In the first of a long and bloody parade of day-after coaching exits, the St Louis Rams (and by “the Rams” I mean owner Stan Kroenke) have decided to completely clean house by firing Coach Steve Spagnuolo and GM Billy Devaney.
You can praise the effort that Spagnuolo’s team gave until the end, and you can shake Mr. Devaney by the hand for leading a complete franchise rebuild, finding some foundation players (James Laurinaitis, Chris Long), a few diamonds in the rough (Danny Amendola, Darian Stewart) and installing a quarterback of the future. But the progress the team made in 2010 also helped write their epitaph on the first business day of 2012.
Inscribed on their tombstone: “Failed to deliver a winning season with Sam Bradford.”
In fact, the Rams took so many steps backward in 2011, falling from 7-9 to 2-14 and back into the basement of the NFC West and doing so with a roster made up of one-year free agent solutions that leaves more holes than filled positions for the next season, that Kroenke really had no other choice than to swing his axe.
This news has been in the wind for the last 18 hours, thanks to a source that tipped off ESPN’s Chris Mortensen. In a weird twist, Rams beat reporter (and former front office man) Tony Softli suggests that it may have been Devaney himself that leaked the news.
Spagnuolo immediately becomes a very hirable prospect, as a defensive coordinator, with fan bases in New York and Philadelphia clamoring for his return. Devaney’s path will probably take him someplace quieter. But for the Rams themselves, much has yet to be settled, including where they might be playing their home games in 2015.
