Laurinaitis closing in on franchise record
• By Jim Thomas
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/foot...cle_5e9b2009-1240-5476-ac61-78719a86075f.html
Around Rams Park, which can be a hotbed of prankster-ism, James Laurinaitis is regarded as such a good guy that it’s hard to make fun of him. That wasn’t always the case.
“It’s like when we filled his car with crickets — allegedly,” defensive end Chris Long said with a guilty smile. “It’s never been proven. He still to this day has never done anything to get back at us.
“And we ruined his Audi. I mean that was a nice SUV. He had to get a new one evidently. I think he could’ve taken more drastic measures to clean that smell out.”
Trouble was, many of the crickets got stuck in the air conditioning vents and died.
“It stunk terribly,” Laurinaitis said.
The Great Cricket Caper took place during training camp in 2012, when Laurinaitis walked into the players’ parking area at Rams Park and opened his vehicle, only to find it filled with crickets.
Laurinaitis says there is film — apparently from a surveillance camera — of Long, William Hayes, and former Ram Kendall Langford perpetrating the deed.
“So for them to continue to lie about it — it’s disrespectful,” Laurinaitis said.
But Laurinaitis says he’s a New Testament kind of guy. He has turned the other cheek.
“I forgave ’em vs. being vengeful and getting my vengeance,” he said.
The moral of the story ... well, there is no moral to the story. But as he moves forward in his seventh NFL season, Laurinaitis has almost as many tackles as he once had crickets in his SUV.
Laurinaitis enters Sunday’s game at Washington with 908 career tackles. He is just seven behind Hall of Famer Merlin Olsen’s franchise record of 915, so the mark should fall at FedEx Field.
“James Laurinaitis is the epitome of ‘tackler,’” Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams said last week. “I can’t think of a better person than him to be the all-time leading tackler here. I didn’t know he was that close.”
Laurinaitis always has been a student of the game, but after the Rams selected him in the second round of the 2009 draft his father gave him an instant Rams history lesson about the “Fearsome Foursome” and some of the defensive greats who played for the franchise over the years.
Laurinaitis watched the “Greatest Show on Turf” teams growing up. He knew about middle linebacker London Fletcher on those teams. He has since met team greats such as Deacon Jones and Rosey Grier.
“When I got drafted here, I really tried to study the history of this organization,” Laurinaitis said. “Because my goal was to play my whole career here. I wanted to be a guy that played for a decade in one spot, and was a staple of an organization.”
He wanted to be available, dependable, accountable. He wanted to be on the field every game. He looked up to Fletcher for those reasons.
Well on his way to that decade-long stint, Laurinaitis has been just that. He has started all 97 games in his career. Only David Harris of the New York Jets (101) and Curtis Lofton of Oakland (100) have longer ironman streaks among active NFL linebackers.
Coaches always talk about the importance of players having not only ability, but availability. You can have all the talent in the world but if you’re not available on Sundays, that talent doesn’t mean much.
Coach Jeff Fisher adds a third factor when it comes to Laurinaitis — reliability.
“He’s always been the guy that you can count on,” Fisher said. “He knows exactly what to do. He does all the extra things. He’s always ready to play. And he’s a very instinctive player.”
Laurinaitis led the Rams in tackles in each of his first four seasons in the NFL. The past two seasons he has finished second to Alec Ogletree, with Ogletree winning the team tackling title by a mere one stop in 2014 — 169 tackles to Laurinaitis’ 168.
“That production speaks to his reliability just week after week after week,” Fisher said of Laurinaitis. “He’s been through some tough times, but he’s persevered. Now he gets to be part of a defense that’s starting to get a reputation for being pretty good.”
It’s a lot easier to suck it up and play ‘dinged up’ when your team is in the middle of a playoff push and the center of attention in the NFL. Laurinaitis, No. 2 on the team’s seniority list (behind Long), doesn’t know that feeling.
He never has been part of a Rams team that had even a .500 record. Try going out there in mid-December when your team is 1-12 and you’ve got a sore shoulder or a bum ankle. Laurinaitis knows that feeling. The losing has left a hole in his career.
“I think a lot of times, you’re gonna be judged on the teams that you’re on,” he said. “Chris (Long) and I have been through some bad years here. We’ve been close for the last couple but you’ve gotta hope that this thing is turned around here. I’ve always said, I want to be here when the thing flips over the other way.”
Even though the victories have yet to come in large numbers, Laurinaitis will take pride in holding that franchise mark for tackles.
“To be even in the same sentence as a guy like Merlin Olsen and Deacon Jones and those guys — I don’t consider myself equals with them at all,” he said. “But just to have your name on a list kind of around those guys, around those names, it’s such a tremendous honor. I can’t even put it into words.”
Undoubtedly in part because of the losing, Laurinaitis hasn’t always gotten his due, even among some fans and media observers locally. He isn’t as punishing as say, a Ray Lewis, or as fast as a Bobby Wagner. He doesn’t get as much hype as a Luke Kuechly, or as many endorsements as a Clay Matthews.
Williams, who has been around several great defenses and great defensive players over his coaching career, has this to say about any critics: “Those are the same guys that probably thought they should’ve been all-conference in high school, that didn’t get a chance to play after that. I laugh and I smile when I hear about (that).
“The all-time leading tackler, that says something. It says ‘something’ a lot.”
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