But prior to that, the Rams in the 70's were a powerhouse when Carroll Rosenbloom was the owner. But he died in a swimming accident and Georgia, Rosenbloom's wife wasn't the best owner. It's a miracle that things fell into place and we won super bowl 34.
It was tough with Georgia as owner because Carroll Rosenbloom was more like Jerry Jones, he was involved and although Don Klosterman was the General Manager, Rosenbloom was totally involved. Landed his helicopter before practice, quite something back then.
There was a story that during practice during the 1974 season, Rosenbloom saw QB John Hadl throwing a bunch of wobbly passes and Rosenbloom asked Hadl "What's wrong with your arm?" Hadl replied: "It's not my arm, it's my back." Rosenbloom then engineered a huge trade of John Hadl to Green Bay that provided the Rams a bevy of draft picks that included the likes of Dennis Harrah & Nolan Cromwell among many others. Hadl said years later, I was honest, once CR heard back, he felt I couldn't come back from that.
My only knock on Carroll Rosenbloom was trusting his wife to be a Laissez-faire owner as the intent was for Steve Rosenbloom (Carroll's oldest son) to run the Rams and Georgia just to be a figure head because of the inheritance tax. Leaving the estate to your widow did not incumber that tax, so Georgia was supposed to be just owner in name only with Steve Rosenbloom running day to day operations.
John Shaw who was in the finance department got in Georgia's ear and convinced her to take over, thus giving him power too and that's how it played out. It was tough with Georgia as she did some good things like hiring John Robinson, but I will always wonder what would have happened if Steve Rosenbloom had run the Rams, although Steve did get his shot with the New Orleans Saints and that did not turn out well at all.
BTW the only other knock I have on Carroll Rosenbloom was he was a huge fan of Pat Haden, Rosenbloom had a suite for USC games at the Coliseum and watched Haden and liked him and felt that Haden should be the Rams QB over James Harris & Ron Jaworski. I always felt the Rams should have given Jaworski a chance to be the guy, but they never did.