Common thread ties Rams' new leadership

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By Mike Sando
http://espn.go.com/blog/nfcwest/post/_/ ... leadership


INDIANAPOLIS -- The St. Louis Rams pointed to Les Snead's wide-ranging experiences in Atlanta when explaining why they hired him as general manager.

"The one thing that stood out to me in time as we talked with Les is, in his time with the Falcons, he's seen everything," chief operating officer Kevin Demoff said at the time.

The Rams are getting the same qualities in even greater abundance from coach Jeff Fisher.

Detroit Lions coach Jim Schwartz, who worked with Fisher in Tennessee, showed impressive recall in running through his former boss' résumé.

"You go through some of the things he has experienced, taking over on an interim basis in Houston, seeing the team move from Houston to Nashville, playing their home games in Memphis and getting on a plane 16 games a year, then transition to Vanderbilt and having facilities in trailers, just going through the salary-cap purge and all those different things, that experience is something that you just can't get unless you live through it all," Schwartz said from the scouting combine Thursday.

Schwartz then said of Fisher almost exactly what Demoff had said of Snead: "Jeff has seen just about everything there is to see in the NFL."

Fisher and Snead figure to see a few more things in St. Louis. The uncertainties St. Louis faces in rebuilding the roster, all while navigating stadium issues, led the organization to coaching and GM candidates with varied backgrounds.

"He is not a guy that panics," Schwartz said of Fisher. "He is not a guy that changes course without reason. That kind of perspective he has from all the things he has gone through will serve that franchise very well."

The Rams have been vague in describing where Fisher and Snead rank in the decision-making process. The setup is similar to the one Seattle has in place with coach Pete Carroll and GM John Schneider. Both head coaches wanted and got enough control over personnel to shape the roster. Neither was interested in becoming a GM, however.

 

[Anonymous]

The setup is similar to the one Seattle has in place with coach Pete Carroll and GM John Schneider. Both head coaches wanted and got enough control over personnel to shape the roster. Neither was interested in becoming a GM, however.

Just thinking out loud about front office structure.

He's right, this is a TYPE of front office arrangement. They hire a veteran coach, and then hire a GM afterward. The coach's vision directs things, not the GM's. That doesn't mean the coach makes every pick (cause coaches don't know the middle and bottom of a draft as well as scouts do) but it does mean that he gets a strong say in personnel and sets the direction.

Seattle hired Carroll first, then Schneider. It was the same with Vermeil and Armey. If this were a ship, the coach would be the captain, and the GM (though Armey never had the GM title while Vermeil was there) would be the executive officer of personnel.

This is not the 3-headed set-up they had with Armey, Martz, and Zygmunt. Or for that matter the one they had with Zygmunt, Linehan, and to an extent Devaney. It's different from the 2009 Devaney as GM model, who brought in his coaching candidate after becoming GM.

The problem in the 2009 model is that Demoff's place was ambiguous. In most respects he ran the business end. But he was the one who reported directly to ownership in LA (via Shaw) and then to Kroenke. So in effect he was a team president but in other respects he was an equal to Devaney, in the sense that Devaney had no "chain of command" power over Demoff and Demoff was the one who regularly reported to ownership.

Demoff in this situation does not have power on the football side equal to Fisher. He runs the building, the business, and the cap. He is a de facto team president in all but title. His function with the cap, according to Demoff, is to advise. Team president types are frequently NOT football guys. If this were a band, Fisher would be the front man, the Sinatra or Tom Jones, and Snead would be in charge of the instrumentalists, and Demoff would be the manager--booking gigs and hiring the roadies.

This would all be clearer if they just made Demoff team president. I dunno, maybe they think they have but they're just not using the official title. Anyway. As a rule, team presidents are stand-ins for the owner and facilitators. They don't intervene in football stuff except in extreme moments (for example, Shaw informed Vermeil that they were going to draft Holt, Armey's choice, and not Bailey. Which DV was fine with.) That's the kind of role a team president performs. Occasional settling of issues IF there ever is one, but mostly, they facilitate and advise. In the end though, team presidents are supposed to outlast coaches. They provide the sense of continuity. If Fisher ever leaves for any reason, Demoff is either directly in on hiring the next coach, OR he delegates that to the GM.

That all sound about right?