The St. Louis Post-Disaptch has an update on new Rams head coach Steve Sapgnuolo's effort to round his coaching staff. With the new offensive and defensive coordinators in place, Spags is working on finding the assistants and position coaches.
Names on the rumor list include: Browns D-line coach Randy Melvin for the same job with the Rams; Bill Muir, the recently fired Tampa Bay offensive coordinator/offensive line coach, for the Rams O-line coach; and Paul Ferraro, the Vikings special teams coach, for the Rams linebackers coach.
Interesting to note that Spagnuolo is starting with coaches for three areas where the Rams really struggled. Coincidence?
Muir is a 31 year NFL veteran, and considered an expert with the offensive line. He spent 11 years with the Bucs, getting canned in this month's house cleaning that put John Gruden on the street. There were whispers that some high profile players had much to do with the coaching changes in Tampa, but take that for what it's worth. With that much service time in the NFL, Muir clearly knows his trade. Based on his track record with Tampa, this can be interpreted that the Rams are serious about making the running game the starting point for the offense. The Bucs scrubbed their web page already, but here's the Google cached version of Muir's bio page.
Randy Melvin was the Patriots D-line coach when they won the Super Bowl in 2001. Yeah, remember that one?
Spags figures to have a pretty prominent role in building the defense, so he's got some leway in the position coaching hires for that side of the ball.
Paul Frerraro unfortunately comes to the Rams after a rough season for the league-worst Vikings special teams. He wasn't a popular guy with Vikings fans. Much of that, though, had to do with the absence of Heath Farwell, the Vkies' special teams player of the year in '06 and '07, who missed all season with a knee injury he suffered in the preseason.