Old friend Mike Martz finding more controversy

by Ryan Van Bibber on Nov 12, 2008 10:57 AM CST in 2008 St. Louis Rams season

Here's a little deja vu for Rams fans: questions about where Mike Martz's loyalties lie, with the team or with Mike Martz.

Pundits scratched their heads when the 49ers passed over Mad Mike for the interim head coaching gig for LB coach Mike Singletary in the wake of canning Mike Nolan. And red flags were raised further at Singletary's decision to bench Martz's disastrous starting QB, J. T. O'Sullivan.

Just a matter of time, until...

In the wake of the confusion that marred the final moments of thier Monday night game against the Cardinals, a full-blown conspiracy has emerged. From our friends over at Niners Nation:

There’s been a lot of talk last night and today that Martz is trying to undermine Mike Singletary and purposely screwing things up. One person found comments from another site indicating they felt Martz was actually going out of his way to sabotage this team.

Among the more rational, Martz isn't finding much support either, with very familiar sounding talk of Martz overdoing it and/or being unprepared. Fooch at Niners Nation quickly tamps down the conspiracy nonsense, but still doesn't see Martz in SF's future. Hey, Rams fans are no strangers to the bizarre calls of Mike Martz. Good calls, bad calls, there's another controversy emerging around Mike Martz.

Welcome to the club 49ers fans.

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Week after week

I think Singletary keeps making himself look foolish. The whole thing with Davis in his first game which was preceded by the pantsless coach delivering a halftime speech to this week when his quarterback had no idea how much time was on the clock while losing 35 seconds on a spike play to not having a clue that a running play had just been called that was putting the game in the hands of their fullback and not Frank Gore.

Sure, the play call is on Martz, but as a head coach he should have done something about it. And if he didn’t know the play was called, shame on him. There was a video review right before that play so he had plenty of time to find out what play had been called.

But ultimately, he summed it up in his first game post-conference when he said he “can’t coach players that put themselves ahead of the team”. Guess what Mike, that’s gonna be about 70% of the players on your team or any other team. That’s just the way it is with NFL players. If you can’t coach them (and you said you can’t with your own words, no need to mis-interpret anything here) then you really don’t need to be a head coach.

But, I’m sure everyone thinks he doing a superb job because he’s got “that intense look in his eyes” and he yells and stomps around the sideline all game.

Our country reeks of trees. Our yaks are really large. And they smell like rotting beef carcasses. And we have to clean up after them. And our saddle sores are the best. We proudly wear women's clothing. While searing sand blows up our skirts.

And the buzzards, they soar overhead. And poisonous snakes will devour us whole. Our bones will bleach in the sun. And we will probably go to hell. And that is our great reward. For be-ing the-uh Ro-yal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen!

by Tackle Box on Nov 12, 2008 12:12 PM CST reply actions

I'm not ready to write Singletary off

I think he lacks the management skills to carry off a head coaching job, but those can be learned over time. But he has the passion and the football smarts to make it work at some point down the road. There’s nothing wrong with him that couldn’t be solved by shutting up and putting his shoulder to the work, instead of indulging himself at press conferences and pants-optional halftime speeches.

"Attaway to stomp 'em. Stomp the piss out of 'em. Stomp 'em when they're down. Kick 'em and stomp 'em. Attaway to go boys. Pound that old Budweiser into you and go get them tomorrow." -- Joe Schultz

by taiko on Nov 12, 2008 12:18 PM CST up reply actions

I saw that earlier today – I liked this quote:

Personally, the [Mike Martz] hiring excited me, but it might fall under the “shiny penny” theory of distracting people from the problems at hand.

There was also a quote from Martz about the confusion of the final seconds that made me cringe:

There was some chaos that I created on the sideline. I did a bad job there…. I just went too fast with everything and it created too much confusion. That’s my fault more than anything else…. That’s just a bad job of coaching on my part. I knew what we wanted to do. I called out two different things at the same time.

This was reminiscent of so many post-game press conferences after Rams losses. He would stand up there and say that the blame was his (usually followed by a “shoot, we’ll fix that”) but none of the core issues would ever improve. To my mind, he isn’t trying to actively sabotage his team, he’s just a terrible crunch-time decision maker. Maybe he has too many possibilities competing in his brain at once, but the output is the same as the guy who doesn’t have a clue at all.

"Attaway to stomp 'em. Stomp the piss out of 'em. Stomp 'em when they're down. Kick 'em and stomp 'em. Attaway to go boys. Pound that old Budweiser into you and go get them tomorrow." -- Joe Schultz

by taiko on Nov 12, 2008 12:15 PM CST reply actions

martz

i always felt worked best answering to a strong executive, like Dickie V. Look at his tack record post-STL and he never had that. i always felt he got by as our HC mostly b/c the team still had lots of talent in its prime

by Ryan Van Bibber on Nov 12, 2008 12:24 PM CST up reply actions

well, there were times when his scheme was so good, he could just blow people away. that was probably good for 4 or 5 wins a year, guaranteed. but he really had a poor eye for defensive or special teams talent, and couldn’t contribute much to that art of the team-building. and, as said, I think his game-management sucks in tight situations. watching him engage in the blame game again reminds me that his people skills aren’t so good either.

he’s a frustrating and fascinating case – I feel his flaws are so many and so vast, that with even his immense talent at drawing up plays, he has to be surrounded by an extraordinary set of complementary people for him to succeed… whether he recognizes that or not.

"Attaway to stomp 'em. Stomp the piss out of 'em. Stomp 'em when they're down. Kick 'em and stomp 'em. Attaway to go boys. Pound that old Budweiser into you and go get them tomorrow." -- Joe Schultz

by taiko on Nov 12, 2008 1:04 PM CST up reply actions