NFC West rookie grades: Rams, Cardinals collected best talent

Bucky Brooks

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000635928/article/nfc-west-rookie-grades-rams-cardinals-collected-best-talent

The 2015 NFL season is in the books — and now it’s time to turn toward the 2016 NFL Draft. Before the NFL Scouting Combine shines the spotlight on the next crop of incoming talent, Bucky Brooks is taking a division-by-division look back at each NFL team’s 2015 rookie class, providing grades and highlighting what teams should be focusing on when they head to Indianapolis.

Arizona Cardinals
Round 1 (No. 24 overall): D.J. Humphries, offensive tackle
Round 2 (No. 58 overall): Markus Golden, outside linebacker
Round 3 (No. 86 overall): David Johnson, running back
Round 4 (No. 116 overall): Rodney Gunter, defensive tackle
Round 5 (No. 158 overall): Shaquille Riddick, outside linebacker
Round 5 (No. 159 overall): J.J. Nelson, wide receiver
Round 7 (No. 256 overall): Gerald Christian, tight end

The Cardinals have emerged as a heavyweight in the NFC behind a talent-laden roster loaded with young playmakers. The “Birdgang” will remain among the NFL’s elite with a rookie class that showed tremendous promise throughout the season. David Johnson is an impressive all-purpose RB1 with the size, strength and speed to deliver explosive plays as a runner or receiver. He amassed over 1,000 scrimmage yards — and really delivered the goods as the Cardinals’ feature back down the stretch of the season. J.J. Nelson flashed big-play ability as a deep threat on the perimeter. Although he only snagged 11 receptions during the regular season, seven of those grabs went for 20-plus yards, showing a glimpse of his impact potential. Markus Golden was a nice find as an energetic pass rusher off the edge. He not only has a knack for getting home (four sacks, to go along with two forced fumbles), but he plays with a relentless spirit that energizes the unit. D.J. Humphries failed to make a positive impression as a rookie, but he remains a talented prospect with immense potential. Grade: B+

Combine focus: The Cardinals’ defense needs to replenish the active rushers along the front line, something they could do with the No. 29 pick in the draft.. Thus, the team likely will spend much of the combine visiting with the likes of Eastern Kentucky’s Noah Spence, Georgia’s Leonard Floyd, Utah State’s Kyler Fackrell and Boise State’s Kamalei Correa to see if they can fill roles as edge rushers. The Cardinals also could study Clemson’s Kevin Dodd and Oregon’s DeForest Buckner to project their potential as five-techniques in Arizona’s 3-4 scheme.

Los Angeles Rams
Round 1 (No. 10 overall): Todd Gurley, running back
Round 2 (No. 57 overall): Rob Havenstein, offensive tackle
Round 3 (No. 72 overall): Jamon Brown, offensive lineman
Round 3 (No. 89 overall): Sean Mannion, quarterback
Round 4 (No. 119 overall): Andrew Donnal, offensive lineman
Round 6 (No. 201 overall): Bud Sasser, wide receiver
Round 6 (No. 215 overall): Cody Wichmann, offensive guard
Round 7 (No. 224 overall): Bryce Hager, linebacker
Round 7 (No. 227 overall): Martin Ifedi, defensive end

Beyond obvious shortcomings at quarterback, the Rams have assembled a talented collection of players on both sides of the ball during the Jeff Fisher era. The franchise continued to add quality youngsters in 2015, with blue-chipper Todd Gurley headlining a productive rookie class that made immediate contributions in Year 1. The Offensive Rookie of the Year rushed for over 1,100 yards in just 13 games (12 starts), displaying the balance, body control and explosiveness to take it the distance from anywhere on the field. Rob Havenstein, Jamon Brown and Cody Wichmann anchored an offensive line that paved the way for Gurley’s dominance between the tackles. Andrew Donnal also contributed as a valuable backup/spot starter during the season. With the Rams getting key production from a number of first-year players, the future looks bright for the Rams. Grade: A-

Combine focus: The Rams, who hold the 15th overall pick, are a quarterback away from joining the title contenders in the NFC. The team desperately needs a proven playmaker at the game’s most important position, which will lead Fisher and general manager Les Snead to spend countless hours studying North Dakota State’s Carson Wentz, Cal’s Jared Goff and Memphis’ Paxton Lynch to assess their potential as franchise signal callers. Despite an annual investment in the wide receiver position, the Rams still need a dominant playmaker on the edge to complement Tavon Austin. Mississippi’s Laquon Treadwell, Baylor’s Corey Coleman, TCU’s Josh Doctson and Ohio State’s Michael Thomas could be in the team’s crosshairs based on their potential as WR1s.

