The Space in Between

 Well, the good thing about a bye week is that we can't lose.  Seriously, though, we couldn't have fired Linehan at any other time.  Two weeks ago, in a post-Seahawks diary, I wrote:

Regardless of what happens against Buffalo next week, by the morning of Monday, September 29th, I expect to have a new GM and new head coach for the Rams.  It will give the pair a bye week to get their philosphies ingrained into the team.  I'll get to that more as this week and next week go by, but it's time to end the Linehan era immediately after the Bills game.

 Well, half of that has been official and the other half, not so much.  There are rumblings that Shaw will take over more of the personnel duties while Zygmunt slides back into his cap-manager role.  In Van's report on the Linehan departure, he linked us to a STL Dispatch story (here) which ended with this confusing quote:

Zygmunt will stay for the remainder of the season as GM. After the season, changes will be made to the team's management structure.

If the state of the current team merits firing the coach but not the GM, you have to wonder what kind of referendum this is.  It almost suggests that a better coach could succeed with this team.  I would disagree.  Do we have the personnel on defense to be able to stop key drives?  Do we have the talent defensively to bust up the run and cover the pass?  If you answer yes, then keeping the GM and bringing in a coach who can maximize the talent and potential of that personnel is warranted.   However, if, like me, you disagree (vehemently), then what is the point of keeping the management structure in place now?  Why not shake it up as we did the coaching structure through the bye week?

I'm so confused by the moves the front office makes, it's almost sickening.  Look at the Fakhir Brown situation.  Why was he let go?  Dropping someone from the team is a front office move.  Benching him, however, would have been a coaching move.  If Linehan wanted to keep Brown off the field, then park his ass on the bench, but for the office to let him go and then a couple days later go crawling back to him shows how utterly pathetic our management is.

Yes, Linehan was unsuccessful as a head coach, but what real chance did the office give him?  Joe Klopfenstein?  La'Roi Glover?  Drew Bennett?!  Until ownership puts people in positions of authority at the management level who can spot above-average football players, we're going to be stuck in the space between success and failure.