 THE MIDDLE WAY OF SERENITY AND PEACE,
BY RAMMMED FOR LIFE (Sept 5) |
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I. WHAT IS THE
FOD? The FOD is a long-standing debate that centers on this question: Does Vermeill get credit for this season's organizational re-invention, or is he a visionless Chief Operating Officer who was TOLD what to do by the CEO (namely Shaw)? One big part of the debate is who gets credit for hiring Martz. Another is whether Armey is really pulling the strings and DV is just following along. In my view there is a lot of indisputable truth on both sides. I also think that is why the debate will not die. DV was pushed by Shaw (everyone agrees on that) and during this remarkable offseason, DV has adopted a remarkable degree of delegation and deferral. So, the question is this: is he a figure head who is riding his talented subordinates or is he a consensus builder who should get credit for enabling a complex organization to operate coherently? Either way you look at it, we will soon know the important thing: will this contraption fly? II. FIRST, A CAVEAT: Please. Offer new info or make a clear argument. We have reached the point where we have said everything that can possibly be said about who hired Martz! It's like the endlessly repetitive Banks spats last year. My judgment on the FOD is of course just that--a personal judgment. Obviously, it's not one with which everyone agree. Sometimes I see a certain type of post and it strikes me as trivial, redundant, mean-spirited, uninformative, and more interested in baiting personalities than in instructive debate. Enough already! People see this thing differently. OK. So be it. There's no mystery any more in who feels what and why. So certain posts on the FOD strike me as being examples of the law of dimishing returns; others seem alive and productive. I am not sure I can distinguish between the 2 groups with philosophical rigor. III. BUNTING'S INTERVIEW: Rams LB coach John Bunting said this--- *************************** "On whether he feared that the coaching staff would get fired after last season's 4-12 finish: `To be quite frank, I don't know that I would have given us another chance if I was the owner. I thought last season was a disaster. I say this with due respect for a man (Dick Vermeil) I love, honor, and regard. It was out of control. The direction wasn't . . . clear-cut. It was due partly to losing. Losing breeds that. And it was due partly to the fact that we had no leaders.' The Rams would not have traded RB Greg Hill to Detroit as long he was judged the top backup to Marshall Faulk. Only when the coaching staff, basically in unanimity, agreed that Robert Holcombe should be No. 2 on the depth chart ahead of Hill, was the trade made. If this trade backfires, don't lay all the blame on Vermeil. Vice president of player personnel Charley Armey, long a Holcombe booster, wasn't exactly banging the table in Hill's defense. And executive vice president Jay Zymunt, with an eye on salary cap relief minus Hill's $700,000 base salary, had no complaints once the coaching staff decided that Hill was No. 3. ************************ What does Bunting tell us? * DV WAS A DISASTER LAST YEAR! It is important to be clear on this. The whole staff was in chaos, as Bunting so frankly states. IF DV goes on to lead us back to respectability, or even glory this year, one cannot therefore revise history! Last year was a lost year, and DV bears primary responsibility for that. In a historical sense, he always will--that year cannot be redeemed as leading to this year's success (assuming we have it). I assume EVERYONE will agree on this. I imagine DV agrees with it. If he didn't he would not have so drastically re-invented himself and his staff! That missed meeting taught him a lesson--and he was willing to learn it! * This staff is clearly making decisions by consensus. It strikes me as an unusual situation. Certainly, all staffs operate this way somewhat. But I think DV is deferring to people a great deal, far more than a Parcells or Reeves or Shanahan or JJ would. But you must see that this points in 2 directions! One could draw the conclusion that DV is a weak leader. I could see justification for that. But at the same time, an article like this puts THE ENTIRE STAFF on the line for controversial decisions like the Hill trade. It's not just DV's decision. Apparently Armey still loves Holc. Again, the temptation for some might be to say, "it shouldn't be that way!" Well, that's a matter of opinion. But here is my point on this: one cannot MAINTAIN a view of this staff that says, Armey/Martz good; Vermeill bad. One especially cannot do that if one condemns the Hill trade or Justin acquisition. These guys are as deeply involved in those moves as DV was! Martz especially apparently really wants Justin, whom he coached in college, I believe. I actually think that JT's point about the STAFF BEING CONVINCED HILL WAS NO LONGER #2 is a key. Many posters have dismissed that as spin. Well, if you buy what JT says (and since he has been harsh with DV lately this exculpatory evidence would seem senseless unless it were true) then the entire staff buys into that spin. It may be spin, but they appear to believe it! (Personally, as I have said all along, I feel ambivalent about this concept of Holc as #2. The THEORY is great along the lines of the Smith/Hoard rotation. But I just have not seen enough evidence of Holc really being good enough as a TB rather than FB. What I am hoping, really, is that Watson plays the Hoard role!) To me, the bottom line is this: assuming the Ram Front Office is more democratic than most, that really is unimportant AS LONG AS IT WORKS! Are they building a good team? Well, you be the judge on that. Obviously, we'll know more a week from now and a month from now. But in my view the question of who is behind what is far less important than what decisions are being