MVN - Most Valuable Network

Linehan Stays Put

It’s official. Despite the 0-8 start to the season, despite the obvious play-calling and strategy blunders during games, and despite being downright awful all season long, the Rams and coach Scott Linehan will be together next year.

In one way, this decision is understandable. The injuries weren’t Linehan’s fault. Leonard Little, Marc Bulger, Steven Jackson (for a while), Orlando Pace (and every other offensive lineman), and a host of other players have been injured this year. Assuming that most of these players can return to form next year, the Rams could be significantly better even if they field exactly the same team.

In another way, however, Linehan really deserves much of the blame for the debacle we call the 2007 St. Louis Rams.  Certainly there has been slow, barely noticeable improvement since the miraculous New Orleans win that finally snapped that horrendous 8-game losing streak. But Scott Linehan and his partner in crime Greg Olson continually make boneheaded calls on offense that ruin whatever small chance the team has to score.

Consider Steven Jackson, the workhorse, the rushing phenom. Cincinnati’s rush defense is ranked 22nd in the league, and its pass defense is 25th. Not much of a difference there, so with a third-string quarterback taking snaps, why not just hand Jackson the ball? 18 carries for 91 yards is an acceptable day for a RB on a good team. A rusher like Jackson on a team fielding a QB who practiced with the first string for the very first time the Friday before the game should have had closer to 30 carries. Quarterbacks are falling like dominoes at Rams Park, yet Scott Linehan refuses to trust his superstar rusher and let him take over a game.

The bad play-calling is reason enough to seriously start thinking about firing Scott Linehan. But the problems with the Rams’ head coach go deeper than that. Simply put, Linehan does not have the team’s respect. We all saw the eye roll. We all saw Jackson cussing up a storm in the early weeks when potentially game-winning drives stalled simply because the coaches refused to run the ball. John Shaw insists the players believe in Linehan. But Shaw doesn’t even go to all the games. I find it hard to believe that a man who lives in L.A. and doesn’t find it worth his time to see his team play has any idea what his players actually think.

More important than his bad calls and even more heinous than being disrespected by his own players, however, is the fact that Linehan doesn’t really seem to care anymore. If you saw his press conference when the team announced that he would not be fired, you heard this response:  “It’s important to know you’ve got support and those things. But at this point it’s really not my issue.” He might have meant that his most important concern is preparing for next week’s game. But the fact remains that his team is so bad that there was serious talk about kicking him out after just his second season. That’s not his issue? The season cannot be salvaged anymore. Why does Linehan feel that having support for the future is not his issue, that knowing that he still has a chance with this team is no big deal? Does he really care that much?

Whether he cares or not, Linehan is here and will stay here for at least another year. Let’s hope he can get more done during next year than he did during this one.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Scott Linehan, Rams News, Greg Olson, Marc Bulger, National Football League, St. Louis Rams, Steven Jackson, Professional Sports, NFL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.