- Joined
- Jun 20, 2010
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- Name
- The Dude
Bryan Burwell
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/bryan-burwell/burwell-be-smart-keep-spagnuolo/article_914bbdf8-17c7-5f78-9866-f5e39a987e87.html#ixzz1iAOfkebU" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/ ... z1iAOfkebU</a>
[wrapimg=left]http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/stltoday.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/3/c5/3c5b9f11-0ebf-5212-9eef-baf366f6db69/4efa9f2177503.preview-300.jpg[/wrapimg]As we watch the final days of the Rams' 2011 season wind down, Rams Park is suddenly like Paris under siege during the French Revolution. Outside the gates at Earth City is a figurative insatiably bloodthirsty mob, knitting away like Madame Defarge, waiting for heads to come tumbling off the blade of the guillotine.
The ill-tempered lot lurking in the new market square (the Internet) of this Rams revolution are reveling in anticipation of the wholesale demise of the football operation. They will not be satisfied without blood running in the streets. Their blood lust will not be quenched until Rams owner Stan Kroenke makes a clean sweep of his front office and coaching staff, preferably with mass executions in the Edward Jones Dome at high noon.
Excuse me if you non-literary types don't get this "Tale of Two Cities" reference, but I'm about to play the role of Miss Pross and for a moment and try to stymie the revolution.
I know what you want, and thank goodness I'm here to stop you.
I know Kroenke is going to do something. I know he has to do something. But before he makes the most significant decision of his 16-month tenure as majority owner, I'd like to take a columnist's liberty and dispense a bit of unsolicited and free advice.
No mass executions, please.
Firing everyone is easy. Making a clean sweep after a likely 2-14 disaster, is surely the most popular thing to do. But let's never confuse easy and popular with smart and right.
So in anticipation of Kroenke making at least the first of his intentions public next week, I know the inevitable fallout from this lost season requires some changes to be made. I just hope Kroenke resists the shrieking voices that demand he make some spectacular and immediate cosmetic fix, and instead forge ahead on a more daring path that requires bold and insightful moves rather than easy ones.
One of those bold moves would be to keep Steve Spagnuolo around to finish the job he started nearly three years ago.
I have no reliable intelligence into what's on Kroenke's mind. But I will state my case one more time why I think he ought to keep Spagnuolo.
It's very simple.
Leadership.
Of all the attributes an NFL head coach should have, the single most important quality he must bring to the job is the ability to convince a room full of Type-A personality football players to follow him over the hill into battle despite the odds. That is a rare quality in the NFL coaching business and to anyone who actually bothers to investigate, Spagnuolo possesses that quality.
An NFL locker room might be the most demanding room to work in American sports. In this testosterone-overloaded environment, lack of leadership is easily sniffed out. So can quality leadership.
It's why I've seen phenomenal assistant coaches who could dazzle you with great Xs and Os, yet as head coaches couldn't lead a room full of men across the street even if there were supermodels and free food waiting for them. From the outside looking in, that might not be a big deal to you. But in football circles that is a significant quality, particularly when you have seen the ill effects of a leadership void.
As a little history lesson, should I remind you that a little more than 13 years ago, Dick Vermeil — now widely acknowledged as the patron saint of Rams Nation and one of the greatest leaders of men this city has ever known — was fighting for his coaching life after going 5-11 and 4-12 in his first two seasons.
But Vermeil wasn't chased out of town because everyone knew he was the right man at the top of the food chain. He just needed to make some adjustments.
So he hired an offensive coordinator named Mike Martz, changed his maniacal practice habits, brought in some critical new talent such as Marshall Faulk and Torry Holt and the mess was turned into a 13-3 Super Bowl championship team.
Why did ownership keep Vermeil around? Because he was a leader, someone who could manage grown men.
It would be great if history could repeat itself in 2012.
If Spagnuolo is allowed to make a few critical tweaks to his coaching staff, and the right personnel decisions are made in the offseason with the predicted $30 million in cap space and the rather attractive collection of high draft picks available to them should they garner either the No. 1 or No. 2 overall pick, and with a normal offseason that allows Sam Bradford and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels to be in complete lock step in the playbook, this team could make the sort of dramatic turnaround comparable to what the San Francisco 49ers and Detroit Lions made this season.
The players still believe in Spagnuolo, and that's not lip service.
It might help if he followed Vermeil's pattern and made a few tweaks to some of his hard-driving ways, too. This is not as lost of a project as it appears to the untrained eye.
But it all begins and ends with Kroenke. Does he think his football team is like a car that has been totaled from this wreck of a season, or does he think it can go into the shop and with a few new parts come back out as good as new?
