down for this. Spagnuolo is actually ready to make Incognito the poster child for the new face of his football team. No more pansies. No more soft, finesse, nice, polite guys who get intimidated and punked down the moment the game gets a bit too chippy and overly violent.
Spagnuolo has to know that if he's going to turn this bad football team around quickly, it better begin with harnessing that attitude Incognito brings to the table every week. On Sunday, Spags sounded just like every other coach who has been given a high maintenance player to deal with. He believes he can find a way to do what no other coach in Incognito's football life has been able to do so far: keep him consistently on the right side of that narrow line that separates the passionate warrior from the unstable madman.
"We're going to try and figure that one out on the plane," Spags said with a wink and a smile. "I don't have the answer for that right now. But I will say this: I'd rather be trying to figure that out than having guys who didn't care. I really would. I'd rather have a bunch of passionate guys who we can help turn into productive passion anytime. Because the flip side is you don't care, you quit."
Well, good luck with that, coach.
But in the mean time, I will say this about the new guy. His tough-guy persona is rubbing off. From the very start of this game, the Seahawks tried to get in the Rams players' faces and intimidate them, and the Rams surprised them by pushing right back.
It wasn't just Incognito. Marc Bulger bounced up off the ground after getting smashed by a couple of Seattle defenders and tried to take on three Seahawks when they got in his face and started woofin'. Yeah, that's right, the quarterback you love to hate, the QB you swear has all the emotion of a sun dial, the guy you all swear is too low-key, too emotionally detached, was ready to rumble. "If you get hit and somebody wants to get in your face, well, I take exception to that," Bulger said after the game. "I don't care if it was me or Josh Brown or Steven Jackson. You don't get in our face."
A few steps away from Bulger after the game, Jackson was still fired up, too and defending Incognito, Bulger and anyone else on his team that was ready to fight. "It's football, it's not golf," said the big running back. "It's (bleepin') football. Would you rather us just get our tails kicked and run back? I think you saw some fight in this team. ... We lost the game, but it's a lot different around here. I've been around here for six years and this team is intense and I love it, I love it."
So the good news is that Spags brought his new Rams to Seattle and they passed the tough test with flying colors. But the bad news is, they also flunked the poise test royally.
But like the man said, he'll figure out how to solve that little problem on the fly.
Bryan Burwell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
09/14/2009
SEATTLE — The rowdy folks inside Qwest Field just wanted to party already. They had spent the better part of this flawless football Sunday turning their raucous stadium into a joyful and vulgar open-air madhouse — laughing and cursing and chanting and cheering all afternoon as their Seattle Seahawks dismantled the hated Rams in a 28-0 rout. And now all they wanted to do to was let the game clock tick down so they could dance in the aisles and spill out into the streets and party some more.
Only Steve Spagnuolo wouldn't let them.
There were less than two minutes left in his first regular-season game as Rams coach, and Spags kept calling timeouts as if it were the end of some skin-tight playoff game instead of the dying moments of garbage time in an ugly, one-sided shutout that had essentially been over since the third quarter.
Spags was still pacing the Rams sidelines, and his body language told you he didn't care what the score was. As long as there was time on that clock, he was going to work it.
The Seahawks ran a play.
Spags called a timeout.
Booooooooo!!!!
The Seahawks ran another play.
Spags looked at the ref and called another timeout.
Booooooooo!!!!!
Edgerrin James tried to barrel off-tackle, and he was swarmed by a pile of white Rams jerseys for a 1-yard loss, and now Spags was crouched near the 30-yard line, his head set tilted slightly, his hands cupped around his mouth.
"KEEP ON MAKIN' PLAYS MEN, KEEP ON MAKIN' PLAYS!" he shouted in a voice that pierced the din of this angry and impatient partisan Qwest Field mob.
And then he called another time out.
Booooooooo!!!!!
So maybe you're not looking for a pearl to cull out of this disastrous start to the 2009 regular season. Perhaps all you see is another rotten start to another season destined to be as horrible as the last two or three or four. Maybe all you see is the unsightly misadventure that seemed a whole lot like the last four trips to Seattle.
But I'm going to try to squint a little bit for you. I'm going to try to block out the blinding glare of this mistake-riddled, self-destructive loss to the Seahawks and try to tell you why the Steve Spagnuolo Era is still headed in the right direction even after going scoreless in Seattle.
It can all be summed up in the sight of Spags on the sidelines and in the voice of Spags after the game.
When he walked into his postgame interview room, Spags didn't spend a great deal of time fretting over the countless self-destructive miscues that wrecked what started out to be a fairly competitive ballgame. And surprisingly, he did not throw his emotional roller-coaster and ticking-time-bomb Richie Incognito under the bus after the starting guard ruined several potential scoring opportunities in the first half with two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties and a false-start violation as well.
While half of Rams Nation is probably forming angry mobs to run Incognito out of town, the coach surprisingly held Incognito up as an exemplar of the toughness and passion he is seeking from a team that for too long been thought of as one of the least intimidating football teams in the NFL.
"I told him I still have confidence in him," said Spagnuolo. "I'm not going to lose confidence in him after one game. I think Richie is one of our most passionate guys. He plays his butt off. Sometimes he has to temper that, is all."
I want you to sit down for this. Spagnuolo is actually ready to make Incognito the poster child for the new face of his football team. No more pansies. No more soft, finesse, nice, polite guys who get intimidated and punked down the moment the game gets a bit too chippy and overly violent.
Spagnuolo has to know that if he's going to turn this bad football team around quickly, it better begin with harnessing that attitude Incognito brings to the table every week. On Sunday, Spags sounded just like every other coach who has been given a high maintenance player to deal with. He believes he can find a way to do what no other coach in Incognito's football life has been able to do so far: keep him consistently on the right side of that narrow line that separates the passionate warrior from the unstable madman.
"We're going to try and figure that one out on the plane," Spags said with a wink and a smile. "I don't have the answer for that right now. But I will say this: I'd rather be trying to figure that out than having guys who didn't care. I really would. I'd rather have a bunch of passionate guys who we can help turn into productive passion anytime. Because the flip side is you don't care, you quit."
Well, good luck with that, coach.
But in the mean time, I will say this about the new guy. His tough-guy persona is rubbing off. From the very start of this game, the Seahawks tried to get in the Rams players' faces and intimidate them, and the Rams surprised them by pushing right back.
It wasn't just Incognito. Marc Bulger bounced up off the ground after getting smashed by a couple of Seattle defenders and tried to take on three Seahawks when they got in his face and started woofin'. Yeah, that's right, the quarterback you love to hate, the QB you swear has all the emotion of a sun dial, the guy you all swear is too low-key, too emotionally detached, was ready to rumble. "If you get hit and somebody wants to get in your face, well, I take exception to that," Bulger said after the game. "I don't care if it was me or Josh Brown or Steven Jackson. You don't get in our face."
A few steps away from Bulger after the game, Jackson was still fired up, too and defending Incognito, Bulger and anyone else on his team that was ready to fight. "It's football, it's not golf," said the big running back. "It's (bleepin') football. Would you rather us just get our tails kicked and run back? I think you saw some fight in this team. ... We lost the game, but it's a lot different around here. I've been around here for six years and this team is intense and I love it, I love it."
So the good news is that Spags brought his new Rams to Seattle and they passed the tough test with flying colors. But the bad news is, they also flunked the poise test royally.
But like the man said, he'll figure out how to solve that little problem on the fly.
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