made. IV. THE POSITIVE SIDE OF BUNTING'S REMARKS. I kind of like the fact that Bunting felt free enough to come out and say what he did! Last year was a disaster. DV was largely to blame. The press has said it. The PLAYERS said it in the missed meeting. Gandy kept saying it, and he was right. Now Bunting says it. And that is amazing. Here is an Asst Coach willing to remark in a way that makes his H C look really terrible. Wow--we NEVER see that in the NFL Here's another testimony: VERMEILL SAYS IT! I'm not talking about sound bytes or quotations. DV acknowledged his failure in the best possible manner this year. His system had completely broken down. So he decided to change it. After the missed meeting, DV re-invented the coaching and scouting staff to a remarkable degree. You'd say he was pushed to do it. Perhaps. I don't care about that. He is still the HC, the system has changed dramatically, and 2 important results have occurred: * The staff put together an impressive list of accomplishments over the off season. * The players come out of camp with a very high morale and apparently a lot of confidence in themselves and in their preparation. Both are almost miraculous turnarounds from last year. To see the full significance of Bunting's remarks, you need to remember that context. Bunting speaks after 6 months of wholesale transformation. He is on the inside and his remarks reflect not only how bad last year was, but how much has changed. Do you think he would feel free to say all this if the situation were unchanged? If Bunting were in the middle of an organization that was continuing the trends of last year, he would know that it was nearing meltdown. He'd keep his head down, do his job, and polish his resume. As such, Bunting's remarks are a fascinating reflection that really does seem unprecedented. And the uniqueness is not all bad. Here is an organization that has had the self-awareness to recognize its mistakes and radically transform itself. I have heard of that sort of thing in industry, though not often. Iaccoca did it to a moribund Chrysler Corp, for example. But I cannot think of a single trqansformation in the NFL that occurred in the middle of a coach's tenure. Most of them stay on their idiosyncratic track until it either succeeds of fails. If DV had done that, training camp this year would have been unimaginably bad. He simply would not have survived it. So he changed--or allowed people to change, or whatever. The organization changed, at least in Vermeil's sector (I don't imagine Shaw or Georgia or Zygmunt have changed much). A process like that MUST begin with a brutally frank self-assessment, the sort of thing that Bunting's remarks indicate. Yes, it is weird. You'd never see Parcels doing or permitting this, or Shanahan, or Holmgren or virtually anyone else. But that doesn't bother me. Because although I respect Parcels, I don't necessarily feel his is the only model for success. His approach is pretty different from that of Marv Levy or Joe Gibbs or Bill Walsh. As different as this approach of Vermeill's? Maybe not. By NFL standards, Vermeill's current organizational approach is strikingly unusual, perhaps unique. He has delegated EVERYTHING. The Mike White role seems to me quite simply unprecedented, and it was NECESSITATED by Vermeill's weird, compulsive personality. DV needed White to run his camp for him because he could not trust himself to run it! That sounds bad, doesn't it? Or does it? What's worse: having a weakness that requires delegation or refusing to SEE your weakness and doing it yourself on a quick trip to disaster? If Wannstedt had been able to see that he was a lousy evaluator of personnel, he might have been successful as the Bears' coach. So some see Bunting daring to criticize his coach and think, "Oh my God, what a weakling. Not only does he screw up last year, but he then lets his subordinates go around and talk about it!" I hear Bunting's words and think, "Wow, that's pretty neat! Here is a subordinate who feels free to tell the truth about last year. Here is an organizational culture that cultivates awareness of past failure. Here is a group that is willing to deal with its problems and make necessary changes. I like that!" So, yeah, I like the Bunting remark. I like the fact that my team's staff is capable of that degree of candor. Since Vermeill remains our coach (I wanted him gone in early Jan!) I am glad the organization is like that because it has allowed them to get their act together. I think that the TEAMWORK that is permeating the organization from front office to coaches to players just may turn out to be stronger, more stable than Parcels' autocratic instability. (I can see being a Parcels fan, but it's pretty tough to be a fan of one of the teams he has left in his dust!) V. HOW IMPORTANT IS THE FOD REALLY? It has some importance. I believe the discussion of the Front Office can be healthy and instructive--AS LONG AS WE KEEP MOVING FORWARD! That's actually what I am trying to do here. If we discuss Justin and Holcombe and Watson and how the staff came to make those decisions, we move forward. That's worth doing. I just cannot deal any more with who hired Martz! That's ancient news and I have not heard anything new on that in months. So let's keep our eyes on the ball, so to speak. Where are we CURRENTLY GOING with this organization? But in the end it may not be that important. Now, I don't think Old Hacker is right about DV being fired early in the year if the team dies. But essentially, Old Hack is right: by about Week 7-8 we will know his fate. And when we know that, the FOD will cease to be primarily relevant. The next month or so will decide a lot. And always remember. If the Rams survive in a viable way, the issue will fade away. If they collapse, DV will be caught up in the maelstrom, and these issues will be lost in the deluge. |
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