Will Brian Schottenheimer Be Successful With The Rams?

"One man's trash is another mans treasure". Hopefully that saying rings true for the Rams new offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer.

Brian didn't have the best career with the New York Jets and our friends at Ganggreennation.com, had a lot of nice things to say about their old offensive coordinator.

They voted to have a holiday celebrating his departure, and if that doesn't say I love you how about letting Brian Schottenheimer go being the best offseason move by the Jets?

I never payed much attention to the Jets, but John B, from Ganggreennation.com had a lot of information on Brian, in his number one offseason move by the Jets article.

The numbers speak for themselves. In his six years as offensive coordinator, 61% of teams in the league had more productive offenses than the Jets. Schottenheimer worked under two head coaches. He had four starting quarterbacks. He had rosters with different skillsets. It never worked for him over any extended stretch.

In Brian's defense though, he didn't have great quarterbacks to work with during his tenure with the Jets, unless you think Chad Pennington, Kellen Clemons, an aging Brett Favre, and Jets current starter Mark Sanchez. However John B does have an excellent point.

What might be most telling is the "proof" many of his defenders use of his ability. They say the offense was productive the first three quarters of 2008 when Brett Favre was healthy. If this is the best evidence of his ability, the case is closed. Failing for five and a quarter years and producing when given one of the greatest quarterbacks ever doesn't make a great offensive coach.

Honestly, I don't know how to feel about Brian Schottenheimer as new offensive coordinator.. He will be bringing a system which resembles the offense that helped Sam Bradford succeed. However his track record isn't great, the Jets were ranked 25th last season, which is better than the Rams 31st rank, but still not that impressive.

Here's one more quote from John B, talking about the play calling.

The play calling was frequently nonsensical. Take the home game against the Patriots in 2011. There was one stretch where the Jets ran it three straight times for 18 combined yards. What did Schottenheimer do the next play? He went shotgun, five wide. It resulted in a sack. The call defied logic. A good coach exploits things in his favor. In this case, his running game was blowing the other team away. He could have kept it on the ground. He could have called a play action pass, gotten the safeties to bite, and given his receivers a favorable matchup. This was all on the table. Instead, he threw these advantages away and abandoned any pretense of a run. Even if that play had worked, it would not have been about the call. Coaches don't deserve credit for throwing darts at a board. The sad thing is I could have substituted about 200 similar stories over Schottenheimer's tenure for this one to explain how frustrating his offense was to watch. He just did not understand how to play to his advantages.

Honestly, I wasn't a big fan of adding Brian to the team, then shortly after the Rams hire him you hear Rex Ryan saying he didn't get involved with the offense,because the verbiage was too much.

What took the cake for me, is how difficult his playbook is supposed to be. I mean it has to be real difficult if the offensive line is bad because of it, and even if that's not true, Jets running back Joe McKnight, decided to speak on Brian

"It just had so much stuff in the offense," McKnight said about Schottenheimer's system. "If the defense comes out and they line up one way we had to change the way we run our routes the other way, but when Sparano came we just run the routes. No changes, just go out and play football.

Not only did Rex Ryan kind of throw him under the bus, now the offensive players decided to have their say.

Everybody had a sigh of relief when we didn't have the same amount of plays we had last year, we had a lot of plays and a lot of things that go with the plays and right now it's just the play is here, you just go out and run the play and you win your matchup."

Going off of the example that John B gave us about the Patriots game last season.

"Sometimes, we didn't run the ball a lot when we should have (last year)," McKnight said. "But that's just the learning curve for us to work on this year."

Things should be different with Jeff Fisher over Brian, but how different? It's hard to tell right now. Sam Bradford will give Brian a young quarterback with high potential to work with. The Rams have a lot of "green players", compared to the vets on the Jets roster, so it will be a challenge. Right now the hope has to be getting the run game going, and hoping that Danny Amendola and Lance Kendricks, become dependable check downs for Bradford.

The Jets was Brian's first job as an offensive coordinator, all coaches don't have great first jobs, which is usually why they land with another team. Hopefully Brian learned from his time with the Jets, and his time with the St. Louis Rams be more profitable.