http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...eak-500-with-the-saints-thats-not-acceptable/
James Laurinaitis: With the Rams we couldn’t break .500, with the Saints that’s not acceptable
Posted by Michael David Smith on June 3, 2016
Getty Images
James Laurinaitis has spent his entire seven-year career with the Rams, and in those seven years the Rams never won more than seven games. Now Laurinaitis is with the Saints, and he thinks he’s in for a refreshing change.
Laurinaitis noted that during his entire college career at Ohio State, the Buckeyes lost only nine games, and so it was a rude awakening to play for the Rams, where losing nine games a season was the norm. In New Orleans, Laurinaitis says, no one is satisfied with 7-9.
“We have a lot of guys here who are
extremely hungry to be good,” Laurinaitis said, via Larry Holder of NOLA.com. “I think it’s refreshing to me to be in a place where they’ve won. The expectations are to get back to that. Coming from a spot where we couldn’t break .500, in college I lost nine games — that was it at Ohio State.”
With the Rams, Laurinaitis constantly felt like the team was trying to climb out of a sub-.500 hole, and never able to.
“Then you get to here and you hear 7-9 is just not acceptable. It’s awesome to be around that, that hunger,” Laurinaitis said.
Although Laurinaitis didn’t exactly say that the Rams considered 7-9 acceptable,
that’s the implication of his comments. And, given that Jeff Fisher has kept his job while failing to win more than seven games in any of his four seasons, that’s a fair assessment of the Rams.