PRO FOOTBALL / DAILY REPORT : RAMS : Robinson Says He Will Take Time to Decide Future
The day after his resignation from the team he coached for nine years, John Robinson answered questions, saying that taking a job in television is “a possibility,” but emphasizing that he wants to organize his thoughts before committing to anything.
“I am trying my best not to make some decision,” Robinson said Thursday.
“I think what I need to do is decide what I want to do. I would like to believe I have some time to do that.”
He said that as he approaches his final game Sunday as Ram coach, he isn’t experiencing much sadness.
“I felt sadness every time we walked off the field on Sundays,” Robinson said. “I mean, that’s when you feel the sadness, saying, ‘What the hell, we’re not doing it, and we’re just not making progress at all.’ . . .
“I think change is not sad. Losing is sad. But change is not.”
Buddy Ryan, the leading candidate to replace Robinson, says he doesn’t think he would chafe under the Rams’ hard-line approach to player salaries.
“Hell, I’ve never been with a free-spending organization,” said Ryan, who was an assistant with the New York Jets, Minnesota Vikings and the Chicago Bears before serving as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1986 through last year.
“You just have to work harder and hope if you really need somebody, you can go get him.
“I’ve sat at a table with Georgia (Frontiere, the Rams’ owner), and she seemed to me like she was excited about her football team, and I like that.”
One player Ryan coyly suggested going after if he was hired: “Jim McMahon, bring him in as a backup, that’d make that quarterback (Jim Everett) straighten out.”
Ryan, who has not been yet been approached by the Rams, said that from the games he has seen the Rams play this year, there is no way the team should be 3-12.
“They’re not as bad as the team I inherited in Philadelphia,” Ryan said. “They’ve got a quarterback who two years ago could really throw and can be good again. They’ve got some talent in the defensive secondary.
“It shouldn’t take me near as long to turn them around as it did the Eagles, and we won the NFC East my third year.”
Ryan had another thought: “If I got in there, you wouldn’t hear much about the Raiders anymore. I hear they get all the talk in L.A. It’s time to put Al Davis on the back page for a change.”
Everett suggested that the way the Rams handled the announcement of Robinson’s resignation was shabby.
“There’s never ever any good way to say goodby, but as a person, I was dissatisfied that there wasn’t a representative of the Los Angeles Rams other than Coach Robinson,” he said.
“He’s been a hell of a spokesperson for this team, and he’s done a hell of a lot for our organization and our community. And for someone not standing up and giving him his due respect I believe he is truly deserving of, even though we’ve had two bad seasons, I think was disrespectful.”