San Francisco 49ers
Round 1 (No. 17 overall): Arik Armstead, defensive lineman
Round 2 (No. 46 overall): Jaquiski Tartt, safety
Round 3 (No. 79 overall): Eli Harold, outside linebacker
Round 4 (No. 117 overall): Blake Bell, tight end
Round 4 (No. 126 overall): Mike Davis, running back
Round 4 (No. 132 overall): DeAndre Smelter, wide receiver
Round 5 (No. 165 overall): Bradley Pinion, punter
Round 6 (No. 190 overall): Ian Silberman, offensive guard
Round 7 (No. 244 overall): Trenton Brown, offensive lineman
Round 7 (No. 254 overall): Rory “Busta” Anderson, tight end

The rapid decline of the 49ers has been staggering. The team just has lost too much talent — in addition to an exceptional head coach — to compete in one of the toughest divisions in football. The Niners saw a ton of veteran leadership walk out the door prior to last season (see: Patrick Willis, Justin Smith and Frank Gore), and San Francisco didn’t get enough help from its rookie class to make up the difference. (An impossible task, really.) Still, there are some things to be excited about going forward. Arik Armstead made tremendous strides as a rookie despite only logging one start. He could grow into a solid plugger along the interior. Jaquiski Tartt made contributions on the second level as a designated thumper between the hashes. The 49ers should be encouraged by the flashes displayed by Mike Davis and Blake Bell in spot duty — the young offensive playmakers should contribute as rotational guys going forward. Grade: C+

Combine focus: San Francisco owns the No. 7 overall pick in the draft. With Chip Kelly coming on board, it remains to be seen what the 49ers’ new coach thinks of the two QBs who started games last year (Colin Kaepernick and Blaine Gabbert). The new coaching staff could set its sights on a young QB prospect to build around. Cal’s Jared Goff, North Dakota State’s Carson Wentz and Memphis’ Paxton Lynch could get extended looks at the combine, based on their talent and experience directing spread offenses in college. The 49ers are also in need of more speed at wide receiver, which makes Baylor’s Corey Coleman, Notre Dame’s Will Fuller, Ohio State’s Braxton Miller and Colorado State’s Rashard Higgins worthy of inspection from the team’s coaches and scouts.

Seattle Seahawks
Round 2 (No. 63 overall): Frank Clark, defensive end
Round 3 (No. 69 overall): Tyler Lockett, wide receiver/returner
Round 4 (No. 130 overall): Terry Poole, offensive lineman
Round 4 (No. 134 overall): Mark Glowinski, offensive guard
Round 5 (No. 170 overall): Tye Smith, cornerback
Round 6 (No. 209 overall): Obum Gwacham, defensive end
Round 6 (No. 214 overall): Kristjan Sokoli, offensive guard
Round 7 (No. 248 overall): Ryan Murphy, defensive back

Seattle has done a great job of developing young players in the Pete Carroll era. The Seahawks have not only helped mid-to-late-round selections play at a high level, but they also have gotten exceptional performances from some of their UDFAs (undrafted free agents) in recent years. The Seahawks might’ve stumbled upon Beast Mode 2.0 in Thomas Rawls. The undrafted free agent tallied four 100-yard games (including one 200-yard effort) and showed team officials he was a capable workhorse runner. How well he recovers from his season-ending ankle injury could determine whether the Seahawks continue to invest in the position. Among the 2015 draftees, Tyler Lockett and Frank Clark played like seasoned vets in their respective roles. Lockett, in particular, displayed outstanding skills as a receiver/returner on the way to scoring eight total touchdowns (six receptions, one punt return and one kick return) during his rookie campaign. He looks like a natural WR2 opposite Doug Baldwin, which should encourage Carroll to carve out a bigger role for Lockett in Year 2. Clark is an energetic edge defender with a non-stop motor and explosive rush skills. He finished with three sacks and showed a knack for getting home off the edge. With more playing time, he should blossom as a DPR1 (designated pass rusher) in the Seahawks’ aggressive scheme. Grade: B+

Combine focus: Lynch’s retirement forces Seattle to reassess the state of the backfield. As mentioned above, the Seahawks got promising returns from Rawls in Year 1, but they’ll have to see how he recovers from injury — and honestly, they’re not going to make him the unquestioned RB1 after a solid half-season of work. This draft class offers plenty of attractive options for Seattle at running back — guys like Ohio State’s Ezekiel Elliott, Alabama’s Derrick Henry and Arkansas’ Alex Collins fit the franchise’s mold as rugged inside runners with soft hands in the passing game. Carroll will pay close attention to their combine workouts to determine if they have the ability to contribute immediately in a revamped offensive scheme that will put more responsibility on Russell Wilson’s shoulders in 2016. Meanwhile, Russell Okung is a free agent, which makes offensive tackle a huge priority for the team (which holds the No. 26 pick, by the way). Mississippi’s Laremy Tunsil, Michigan State’s Jack Conklin, Notre Dame’s Ronnie Stanley and Ohio State’s Taylor Decker will all get long looks, but their workouts on the field turf could determine whether the Seahawks view them as ideal fits at left tackle.

