COMMENTARY : Keeping Robinson as Coach Is Soundest Move for Rams
No, Georgia didn’t sell the Rams to Bruce McNall. Friday’s news wasn’t that good.
But it was good enough. In fact, it makes the list of Top Two Things Georgia Frontiere Has Ever Done for Her Football Team:
1. Hire John Robinson.
2. Rehire John Robinson.
It’s No. 2 with an asterisk, too, considering the chorus of headlines that awaited if she had gone the other way and let Robinson go his:
Robinson: NFL’s Hottest New Property
Cleveland, New England, Tampa Bay All Make Robinson Offers He Can’t Refuse
Bill Walsh to Rams: You’ve Got to Be Kidding
Mackovic Says No; Rams to Look at 12th Choice
Rams’ Search for New Coach Enters Sixth Month
Snubbed by Junior College Assistant, Rams to Consider High School Coaches
For weeks now, the gossip circuit had been asking the wrong question: Should the Rams get rid of Robinson? That’s like jumping out of an airplane because the chicken Kiev was cold. The right question, from the start, was to consider the alternative: Who could the Rams hire who could do the job better?
That, from the start of this mini-melodrama, was always the biggest laugh--that the Rams could part with Robinson, snap their fingers and bring in the Hall of Famer of their choice. Sure. Coming right up. The Non-Robinson Movement favored a tougher coach, a sleep-eat-and-drink-Maalox-in-the-office workaholic who could kick some Ram butts into the Super Bowl. What the Rams really need is a coach like Mike Ditka. What the Rams really need is a coach like Buddy Ryan.
Can we get real for a second? Mike Ditka, coaching for an owner who kisses players and signs autographs on the sidelines during 26-10 blowouts on national TV; an owner who will spring for summer trips to Tokyo and Berlin but won’t spring for one decent pass rusher? Buddy Ryan, coaching for a general manager who lowballs key veteran players into lengthy morale- and performance-draining holdouts and then undermines his coach with off-the-record sniping and innuendo?
Can you picture any other coach of any stature signing onto a situation where he has minimal say in the drafting, trading and signing of the players he must coach--and then must act as the organization’s sole mouthpiece when those players fail and questions must be answered?
Coaching the Rams is a calling, like the priesthood, only without the support upstairs. It’s not for everyone. And given the present, bizarre parameters of the Ram power structure, it might not be for anyone except John Robinson.
Memories are short in this business, so we offer a quick refresher course in Ram history, pre-Robinson.
In 1982, the Rams were 2-7 under Ray Malavasi. They were the New England Patriots of their era, the running gag in Johnny Carson’s monologue. They were known as the L.A. Lambs. Their fans wore paper sacks over their heads. Malavasi got so bored, he fell asleep during a radio interview, his snores recorded for posterity.
The Rams were the league’s biggest jokes before they hired Robinson. Robinson gave them immediate credibility. Along with a rookie tailback named Eric Dickerson, Robinson had the Rams in the playoffs his first season. In his third, he had them in the conference championship game. Two years after Dickerson abandoned ship--outraged over another contract squeeze play--Robinson had the Rams at the doorstep of the Super Bowl again.
The knock against Robinson, of course, is that he never got the Rams in. But neither did George Allen or Chuck Knox. Robinson came close twice, but in 1985 he drew the Chicago Bears, who had one of the great defensive units in NFL history, and in 1989 he drew the San Francisco 49ers, who had one of the great teams in NFL history. What did Robinson have? Dieter Brock in ‘85, the league’s 21st-ranked defense in ’89.
Robinson has won with whatever Ram management has given him. When he had Dickerson, he ran the ball. When he had a defense, he won games by scores of 13-10. In 1989, when he had neither, he turned to Jim Everett and Flipper Anderson, turned them loose and went 13-6.
This year, things turned rotten, but that started before the first kickoff, when none of the team’s gaping defensive needs were addressed and when three key defensive starters--linebacker Kevin Greene, lineman Doug Reed and safety Michael Stewart--held out during training camp. The 1990 Rams are 5-10, but the season was lost long before, when the Rams failed to act on free agents, Plan B or otherwise, and allowed Dave Waymer and Fred Smerlas to traipse up to San Francisco and Dave Duerson and Everson Walls to land in New York.
But the Rams saved a lot of money.
The Rams aren’t going to get serious about the Super Bowl until they get serious about paying players. Friday, they may have taken a step in the right direction. Perhaps the most significant passage in Frontiere’s statement, which announced that Robinson would coach the Rams “next year and into the future,” was the one that said Robinson will be given more say in the college draft and Plan B.
You don’t have to squint to read between the lines. The power struggle between Robinson and Executive Vice President John Shaw is over, and we have a winner. How much influence Robinson should have in personnel decisions. . . . This was the line drawn in the sand as Robinson and Shaw headed for their climactic, dramatic postseason “summit.” Already, drums were beginning to roll.
But no one made it to the summit. Robinson canceled it by pulling a time-honored maneuver out of the playbook--the old end-around--by first placing a call to Frontiere and airing his side.
Georgia took a few days to think about it, and on Friday she got back to Robinson.
Robinson called it a “bold decision.”
Bold? Possibly. Correct? Definitely.
Bottom line, it was the only decision Georgia could afford to make.