Is This Robinson’s Final Four? : Rams: Shaw says coach won’t be fired during the season, but with 3-13 a possibility, chances of his returning don’t look good.

John Robinson, increasingly isolated in the Ram power structure, conceded Tuesday that his future and nine-year career as the team’s head coach rest almost solely on what happens in the final four otherwise meaningless games.

“After the season’s over, then the Rams as an organization, myself included, will sit down and try to plot out our future and try to focus on it,” Robinson said.

“And I believe, if we can give evidence that we can bring this football team back, then there’s a good chance that this staff will stay.”

The Rams are 3-9 after being routed, 33-10, by the San Francisco 49ers Monday night at Anaheim Stadium, with a real possibility of finishing 3-13, their worst record since 1962, when they were 1-12-1. Since 1989, the team is 8-20, and its current six-game losing streak is the longest in Robinson’s tenure.

Executive Vice President John Shaw said the team will definitely not fire Robinson during the season, but no one in the Ram organization is denying that once this year is over, Robinson will have a difficult time returning as coach.

Last week, according to two club sources, owner Georgia Frontiere summoned Robinson and Shaw for a three-hour meeting to get answers from Robinson about the team’s collapse.

Robinson, who has successfully appealed directly to Frontiere to keep his job in the past, apparently has offered no defense so far this season.

Tuesday, he suggested that he might not be able to turn the team around.

“I think we just have to have a sense that . . . wherever the Rams are now, we want to get back in a competitive place as soon as possible,” Robinson said.

“And that obviously includes next year, includes the draft, includes the acquisition of additional players.

“I think there’s a point where you say, ‘Yes, we can do that,’ or ‘No, we’re dead in the water and can’t continue to function.’

“Those are the decisions that our organization has to deal with.”

If Robinson is fired or resigns under pressure, the team would owe him about $550,000.

Last winter, after Shaw recommended to Frontiere that Robinson be replaced, Robinson signed a three-year deal through 1993. The contract was designed to give the Rams the flexibility of firing him after this season with a minimum of cost.

“There’s obviously speculation about my future and all of that, but we’re going to wait until the end of the season,” Robinson said.

“We’re going to work at what we’re doing, and try to get it, try to improve, try to deal with the play-by-play and day-by-day and see if we can get as many players as we can improving.

“Obviously, the season is a loss, and I feel these last four games are still to be played and we can attack these last four games aggressively.”

The Rams begin this last stretch Sunday at Anaheim Stadium against the Washington Redskins (11-1), who are coming off their first loss of the season. Then they will play host to Atlanta on Dec. 8, before traveling to Minnesota on Dec. 15 and to Seattle on Dec. 22.

All four teams probably will be battling for playoff spots, and the Rams, wobbling both offensively and defensively, could conceivably finish the season with a 10-game losing streak.

“We have to find a way to put ourselves back together again in these last four games,” Robinson said.

“Certainly, it’s a monumental task against the Redskins, who are coming off a loss, and obviously whatever lack of focus that they had for Dallas, whatever complacency there was, has been knocked out of them. So they will be a focused football team.”

Beyond his general statements, Robinson, whose team was buffeted by the Anaheim Stadium crowd’s boos and banners demanding his firing Monday night, said he had no further comment about his status.

“I’m not going to speculate on my future or those kinds of things,” Robinson said. “I’m not going to answer those kinds of questions because there’s no possible value to getting caught up in that.”

Wasn’t he bothered by the tense atmosphere in the stadium?

“Those things all come with the territory,” Robinson said. “That’s not the issue. The issue is, ‘Can we function? Can we get this football team improved?’ ”