Coach em when they're up, Coach em when they're down

The St. Louis Rams are terrible. They are perhaps the worst team in the National Football league, with their only legit competition coming from the now Matt Millen-less Detroit Lions. The Rams are bad on both sides of the ball, but their real weakness is their defense. It's truly awful, giving up an excess of 400 yards a game and tying an all time league record with 7 consecutive games of giving up at least 30 points, a record they have a chance to break next week.

After their awful 0-4 start the Rams have decided to fire their head coach, Scott Linehan. On the one hand, this makes some sense: clearly something isn't working. A change is needed. Coaching matters in all sports, but I would argue that it matters most in football. Its not the only thing that matters: you still need talent, health and some luck. But, more than any other sport, coaching is vital in football for success. Coaches spend hundreds of hours a week on game planning, they make substitutions and adjustments constantly, and most importantly they actually call the plays on every down.

All that said, I wonder what kind of "change" is supposed to happen just by firing the head coach. Its not like these guys are just barely losing as a result of some poor decisions by Linehan. They are getting blown out because they simply aren't that good. Is firing Linehan supposed to fire up the players? Is it going to make them faster, stronger, smarter, healthier or more confident? If anything it should have a detrimental effect on them: they realize the season is lost, that they're being coached by a team of monkeys, and that they have played so poorly they got their coach fired after just 4 weeks. Sounds like a devastating combination to me, not a recipe for a turnaround.

The worst part about this is that they fired Linehan and replaced him with Jim Haslett. Who is Jim Haslett, you ask? The Rams Defensive Coordinator. That's right, the guy in charge of one of the all time worst defenses in NFL history. The defense which is their biggest problem, the thing keeping them from even being competitive in games. If anything, Haslett is MORE at fault than Linehan, because he actually sets the defensive game plan and makes the in game calls and substitutions. This is the guy who is supposed to turn things around? Good luck with that, St. Louis. But not too much luck: you're still the best thing that gamblers have going this year.