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 by moklerman
5 years 10 months ago
 Total posts:   7680  
 Joined:  Apr 17 2015
United States of America   Bakersfield, CA
Hall of Fame

/zn/ wrote:Well to be fair Robinson deliberately hired Zampese to do exactly what Zampese did do. That was a calculated choice. They moved on from being a Dickerson team without a qb to being an Everett team built around the passing game. That is what Robinson deliberately set out to do.

So in 88 they were 3rd in total offense, 3rd in passing yards, and 3rd in yards per attempt; and in 89 they were 4th in total offense, 4th in passing yards and 2nd in yards per attempt.

Robinson did not just "adapt." He made a deliberate effort to change the offense around in order to take advantage of Everett.

IMO the big difference was not having a qb (83-86) and having a qb (87-91).

BTW Martz credits Zampese for teaching him the Coryell offense. Martz was an assistant under EZ with the Rams from 92-93 though that was with Knox as the HC.

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I think you're getting hung up on semantics. Robinson did make changes but IMO, it was never really "his" way. He just got dragged into the modern NFL, kicking and screaming if I had to guess.

It's really too bad that the timing was what it was. They peaked in '89 and really looked to be on the cusp but that's when Georgia started gutting the roster in preparation for moving.

 by /zn/
5 years 10 months ago
 Total posts:   6758  
 Joined:  Jun 28 2015
United States of America   Maine
Hall of Fame

moklerman wrote:I think you're getting hung up on semantics. Robinson did make changes but IMO, it was never really "his" way.


I can't mindread Robinson but I do know that when he had a qb but no Dickerson he hired Zampese and they went 21-11 in 88/89 with a top 5 offense. In addition Ellard had 2700+ yards and 18 TDs in those 2 years. And he never kicked or screamed about it that I saw. Just hired Zampese, and boom. Robinson's failure IMO was that he could not draft.

...


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 by Elvis
5 years 10 months ago
 Total posts:   38381  
 Joined:  Mar 28 2015
United States of America   Los Angeles
Administrator

Point of fact: The Rams had Dickerson and Everett when Robinson hired Zampese.

I'm really not sure the semantic distinction of the word "adapted" but good on Robinson for hiring Ernie and good on Vermeil for hiring Martz. They were both extremely smart and timely hires.

Unfortunately, another one of our head coaches did not make an equally appropriate adaptation.

But that brought us Sean McVay who appears to be in the right place at the right time as far as his coaching abilities and philosophies go...

 by /zn/
5 years 10 months ago
 Total posts:   6758  
 Joined:  Jun 28 2015
United States of America   Maine
Hall of Fame

Elvis wrote:Point of fact: The Rams had Dickerson and Everett when Robinson hired Zampese.

I'm really not sure the semantic distinction of the word adapted but good on Robinson for hiring Ernie and good on Vermeil for hiring Martz.
.


This is all interesting (and thanks for the correction on when EZ got hired). But just for the sake of conversation, there are differences here.

Robinson knew exactly what he was getting with Zampese--the Coryell offense fresh from San Diego, and it represented a deliberate change in emphasis. As recently as 85 the Chargers, with EZ as the coordinator, were 1st on offense and 1st in passing yards, attempts, TDs, and yards per attempt.

Vermeil didn't change philosophies that way. He dropped a coordinator who was already in trouble with him as early as August 98 (Rhome). In fact in 98 DV took over the playcalling for a bit. So Rhome was the issue--but his system wasn't. Rhome already ran a Coryell offense. In fact that was one of the reasons DV said he hired Martz---his other candidate (Cavanagh, now the coordinator in Washington) ran a WCO and with Martz they would not have to switch systems. Either way DV had affinities with the Coryell approach. In fact when he coached the Eagles DV's qb coach was Sid Gillman, the father of the Coryell system--and in the Eagles superbowl year they were 7th in passing and 8th on offense. DV was a guy who favored balance on offense but what Martz then did was not a huge departure for him, it was just another step down a path. Though no one really knew what they were getting in 99 with Martz---Martz unlike Zampese was a relative unknown and it was not at all obvious in advance that he would be running an aggressive system.

Short version. When Robinson hired Zampese it was a deliberate change in approach. When DV hired Martz there was much more continuity there with what DV had been before.

 by Elvis
5 years 10 months ago
 Total posts:   38381  
 Joined:  Mar 28 2015
United States of America   Los Angeles
Administrator

/zn/ wrote:Short version. When Robinson hired Zampese it was a deliberate change in approach. When DV hired Martz there was much more continuity there with what DV had been before.


New OC, new QB, new RB (all from outside the organization), what was it 8 new starters from '98 to '99? The last word i'd use to describe what happened to the Rams offense is "continuity." It was a much needed radical change, even if some of the verbiage was the same.

Vermeil said as much himself. He changed. He adapted:

WHEN HE LOOKS TODAY AT the man who gave him the break he needed in pro football, Herman Edwards sees the same inspirational, caring, organizational coach he knew when the Philadelphia Eagles advanced to the Super Bowl in the 1980 season. But there are other times when Edwards, now the head coach of the New York Jets, jokingly says he barely recognizes the "new" Dick Vermeil.

When he played for the Eagles, Edwards knew Vermeil to be, as offensive guru Sid Gillman once described him, "the most defensive-minded offense guy" he'd ever known. "He wasn't going to turn the ball over on offense," says Edwards, an undrafted defensive back who spent 1977 to '82 with Vermeil. "He was going to protect the ball, he was going to run, run, run with that UCLA mentality of the time, and he wanted a strong defense. But that was the league back then. If you used three receivers in those days, people said, `Woah, what's this?' That was the Stone Age!"

