ANALYSIS : In the End, a Coach and a Team Are Still in Search of an Identity
First, John Robinson’s reputation preceded him, then it retreated from him.
He came to the Rams advertised as the master motivator but will leave behind a team unable to rouse enough emotion to win even once in the past nine games.
He arrived as the quintessential “players’ coach” but will leave because his players stopped playing for him around Halloween.
He was the league’s foremost proponent of power football, firm in his belief that the meaning of life is somewhere between the tackles, but he will leave his successor with the next-to-worst rushing offense in the NFL.
He was, above all else, a winner, but he leaves with a 3-12 record in 1991, a 5-11 record in 1990 and an 8-24 record since qualifying for NFC championship game in 1989.
John Robinson won’t be on the Ram sideline next season, largely because that wasn’t John Robinson on the sideline this season.
His resignation came Wednesday, but the resignation had settled in long before that. Robinson has been going, going, gone for nearly a month now, first staggered by the 1-2 punches New Orleans and Kansas City delivered in early November--back-to-back games the Rams should have won, but bumbled away--and then waylaid by the national embarrassment of a 33-10 defeat to San Francisco in front of ABC’s “Monday Night Football” cameras.
Some coaches survive 5-11 seasons. Robinson did, but only after agreeing to fire half his coaching staff, including longtime friend and defensive coordinator Fritz Shurmur.
Some coaches even survive 3-13 seasons, the Rams’ apparent destination after Sunday’s 5 p.m. game in Seattle.
But no coach survives a franchise-record nine-game losing streak, not even Robinson, who lost even his fabled knack for deflecting damage and re-directing it elsewhere.
Teflon apparently loses something after nine years.
United by their inability to win the big one, Ram coaches tend to be remembered for their biggest failures.
George Allen made the playoffs twice in his first three seasons with the Rams and won 11 consecutive games in 1969. He is remembered for being fired three times, one of them overturned by a player revolt, another came two games into the 1978 exhibition season.
Chuck Knox won five division titles in five seasons with the Rams, went 12-2 twice and reached the conference championship game three times. He is remembered for never having made the Super Bowl.
Ray Malavasi made the Super Bowl and nearly beat the Bradshaw-Swann-Lambert Steelers. He is remembered for snoring through an early morning radio talk show in the middle of a 2-7 season.
How will Robinson be remembered?
The dirges of 1990 and 1991 have obscured so much: The drafting of Eric Dickerson and the just-add-water turnaround of 1983. Dickerson’s 2,105-yard odyssey in 1984. The NFC final, in spite of Dieter Brock, in 1985. The NFC final, in spite of the league’s 21st-ranked defense, in 1989. Six trips to the playoffs in spite of an organization’s fiscal policy diametrically opposed to on-the-field success: Don’t pay them now, don’t pay them later.
Robinson revitalized the Rams when he joined them in 1983, transforming a 2-7 punchline into a 9-7 wild card, and kept them at a high level through 1989, but now he leaves them in no better shape than when he found them, and probably worse.
So what has been accomplished, what has been learned?
When reporters’ notepads are closed and tape recorders paused, Robinson has talked about “the system” ultimately beating him down. The system--founded on no rapport between coach and general manager, no communication between coach and draft coordinator, no commitment to current Rams or potential ones--was designed to fail and so, once again, it finally has. For the record, Robinson talks of “up cycles” and “down cycles” and makes mention of the advice Al Davis once gave him: that no NFL coach can expect to last a decade in the same place anymore.
Robinson lasted nine years, and did so with the grace of a contortionist. He survived because he adapted. Working for Georgia Frontiere and John Shaw didn’t cramp his style. Often, it left it twisted beyond recognition.
The last prototypical John Robinson team was spotted in Anaheim circa 1986. He had the tailback he wanted, he pounded the football up the middle all he wanted. But when Shaw wouldn’t pay Dickerson what he wanted, opting instead for Jim Everett’s younger (i.e. cheaper) name on the marquee, Robinson watched the best runner in the NFL go and, rather than protest, chose to go with the flow.
In came Everett, in came Air Coryell maestro Ernie Zampese, out went Robinson’s beloved brand of power football.
Philosophies began to change with the calendar. One year, the Rams’ 3-4, soft-zone defense beats Philadelphia and the New York Giants in the playoffs, leaving its designer to answer to the name St. Fritz. One year later, Fritz Shurmur is in Phoenix, Jeff Fisher is in Anaheim and the 4-3 is the wave of the future.
This year, Cleveland Gary was going to play tailback. Until he fumbled. Then it was Robert Delpino. Until he fumbled. Then it was Marcus Dupree. Then back to Delpino. Then back to Gary.
Robinson changed. He changed his mind, he changed his heart. Outside forces shoved him to and fro, and you wonder how much steadier the course might have been if he worked instead for Eddie DeBartolo. But he wavered, and once his players detected it, wavering spread like a virus, creating a team so indecisive it can’t even handle a center snap.
Now, one more game and Robinson will be done with it. Maybe he takes a year off. Maybe he does some broadcasting. Most likely, he takes some time and finds himself again.
The Rams, too, need to do the same. Only there, the search is never-ending.