Rams Players Feel for Spagnuolo; COO Vows to Hire Right Coach at LinesMaker

Rams Players Feel for Spagnuolo; COO Vows to Hire Right Coach

Next year will be Chris Long’s fifth sea­son with the St. Louis Rams. The defen­sive end will play for his fourth coach in a seem­ingly end­less cycle of futility.

Hav­ing sur­vived Scott Line­han, Jim Haslett and Steve Spag­n­uolo, who knows what’s next? This time around, the Rams also are shop­ping for a gen­eral manager.

Spag­n­uolo and gen­eral man­ager Billy Devaney were both fired Mon­day, one day after the Rams wrapped up a 2–14 record that tied for the NFL’s worst.

“It’s amaz­ing how eas­ily it all could have gone the other way, and this would be a totally dif­fer­ent meet­ing at the end of the year,” Long said. “And maybe we are still play­ing. It’s a fine line between being good and bad in the NFL, and we’ve learned that over the past cou­ple of years here.”

The Rams made a six-win improve­ment last sea­son and played for the NFC West title in the sea­son finale, but were just 10–38 over­all in three sea­sons with Spag­n­uolo and Devaney call­ing the shots. Devaney joined the front office in 2008, but the Rams were 12–52 in his four years as GM.

Play­ers said Spag­n­uolo took the high road in a meet­ing Mon­day morning.

“Coach addressed the team this morn­ing to let us know that he was ter­mi­nated, and he was sorry, espe­cially for the guys that have been here the entire three years he was coach, that he didn’t get the job done,” run­ning back Steven Jack­son said. “He took full responsibility.”

Devaney offered thanks to the Rams and their fans in a state­ment posted on the team’s offi­cial site.

“I want to thank so many peo­ple for my time here in St. Louis,” Devaney said. “While cer­tainly dis­ap­pointed in our record, I wouldn’t trade that time for any­thing. This is truly a spe­cial place.”

Names of poten­tial replace­ments for Spag­n­uolo began to sur­face weeks ago as the sea­son unrav­eled. NFL Net­work insider Jason La Can­fora reported that for­mer Ten­nessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher is a lead­ing can­di­date and some­one the Rams would like to pair with a young gen­eral manager.

“Con­trary to what’s been writ­ten over the past few weeks, there are not any lead­ing can­di­dates,” Rams chief oper­at­ing offi­cer Kevin Demoff said Mon­day. “We have not spo­ken with any can­di­dates. We wanted to make sure until there was a final deci­sion on whether we were going to be mak­ing a change — which was made last night — that we weren’t going to con­tact any­body. … That’s not to say we’re not pre­pared to move for­ward in an expe­di­tious man­ner, but we will get it right.”

The Asso­ci­ated Press con­tributed to this report

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more NFL news see: Rams play­ers feel for Spag­n­uolo; COO vows to hire right coach.

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• Colts Hire Ravens DC Pagano to Replace Cald­well as Coach
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