Grubman ‘insulted’ by Rams job rumor

Jim Thomas

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football/professional/grubman-insulted-by-rams-job-rumor/article_8461ff54-e613-5e09-96c0-3d6489a65c35.html

On a January day full of rumors, it was one of the juiciest of the bunch. Namely, that NFL executive Eric Grubman, the league’s point man for relocation to Los Angeles, would end up with a high-ranking position with owner Stan Kroenke’s Rams on the West Coast.

For those who suspected Grubman had been pro-Kroenke and pro-LA all along, it fit the narrative. This all took place Jan. 12 in Houston, the day league owners approved the relocation of the Rams from St. Louis to Los Angeles.

The Post-Dispatch caught up with Grubman in San Francisco following NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s state of the NFL news conference on Feb. 5. He strongly denied the Rams job rumor.

“It couldn’t be further from the truth,” Grubman said. “I was personally insulted by that. I don’t like that implication or insinuation. It could not be further from the truth.”

Grubman made those remarks standing in the same hotel ballroom where minutes earlier Goodell had answered questions for about 45 minutes. But only two of those questions dealt with St. Louis, a city once again on the outside looking in when it comes to the NFL. Perhaps Grubman could fill in some blanks.

Looking back on the failed task force effort to keep the Rams from leaving, Grubman was asked what went wrong in St. Louis.

“I think that St. Louis could have done a few things differently, which may not have been in their control,” Grubman said. “But I think when the county dropped out, the project that they envisioned at the beginning of the task force process really changed. And the county dropped out because as I understand — a public vote.”

Referring to the NFL, Grubman added: “We weren’t afraid of a public vote. And in some respects we think that could’ve validated what the people really thought, could’ve brought the county back in. So the project changed and they spent months trying to bring it back to that original vision, and they couldn’t.”

Last March, St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger told Gov. Jay Nixon that the county couldn’t provide support for a stadium without a vote. Nixon then let it be known that the project was moving forward without the county.

“The measurement standard in my mind was never any one owner, was never the commissioner, was never Eric Grubman, it was other owners,” Grubman continued.

“And the standard in the early going was less about how are the owners gonna vote. It was whether in their minds, could they see themselves playing in that stadium. And if they could, (St. Louis) had a really great chance. And if they couldn’t, (St, Louis) had a really bad chance.

“And that to me is what happened.”

Grubman also attempted to clear up the confusion of making $300 million in league funding available to owners Mark Davis in Oakland and Dean Spanos in San Diego. But telling task force co-chair Dave Peacock that giving the so-called extra $100 million in stadium funding for the St. Louis project — or $300 million total — was “fundamentally inconsistent” with league policy.

The $300 million, Grubman said, was available only “if offered to the owner to put together a proposal that the owner was in favor of. Not to a city to put in front of the owner. That’s one big difference.”

Kroenke, of course, was never in favor of the St. Louis stadium plan.

“The second is, and I think this is crucial, all of the funding (in St. Louis) ended up being contingent on that use of the extra $100 million. You look at the city (financing) language, it’s predicated on a series of contingencies that include the state funding and the NFL funding and the level of the PSLs.”

Grubman said this was discussed in a call with Peacock and two owners on the LA Opportunities committee — Robert McNair of the Houston Texans and Art Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

But in the end, the move of the Rams back to Los Angeles may have been a “perfect storm” of events that all worked against St. Louis. The league had a chance to build a showcase stadium in Los Angeles, with the stadium bankrolled by one of the league’s wealthiest owners in Kroenke.

“I’m not sure that anybody, including St. Louis, knew the kind of project that Stan Kroenke was gonna assemble in Los Angeles, and how big and ambitious it was,” Grubman said. “Because that clearly had a big impression on owners. But no one knew that when we began the process.

“To me, these things are always about control — what you can control. St. Louis couldn’t control what Stan Kroenke was gonna do or propose in some other city. They could only control what was being proposed for Stan to consider for the Rams and for the NFL to consider in terms of keeping them there (in St. Louis).

“So I go back to what I said. If they could have stuck with the original vision, taken the risk (of a vote), and kept the county in there, they would have had a more powerful project with fewer contingencies and fewer risks.

“How might it have come out if they did that? I don’t know. That’s a hypothetical.”

Echoing comments made by Goodell during his news conference, Grubman wouldn’t close the door on the NFL returning to St. Louis in the future.

“I think it’s all about what St. Louis wants,” Grubman said. “If St. Louis wants to be an NFL city, they’ve got a hell of a chance of being one. If they don’t, or they’re ambivalent about it, then it’s a lot tougher.

nittany ram wrote:

lyser wrote:

Dunno why everyone is so worked up about QB, zn could hand off to Gurley.

That kind of thinking is how we ended up with QB’s like Dieter Brock. “Anyone can hand off to Eric Dickerson”….how’d that work out for us?

