The St. Louis Rams wrapped up another day of practice, the first day of practice with someone other than Jason Brown making snaps as the team's starting center. Or is it? "Center-Gate" took an interesting turn today, and it sounds like Steve Spagnuolo is waffling on his decision. Something's amiss at Rams Park.
Brown told KFNS yesterday that he was benched as the starter. The team confirmed that information. According to the initial report from Brendan Wiese, Brown was shocked by the news, and said that the team was "trying to make changes." Brown added:
As far as giving me an acceptable or good reason, they actually couldn't give me a good reason, other than that they wanted to test out some of the other guys.
Spagnuolo kind of echoed that information today in post-practice comments.
We're mixing and matching. Jason's still in there. ... If you're going to make a change at center, you can't have two centers getting all the reps. Tony's been getting a little more and Jason's been getting some work at guard.
After reading that, I have to ask, is Brown benched or not? Or is there something else going on? One of the guards benched? Hurt? Harvery Dahl has played well, and I felt like Bell has too. It's possible too that Brown has misconstrued what he was told.
According to the Rams official Twitter, Spagnuolo said a decision on who starts won't come until Sunday.
So what exactly is going on? At this point, it should come as no surprise that Spaguolo doesn't know himself what's going on with the team. Though I tend to think that benching Brown wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, you can't tell a player he's getting benched and then walk back from that 24 hours later.
Teams that have their act together, even in the midst of a rough patch, don't do this kind of stuff. If Spagnuolo is going to save his job and salvage the season, this seems like a strange step to take.
Confusion, uncertainty, a lack of clarity or certainty...unfortunately, it's becoming the new norm for this Rams team.