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. The best scenario in the Gateway City was under Dick Vermeil, who had Charley Armey as General Manager in title, but had final say over personnel, however, Vermeil had the ability to follow the direction of Armey and other scouts, whereas, Mike Martz let his ego get in the way and that is what led to his demise. It's too bad that Armey was not given the final authority,
I agree with a lot of what you say in that post except here, I see it differently.
You're right that Vermeil had final say and a lot of the drafting was strictly him---Armey produced info. Once, and only once, Armey went over Vermeil's head and appealed to Shaw, who made the choice. That pick was Holt. Vermeil wanted Bailey. Mostly, though, that was Vermeil.
In terms of what happened next, Armey was simply not as good without Vermeil. In fact he regressed. Jacoby Shepherd for example was an Armey pick. It is true that Martz and Armey fell out and Martz was not much better than Armey. But the real problem was that BOTH were bad without Vermeil. In fact, after a certain point, the draft went back to being Armey's. That was 2005 and it was one of the worst drafts the Rams had. To this day Armey says the pick he gets most criticized for was Incognito. Armey had a big hand in 2006 too and as we know that was a disaster. Those 2 drafts combined yielded guys like Barron, Incognito, Terrell, Byrd, and Wroten---kind of a who;s who of Rams knuckleheads.
So IMO the real problem was that NEITHER Armey nor Martz was very good at drafting without Vermeil.
In terms of structure, in the Martz years Shaw gave Zygmunt, Armey, and Martz equal say and they had to vote to decide things. For a long stint there Martz and Zygment simply froze Armey out. But then as I said, when Armey got back in the driver's seat, he really wasn't any better than Martz.
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