Well, when I tried handing off to Gurley, turns out, I was too slow. So then in spite of swearing up and down that he would never trade me, Fisher made a swap with the Rams Huddle forum. That’s how Nittany ended up with them. But it blew up on them though, because Nittany may be the only guy I’ve heard of who melted down just doing hand offs.

Chip Kelly never got that the Eagles were like a family

Marcus Hayes

http://mobile.philly.com/sports/eagles/?wss=/philly/sports/eagles&id=368548741

TO BE FAIR, Chip Kelly was no monster.

To be honest, Kelly would still be the Eagles’ coach if he had won 10 games in 2015 instead of seven.

To be frank, Kelly was less Captain Bligh than General Patton. Kelly was not maliciously abusive to his players and rebellious to his bosses; he was just uninterested in anything but running the football team, and running it his way.

For a franchise that blossomed under a father figure such as Andy Reid, Kelly’s abruptness and dismissiveness hindered him. When Kelly unseated homegrown favorite Howie Roseman as general manager, he betrayed the sense of togetherness owner Jeffrey Lurie spent 20 years fostering.

That did not make the atmosphere at the NovaCare Center insufferable, just uncomfortable. Every NFL team reflects the essence of its head coach, who presents himself to the public at least four times a week. As such, every head coach is expected to nurture the brand.

Kelly simply refused.

“When all is in harmony, and when everybody is a family, you’ll run through walls for him,” said Don Smolenski, the Eagles’ president.

Nobody was running through walls for Chip Kelly, especially after he built the walls.

Smolenski addressed Kelly’s effect on the franchise at Doug Pederson’s introductory news conference last month. The Eagles hired Pederson after three years of Kelly’s reign. Kelly came to the Eagles with no NFL experience and after only four seasons as a head coach, tucked away at Oregon. He never developed the gift of diplomacy, but he joined an organization that places a premium on diplomacy, especially a conciliator such as Smolenski.

To review: The Eagles in 1998 stole Smolenski from the International Hockey League, where he was a very successful chief financial officer. By 2010, he was the Eagles’ chief operating officer. When Lurie dismissed his buddy Joe Banner in 2012, Smolenski became team president.

By comparison, Roseman is an executive vice president, in charge of football operations. Smolenski reports to Lurie, and Lurie alone. Smolenski is responsible for the team making money. That makes Smolenski very, very important.

Kelly never saw it that way.

Kelly saw the players and the staff not only as his responsibility, but as his fiefdom; his weapon, wielded imperiously. Everything else in the organization existed to serve him and his. His sole responsibility to the franchise: win games.

He did not schmooze sponsors. He did not embrace fans.

He made no effort to make the rest of the NovaCare workforce feel like a part of the process; rather, he made them feel like peons, there to serve at his whim and to be ignored when he had no use for them. Famously, he even forced Lurie to change the date of the Christmas party.

Not long after, Kelly was fired, axed between the 15th and 16th games of the season, and a cloud of oppression rolled away. Sure enough, the Eagles won their finale.

Afterward, a member of Lurie’s inner circle was standing outside the visitor’s locker room at MetLife Stadium. He was asked to describe his relationship with Kelly after three years.

“No complaints. I mean, I can’t even really say we had a relationship,” the executive replied. “What does that tell you?”

It tells you Kelly insulated himself.

Again, if the Eagles had hosted a playoff game last month, none of this would have surfaced, because Kelly would not have been fired. Perhaps if Kelly had not unseated Roseman and/or had not replaced about 45 percent of the Eagles’ frontline players in 2015, Kelly would have survived. But he did overthrow Roseman, and he did gut the roster, and he was fired; so, these sorts of revelations cannot be dismissed.

Current and former players painted Kelly as a hardheaded, bottom-line monomaniac. He ignored players’ suggestions to change the intensity of practice regimens. He ignored coaches’ suggestions to change practice routines, such as practicing fewer plays but practicing them with more repetitions.

And Kelly ignored his duty to cooperate with Smolenski & Co.

“In all sports, I think there’s a misnomer that there’s a football side and a business side. In all sports. It’s one,” Smolenski said. “We all need to be working together, because what might happen on the business side might affect what you can have on the football side.”

The converse is much truer.

“On the flip side, certainly, when you win – a winning record helps the other side,” Smolenski said. “It’s a big, commensurate circle.”

Part of that circle involves providing insight during league-mandated media sessions, which exist to inform the fans. Kelly was willfully deficient concerning that portion of the “commensurate circle.”

To his credit, Kelly usually gave remarkably thorough answers to questions he considered well-presented and relevant. To his detriment, Kelly usually offered petty, trite responses to questions he considered unfair or redundant.

He did not court the press – whether local, where reputations and relationships with the community are built, or national, where often the bills are paid. ESPN might break a lot of news, but it also is paying $15.2 billion to the NFL through 2021 to broadcast games.

There were other issues.

Kelly closed the annual playground build to the press, an event that was one of the Eagles’ more effective public relations gambits. Kelly refused to do a local radio show. Kelly moved training camp from Lehigh University, where the Eagles and their fans had developed a startlingly strong bond.