Welcome to the Space Age.

It wasn't enough that Vermeil's 1999 St. Louis Rams posted offensive numbers that earned them the nickname "The Greatest Show on Turf," to say nothing of their first Super Bowl title. No, Vermeil felt compelled to end his retirement after just one year to attempt a similar offensive transformation of a Kansas City Chiefs franchise that prospered for much of the 1990s but never won a truly meaningful game with its defense-first philosophy.

"Times have changed. My thinking has been influenced by being around coaches who've been successful, by working with Mike Martz and Al Saunders," Vermeil says, referring to the men who ran his Rams offense. "You see the really good offensive teams, with the exception of the Ravens [in 2000], winning Super Bowls.

"There was a time in my coaching career when the No. 1 thing I tried to do was prevent us from losing. But it's just hard to play perfect football in the playoffs when one play gets you beat. My thoughts have become, `Yeah, you're going to make some mistakes. But when you create enough good plays that put you ahead, the one bad play doesn't get you beat.'"

That win-with-offense mentality is on full display in Vermeil's second season in Kansas City. The Chiefs are all but certain to obliterate the franchise record for points scored in a season--448 in 1966--and have an opportunity to finish 2002 as the top-ranked team in the league in total offense.

Talk about a new era. ...


BTW, not sure i can find this article online anymore. I think it was called "Not Your Father's Chiefs," or something like that...

 by /zn/
5 years 10 months ago
 Total posts:   6758  
 Joined:  Jun 28 2015
United States of America   Maine
Hall of Fame

Elvis wrote:New OC, new QB, new RB (all from outside the organization), what was it 8 new starters from '98 to '99? The last word i'd use to describe what happened to the Rams offense is "continuity." It was a much needed radical change, even if some of the verbiage was the same.


Naw, DV did not go through the kind of complete shift Robinson did when he hired EZ. It was a completely different thing with DV. He just took another step but it was on the same path.

And the continuity was with his previous approach to offensive football. I wasn't talking about personnel.

So I didn't say the team itself had continuity in personnel. 99 was the 3rd year of a 3 year rebuild, and when 99 season started they had 6 players on the entire team that were there before 97. There's nothing "continuous" about that (and no one said there was). And there was still work to do--before the 99 off-season, they had no back and they didn't believe their qb would develop. So they fixed those things. They also reaped the benefits of all the personnel work they did in 98.

But either way all that has nothing to do with what I was saying about DV's offensive philosophy.

 by PARAM
5 years 10 months ago
 Total posts:   12186  
 Joined:  Jul 15 2015
Barbados   Just far enough North of Philadelphia
Hall of Fame

Elvis wrote:New OC, new QB, new RB (all from outside the organization), what was it 8 new starters from '98 to '99? The last word i'd use to describe what happened to the Rams offense is "continuity." It was a much needed radical change, even if some of the verbiage was the same.

Vermeil said as much himself. He changed. He adapted:


Also there was some addition by subtraction. Tony Banks was gone as was Eddie Kennison.

 by Elvis
5 years 10 months ago
 Total posts:   38381  
 Joined:  Mar 28 2015
United States of America   Los Angeles
Administrator

/zn/ wrote:And the continuity was with his previous approach to offensive football.


Vermeil himself said he changed his approach to offensive football while with the Rams. You don't find him credible?

And anyone who was watching could see how different the offense was, philosophically, in '99.

I remember an early report (training camp i think) in '99 where, after catching a TD, Bruce was quoted as saying something like, "now that's an NFL offense."

It was apparent to pretty much everyone and Vermeil said as much himself...

 by /zn/
5 years 10 months ago
 Total posts:   6758  
 Joined:  Jun 28 2015
United States of America   Maine
Hall of Fame

Elvis wrote:Vermeil himself said he changed his approach to offensive football while with the Rams. You don't find him credible?

And anyone who was watching could see how different the offense was, philosophically, in '99.

I remember an early report (training camp i think) in '99 where, after catching a TD, Bruce was quoted as saying something like, "now that's an NFL offense."

It was apparent to pretty much everyone and Vermeil said as much himself...


No I find that comment to be taken out of context. If we are thinking about the same comment, an exact quotation would reveal what he was talking about was taking risks in certain situations, like throwing deep from your own redzone, not about offensive football in general or taking good advantage of top passing talent (again, Eagles in 1980 were 8th in offense, 7th in passing yards, and 3rd in yards per attempt...and in 80 and 81, 5th and 6th in points respectively). We have DV miked up in the superbowl telling Martz to keep throwing against single coverage because it was like stealing. And so on.

And Bruce like Vermeil had every right to see the limitations of Banks in 98 and of an offense that featured June Henley. Though he would also know that the main reason they were bad that year was personnel.

Robinson hiring EZ was a complete departure, night and day. DV hiring Martz wasn't. That was a change but just not night and day. The 2 situations were just not equivalent things.

We just see this entire thing differently.

...

 by /zn/
5 years 10 months ago
 Total posts:   6758  
 Joined:  Jun 28 2015
United States of America   Maine
Hall of Fame

Sports, #ross tucker, #ross tucker football podcast

Former NFL Quarterback Dan Orlovsky talks about his recent experience with the LA Rams including his thoughts on HC Sean McVay & Jared Goff. Dan & Ross also discuss Alex Smith, Kirk Cousins, and Nick Foles.


Orlovksy starts at about 3:20 in and begins by answering questions about the Rams. He then discusses other things

https://www.spreaker.com/user/8430262/r ... n-orlovsky

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44 posts Mar 29 2024