I have no idea what's on Kroenke's mind, but I would be infinitely more impressed if he has the audacity to forge ahead on his own bold path to fixing his football operation than if he goes fluttering along on the winds of popular opinion.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/bryan-burwell/burwell-be-smart-keep-spagnuolo/article_914bbdf8-17c7-5f78-9866-f5e39a987e87.html#ixzz1iAOfkebU" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/ ... z1iAOfkebU</a>
[wrapimg=left]http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/stltoday.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/3/c5/3c5b9f11-0ebf-5212-9eef-baf366f6db69/4efa9f2177503.preview-300.jpg[/wrapimg]As we watch the final days of the Rams' 2011 season wind down, Rams Park is suddenly like Paris under siege during the French Revolution. Outside the gates at Earth City is a figurative insatiably bloodthirsty mob, knitting away like Madame Defarge, waiting for heads to come tumbling off the blade of the guillotine.
The ill-tempered lot lurking in the new market square (the Internet) of this Rams revolution are reveling in anticipation of the wholesale demise of the football operation. They will not be satisfied without blood running in the streets. Their blood lust will not be quenched until Rams owner Stan Kroenke makes a clean sweep of his front office and coaching staff, preferably with mass executions in the Edward Jones Dome at high noon.
Excuse me if you non-literary types don't get this "Tale of Two Cities" reference, but I'm about to play the role of Miss Pross and for a moment and try to stymie the revolution.
I know what you want, and thank goodness I'm here to stop you.
I know Kroenke is going to do something. I know he has to do something. But before he makes the most significant decision of his 16-month tenure as majority owner, I'd like to take a columnist's liberty and dispense a bit of unsolicited and free advice.
No mass executions, please.
Firing everyone is easy. Making a clean sweep after a likely 2-14 disaster, is surely the most popular thing to do. But let's never confuse easy and popular with smart and right.
So in anticipation of Kroenke making at least the first of his intentions public next week, I know the inevitable fallout from this lost season requires some changes to be made. I just hope Kroenke resists the shrieking voices that demand he make some spectacular and immediate cosmetic fix, and instead forge ahead on a more daring path that requires bold and insightful moves rather than easy ones.
One of those bold moves would be to keep Steve Spagnuolo around to finish the job he started nearly three years ago.
I have no reliable intelligence into what's on Kroenke's mind. But I will state my case one more time why I think he ought to keep Spagnuolo.
It's very simple.
Leadership.
Of all the attributes an NFL head coach should have, the single most important quality he must bring to the job is the ability to convince a room full of Type-A personality football players to follow him over the hill into battle despite the odds. That is a rare quality in the NFL coaching business and to anyone who actually bothers to investigate, Spagnuolo possesses that quality.
An NFL locker room might be the most demanding room to work in American sports. In this testosterone-overloaded environment, lack of leadership is easily sniffed out. So can quality leadership.
It's why I've seen phenomenal assistant coaches who could dazzle you with great Xs and Os, yet as head coaches couldn't lead a room full of men across the street even if there were supermodels and free food waiting for them. From the outside looking in, that might not be a big deal to you. But in football circles that is a significant quality, particularly when you have seen the ill effects of a leadership void.
As a little history lesson, should I remind you that a little more than 13 years ago, Dick Vermeil — now widely acknowledged as the patron saint of Rams Nation and one of the greatest leaders of men this city has ever known — was fighting for his coaching life after going 5-11 and 4-12 in his first two seasons.
But Vermeil wasn't chased out of town because everyone knew he was the right man at the top of the food chain. He just needed to make some adjustments.
So he hired an offensive coordinator named Mike Martz, changed his maniacal practice habits, brought in some critical new talent such as Marshall Faulk and Torry Holt and the mess was turned into a 13-3 Super Bowl championship team.
Why did ownership keep Vermeil around? Because he was a leader, someone who could manage grown men.
It would be great if history could repeat itself in 2012.
If Spagnuolo is allowed to make a few critical tweaks to his coaching staff, and the right personnel decisions are made in the offseason with the predicted $30 million in cap space and the rather attractive collection of high draft picks available to them should they garner either the No. 1 or No. 2 overall pick, and with a normal offseason that allows Sam Bradford and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels to be in complete lock step in the playbook, this team could make the sort of dramatic turnaround comparable to what the San Francisco 49ers and Detroit Lions made this season.
The players still believe in Spagnuolo, and that's not lip service.
It might help if he followed Vermeil's pattern and made a few tweaks to some of his hard-driving ways, too. This is not as lost of a project as it appears to the untrained eye.
But it all begins and ends with Kroenke. Does he think his football team is like a car that has been totaled from this wreck of a season, or does he think it can go into the shop and with a few new parts come back out as good as new?
I have no idea what's on Kroenke's mind, but I would be infinitely more impressed if he has the audacity to forge ahead on his own bold path to fixing his football operation than if he goes fluttering along on the winds of popular opinion.