Kelly never played nice.

The difference was palpable on the day Pederson was hired, as Pederson trudged through interview after interview. He hadn’t even hired his offensive coordinator yet. Smolenski noticed.

“The amount of time Doug has devoted here, just in the last two days, to do this kind of stuff – yes, it’s taking away from other responsibilities,” Smolenski said. “There’s going to be opportunities all throughout the year (like this) . . . and opportunities for fan engagement.”

And opportunities to promote the brand; opportunities to engage the rest of the building. Kelly clearly treated Smolenksi, Roseman, chief financial officer Frank Gumienny and operations VP Jason Miller with a measure of disdain.

“There are so many pieces to it,” Smolenski said. “The experience we have – I have 17 years, Frank has 18 years, Jason has 13 years, Howie has 16 years – there’s all these people we know we can help. We can be a resource.”

Fine. But what about coaching? Drafting? Football?

“I’m not going to ask the head coach to do something that pulls him out of an important draft meeting. I know when the right time is to ask. It’s a balance,” Smolenski said. “You have to respect it. Work with it. There’s balance, right?”

Now there is.

wv wrote:

Well, yes “he was not used to playing in a pro style offense”
and that certainly didnt help,
but then why did he play so well the first four games?

Just a guess about a mere hypothesis, but…the 1st 4 games had him running on the procedures and plays they rehearsed in training camp. After that film study of him exposed some things and when it was time to adjust, he didn’t have a firm enough foundation TO adjust.

So he ran on what they had taught him that summer but after that, there was no Plan B. He was just lost.

I am obviously just thinking out loud. Truthfully, I don’t know, and I haven’t seen a good account of it yet.

.

InvaderRam wrote:

nice fade. wish we coulda seen more fron him his rookie season.

I suspect that given the time they have under the new CBA, which limits practices, getting both Foles and Mannion up to speed was a tall order.

THE WOW FACTOR
Few could have guessed that the league’s return would become so bloody, bitter and, most of all, emblematic of how power in the NFL truly works.

BY SETH WICKERSHAM AND DON VAN NATTA JR.

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/14752649/the-real-story-nfl-owners-battle-bring-football-back-los-angeles

On West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, an overgrown tree obscures a whitewashed, two-story building sandwiched between a radio station and a studio lot. Inside, it’s a time warp. The battered carpet is blue, and the rippled wallpaper is bubbling, peeling off. Behind glass is a showcase of dull trophies and yellowed photos from another era. Everything is labeled “Los Angeles Rams.” That team, of course, left LA, its home for nearly half a century, for St. Louis after the 1994 season. But on most days since, this nondescript office has remained open, staffed by two people: John Shaw, the former team president who engineered the franchise’s flight from Anaheim to St. Louis, and his secretary. They work in this nearly invisible team outpost, as if the Rams never left.

One NFL owner called the meeting a “s— show.” A “nightmare,” another said. Yet another described it as “the most contentious and polarizing” in decades. On Dec. 2 at the Four Seasons in Irving, Texas, the owners-only meeting had a single agenda item: Which team or teams should be allowed to relocate to Los Angeles?

The inability of America’s most popular sport to occupy the nation’s second-largest market since the Rams and Raiders left after the 1994 season had become a running joke. In the past two decades, at least 20 Los Angeles stadium proposals had been designed and junked. An expansion team had been awarded to LA in 1999 but then, mired in red tape, sent to Houston to become the Texans. Many clubs had used the threat of moving to Los Angeles as leverage to build new, publicly financed stadiums. But now, the idea of at least one franchise relocating to LA wasn’t just a fanciful notion. It was real.

One proposal was for Stan Kroenke, owner of the St. Louis Rams, to build the world’s most expensive stadium, a $2.7 billion, 80,000-seat roofed venue in Inglewood, just east of Los Angeles International Airport. The other proposal was for the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders, owned by Dean Spanos and Mark Davis, to share a $1.8 billion, 65,000-seat open-air stadium in Carson, a city about 12 miles south of Los Angeles.

Most owners meetings are boring. Some members doze. Groupthink often prevails. Not this time. For hours, the owners argued and traded barbs. New York Jets owner Woody Johnson spoke in support of Kroenke four times, to the annoyance of others waiting to be heard just once. Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross joked that the league should hold an auction for the right to relocate, though some owners thought he was serious. Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson argued that Spanos, a beloved owner who for more than a decade had tried to build a new stadium in San Diego, deserved the market.

Others insisted that Kroenke had the land and the money not just to build a spectacular football venue rivaling Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, but to return to Los Angeles with a transcendent “football campus,” as an owner later put it, with a shopping mall, movie theater, office complex and luxury apartments. The project, to be mostly paid in full by Kroenke, had the “wow factor,” Jones liked to say.

