Re: Moment I knew Snead was safe...

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dzrams

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zn

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dzrams

When Snead referred to unfortunate circumstances I think he was being polite. There were several unfortunate circumstances over the years but the biggest was the inept coaching.

I think "unfortunate" is literal. It refers to non-football bad fortune like Bradford suffering 2 injuries to the same knee. That is, Demoff knows enough about football to know that NO ONE wins when they are playing without both or either a relatively healthy OL and a starting caliber qb more than 75% of the time for 5 years (2012-15). I would not trust him to be a a decent football exec if he DIDN'T realize that. I think it's something of an achievement to actually reach 7-9 under those conditions.

It's clear the Rams had talent. They had lost 2 starters in the secondary and still had good starters at DB. They had Donald. I doubt anyone in the organization ever doubted Goff. I could go on.

My read of the situation is entirely different. I'm familiar with your position and not surprised with your stance.

I believe the unfortunate reference was only partially literal. I'm sure they recognized there was some bad luck. But they went with a coaching change anyway

I actually had not commented on the coaching change. I was commenting on the overall record. On that, yes, I have a fixed position because I point to conditions that (in my view) make it impossible to win (qb + OL in only 15 iof 64 games) and also routinely ask, are there examples of anyone winning under those conditions? (I am never offered any examples.) So while I don't know how much better they would have done with more stable conditions on offense, it stands to reason they would do better.

Him getting fired in 2016 is an entirely different issue.

The team fell apart around them after being competitive for a stretch. and that happening means 2 things. One is, it's going to be hard for that coach to start over with most of the same players. The other is, the town was turning against them. Really nothing to do at that point except to move on. And btw I have not seen one single individual who regrets the firing. Given the big perfect cluster storm they had after the series of blowout losses, it was just inevitable. To me the issue is history---what is the real history? What is not really the real history>

2016 had a lot of things going on, including the move. Sometimes people don't want to account for those things but I guess that's to be expected and it doesn't do much good to fight about it all the time. But...I don't buy the version of history that seems to be the most popular.

AND I never thought Snead was ever in any jeopardy at any point, and I also think the fact that he was never in any jeopardy was a judgment on coaching from 2012-15. THAT (the record in those years) was just always going to be subjected to the forces saying, you can't have a young team and a #2 qb and constant disruption on the OL and play well on offense ....and no one can name examples that counter that.

I think it was absolutely clear all along that in spite of circumstances the team did well acquiring talent. If you look past the record you could see that all along.

You then take a new dynamic head coach, a great hall of fame coordinator, add it to that talent, revamp a couple of positions (LOT/OC & WR) and you have a young winning team.

The situation could not possibly be brighter. McVay quite simply does NOT have to rebuild, and we get to see a potentially great coach with a very talented and developing qb and so on.

Plus of course, knock on wood, their luck seems to be changing too. Going all the way back to 2006, 2017 SO FAR is the only year besides 2010 where the starting 5 OL play MOST (not all) of the snaps. This year is like that in another way too. Knock on wood, how many times since 2007 has a starting caliber qb taken the majority of the snaps? (12 games or more.) (Not counting Foles as starting caliber but that's a different issue). From 2007 onward, that has happened 4 times---2007, 2008, 2010, and 2012. In 11 years. Count this year and it's 5 in 12 years.

So one thing we can add to McVay's list of plus qualities is that on top of everything else, which is already considerable, he's also lucky. And. I'll take it.


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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2017 04:29AM by zn.