The dueling proposals did not only represent the NFL’s most recent, best opportunity to return to Los Angeles. They had also become the centerpiece of a chaotic power struggle among the league’s 32 owners, between the so-called new-money group, with members who all supported Inglewood, and the old guard, most of whom favored Carson. Going into the meeting, most believed Carson had more votes. But one moment, many would later recall, seemed to halt its momentum. Michael Bidwill, president of the Cardinals and a Carson supporter, argued that the NFL doesn’t exist just to make rich owners richer. Owners needed to consider what would be best for the league, and …

Jones cut him off: “When you guys moved the team from St. Louis to Phoenix — it wasn’t about the money?”

As Bidwill tried to answer, Jones moved in for the kill: “You did it for the money.”

TWO YEARS EARLIER, on Aug. 27, 2013, Kroenke and Spanos met for a private dinner at Mastro’s Steakhouse in Beverly Hills. At a corner table, the two talked cordially — a quiet beginning to a 29-month saga that would end on Jan. 12 of this year in a Houston hotel. Back then, neither man could have guessed that the league’s return to Los Angeles would become so bloody, bitter and, most of all, emblematic of how power in the NFL truly works. In contentious closed-door meetings in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, New York and, finally, Houston, owners belittled, undercut — even bullied — each other in ways never before witnessed, according to interviews with more than two dozen owners, league officials, team executives, lawyers and staffers involved in the relocation efforts, many of whom requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the negotiations.

The split between owners had as much to do with personal loyalties as it did the appeal of the two stadium proposals. The ruthlessness of Kroenke was fixed in sharp relief against the abidance of Spanos. The savvy of Jones, who led the new-money Inglewood supporters, clashed with the brute force of Richardson, leader of the old-money Carson backers. Bob Iger, chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company — which owns ESPN — was enlisted to run the Carson project, with the hope that his star power could offset Kroenke’s money. It wasn’t enough. In the end, no owner would feel more pain than Spanos, the league loyalist who did everything his peers asked of him — only to be forced to work out a face-saving partnership with the man who had beaten him to LA, a process that likely won’t be resolved until 2017.

If you want to do it right, you have to step up.”
– Jerry Jones, endorsing Stan Kroenke’s vision

Spanos and Kroenke had long targeted Los Angeles as the best, most attractive option for relocation of their respective teams. Their peers viewed them as being on opposite sides of the ownership spectrum. Now 68 years old, Kroenke — tall and thin with a thick mustache — was a largely quiet partner who rarely attended owners meetings and had little patience for the league’s glacial-paced relocation process. He has made much of his estimated net worth of $7.6 billion in real estate and bought several sports teams, including the Avalanche and the Nuggets. After his 2011 majority stake purchase of the English Premier League team Arsenal, Kroenke had pined for the larger international presence that other owners envisioned for the NFL’s global future.

With thinning brown hair and rimmed glasses, Spanos was deeply involved in league matters, “loyal to a fault,” in the words of a close friend. Now 65, he ran the team owned by his 92-year-old father, Alex Spanos. The NFL was his primary business, even if many owners wondered whether he possessed the sharp elbows of his father.

At Mastro’s, the two men met to determine whether they might have a shared vision for Los Angeles. Kroenke was enthusiastic about a 60-acre tract of land in Inglewood, nestled between the Forum and the soon-to-be-closed Hollywood Park racetrack. Earlier in the year, Kroenke had driven around the site at 5:30 a.m. and raved about its potential to Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff and to Jones. Spanos, though, was cool on the Inglewood location, citing concerns about parking and traffic.

Still, both men, and their associates, saw the convivial dinner as a promising first step toward a potential partnership. They agreed to be in touch.

But after the dinner, Spanos called Kroenke several times. Kroenke never returned any of the calls.

Despite Spanos’ reservations, the Inglewood land — owned at the time by Wal-Mart, the family business of Kroenke’s wife, Ann Walton Kroenke — still intrigued Kroenke. At the time, it was being sold in a blind auction. Without any warning to Spanos, a company set up by Kroenke, Pincay RE LLC, offered $90 million, outbidding everyone — including NFL executive Eric Grubman, who later would become the league’s point man on the relocation process. Nobody knew whether Grubman had bid on his own or on behalf of the league or some other buyer. But Kroenke’s purchase — and his later deal for an adjacent 238 acres — was a precursor of what would become the dominant theme of the NFL’s return to Los Angeles:

Stan Kroenke would not be stopped.

NOBODY KNEW IT at the time, but the league office had already lost control of the Los Angeles relocation process. Commissioner Roger Goodell’s mishandling of the Ray Rice domestic violence discipline in the summer and autumn of 2014 distracted him from executing the league’s longtime goal of returning to LA and severely weakened his standing in ownership circles. Meetings about LA that were scheduled for September were pushed to November. The distractions also created a power vacuum that Grubman — and other owners — eagerly filled.

Spanos reacted to Kroenke’s Inglewood purchase by proposing to buy a 168-acre landfill lot in Carson. He and his team had designed a creative development method, based on a landmark California Supreme Court decision a few months earlier, that would expedite the arduous process of entitling a stadium to a city council vote, overcoming legal hurdles that often take years to clear. At a meeting in Los Angeles in mid-November 2014, the Chargers leaders presented their plan to Grubman, who some owners and executives suspected favored Kroenke and Inglewood.

Both proposals were rolling forward. And then, all of a sudden, they weren’t. Later in November, several owners who would serve on the league’s LA committee told Kroenke no team would be moving for the 2015 season — owing, in part, to Goodell’s weakened leadership. In mid-December, on the eve of an important Carson City Council stadium meeting, Art Rooney II of the Steelers delivered the same message to Spanos, telling him to “stand down.” Spanos complied.

But Kroenke, who was well-versed in relocation politics after he had helped move the Rams to St. Louis as a minority owner after the 1994 season, told a few owners that he would play one more season in St. Louis but would exercise his right to relocate in 2015 — “when the window is open,” he told associates. Some took Kroenke’s declaration as a veiled threat to sue if anyone tried to block him; others understood that he had paid a fortune for the land and wanted to move forward. Jerry Jones, who once played himself on an episode of Entourage brokering the NFL’s return to LA, implored Kroenke to “just go” and not wait for the league’s sluggish bureaucracy.

And so on Jan. 5, 2015, Kroenke unveiled plans to build his Inglewood stadium, all but announcing a move to Los Angeles. Spanos and his associates not only were furious that Kroenke had beaten them out of the gate but were also deeply suspicious of Kroenke’s plan to fast-track the entitlement process. It was the exact process they’d presented to Grubman. The Chargers suspected that Grubman had alerted the Rams to it; the Rams insisted that their own California-based development company knew about it.

Either way, it didn’t matter. Carson was behind.

STAY IN THE GAME. If we’re not in the game, we get nothing. Stay in the game.

That’s what the Chargers executives kept telling each other. Kroenke had land, money and, most of all, the shrewdness required to relocate. He was willing to sacrifice his relationship with Rams fans and with the state in which he was raised — something that Spanos, for all of his fights with San Diego politicians, seemed reluctant to do. Spanos needed help. So Richardson suggested that he partner with Mark Davis on the Carson project. For years, the Chargers and Raiders, both of whom play in baseball venues built in the 1960s, had failed to persuade their communities to help offset the costs of new football-only stadiums. If two teams moved together, Richardson said, it would help solve the league’s “California dilemma,” as owners called it.

Most owners liked the eccentric Davis, now 60, even if they knew him only as the quiet guy with the bowl cut who had pushed his father Al’s wheelchair through hotel lobbies at league meetings. Still, many wondered whether Davis, who never had an official job with the Raiders until he assumed control of the team after his father’s death in 2011, was up to the challenge of shepherding a stadium project alone. He had turned down many offers to partner with the 49ers at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, and for years, the Davis family had resisted offers to buy the team and move it south. During one such lunch meeting in 2010, two Los Angeles businessmen pitched a lowball offer to Al Davis, who started laughing. “F— you,” he told them. “Get the hell out of here.” And he went back to eating his lunch.

So on Feb. 19, 2015, six weeks after Kroenke’s Inglewood announcement, the Raiders and Chargers proposed their Carson project, a football-only venue, unlike the epicenter planned for Inglewood, and financed mostly by Goldman Sachs. Looking back now, some around the league wish that Goodell had locked the three owners in a room and forced them to cut a deal right then, avoiding the battles and hurt feelings that would unfold. Instead, Goodell allowed the NFL’s messy form of democracy to run its course, appearing strangely detached in meetings. He said almost nothing while Grubman, who, like Goodell, declined to comment for this story, appeared to be too close to Kroenke; some involved in the process said they had expected Grubman to be strictly neutral. The disjointed process was leading to discontent among owners, at a time when, with football’s long-term future a constant topic of debate, solidarity was needed.

The stage was now set for a showdown. On Aug. 11, 2015, the league’s owners convened at the Hyatt Regency, in a Chicago suburb, for a special LA meeting. For the first time, both sides presented their proposals.

When you guys moved the team from St. Louis to Phoenix — it wasn’t about the money?” As Bidwill tried to answer, Jones moved in for the kill: “You did it for the money.”

– Jerry Jones to Michael Bidwill, president of the Arizona Cardinals

The Carson team went first. During its presentation, Grubman paced in the back of the conference room, drinking coffee.

The Rams contingent went next. Grubman moved to the front of the room and took a seat at the commissioner’s table. The presenters showed off a model of their football oasis, and Mark Davis stared at it in awe.

Saints owner Tom Benson posed the first question about Inglewood, asking why owners should defray the costs of the extra real estate developments — up to $200 million in league loans available for new stadiums — that would benefit only Kroenke. But before Kroenke and Demoff could say a word, Grubman jumped in to answer the question, explaining that Benson misunderstood the amount of money the league would contribute.

The pro-Carson owners couldn’t believe that a league official appeared to be speaking on behalf of the Rams’ proposal. That moment, along with persistent rumors that Grubman wanted to work for Kroenke in Los Angeles, cemented in the minds of some owners that he was an agent for Inglewood.

Later in the meeting, Bears chairman George McCaskey asked whether Kroenke would be willing to share the stadium with a second team. Kroenke reminded the owners of a 2012 memo from Goodell that mandated that any LA stadium be built to house two teams. Kroenke said he could quickly draw up a lease if necessary.

Some of the owners on the NFL’s six-person Committee on Los Angeles Opportunities — Richardson, Rooney, John Mara of the Giants, Robert Kraft of the Patriots, Clark Hunt of the Chiefs and Bob McNair of the Texans, most of whom were considered the old guard and supported Carson — were offended. Spanos’ family had always put the league first, and now Kroenke had declared that if it were necessary to take on a second team, the Chargers would be relegated to a tenant, junior-partner status. Kroenke considered his invitation to be sincere. He had extended a hand as far as he could, given the agreement between Spanos and Davis for Carson.

Before the meeting ended, Jones, as would be his habit, took control. He delivered a rollicking, profanity-laced eight-minute endorsement of Kroenke’s monumental vision, saying in his Arkansas drawl that whichever owner returned to Los Angeles, he needed to have “big balls.”

It was awkward and hilarious. Everyone, including Kroenke, tried not to laugh. But it was also a welcomed sentiment for the new-money owners such as Dan Snyder of the Redskins and Jeffrey Lurie of the Eagles, who backed Inglewood. “If you want to do it right,” Jones continued, “you have to step up.”

With a final vote scheduled for Jan. 12, 2016, in Houston, only five months away, the Carson supporters knew they were in trouble. Making matters worse, Spanos and Davis had argued with each other about Carson earlier that day in front of other owners. Still, Jones sensed Spanos had enough support to prevent Kroenke from going to Los Angeles alone. After the meeting, Jones approached Spanos on the tarmac where a handful of owners had parked their planes.

“I want you in LA with Stan,” Jones told Spanos.

Spanos was noncommittal. He had no interest in partnering with Kroenke.

Meanwhile, a few old-guard owners had another idea to help their friend. If Carson was going to succeed, the project needed a star.

BY THE NUMBERS
INGLEWOOD
HKS Inc.
Boss Stan Kroenke, Rams owner, net worth $7.6 billion
Capacity 80,000
Planned Completion Date 2019
Cost $2.7 billion, privately financed
Total Area 298 acres
Focal Points and Perks Will be part of a mixed-use development complex, including a 6,000-seat performance venue, a 300-room hotel, 890,000 square feet of retail space, 2,500 residential units, 25 acres of parks and space for the NFL Network.

SHORTLY BEFORE THE Chicago meetings, Bob Iger received a call from Jerry Richardson. The Panthers’ owner wanted to meet the Disney CEO, but Richardson didn’t identify the topic — only that the sit-down should be conducted under strict secrecy. An Iger confidant suggested that Richardson was inquiring about his interest in perhaps replacing the wounded Goodell, but Iger suspected otherwise.

After all, a year earlier both Goodell and Kraft had asked Iger whether he’d be interested in getting involved in a team that could move to LA, tapping into his local expertise and gravitas. The topic came up again in April when Iger ran into Mark Davis at a Clippers game, a meeting that led to a few discussions about Iger buying a share of the Raiders. And so when Iger and Richardson met on Aug. 5 for two hours in Iger’s office in Burbank, Richardson asked Iger about the market. One team or two? Carson or Inglewood? They agreed to stay in touch.

Over the next few days, Iger researched the Carson site online, noting its proximity to a cross-section of freeways. Richardson and Iger met two more times, talked often on the phone and traded email. Iger liked the fact that Carson would be an open-air stadium, unlike the roofed one Kroenke wanted to build. He also preferred parking lots rather than the garages proposed at Inglewood that would limit tailgating and make game-day traffic a mess. “This is great,” Iger told Richardson. It was exactly what Richardson wanted to hear. So he asked whether Iger would be willing to talk with Spanos and Davis about it.

In early October, Iger met with Spanos at the Shutters hotel in Santa Monica. A month later, Disney’s board of directors approved Iger’s involvement. On Nov. 11, it was announced that Iger had become the nonexecutive chairman of Carson Holdings, the joint venture between the Chargers and Raiders, with an option to become a minority owner of one of the franchises after the stadium was completed.

Goodell, who privately preferred the Inglewood site but had pledged to remain neutral, told a friend that Iger’s involvement was a potential “game changer” for Carson. Having helped negotiate billions of dollars of rights contracts with the NFL, Iger and some of the owners were acquaintances. He knew how the league worked. Many owners who had considered Kroenke to be a Los Angeles lock worried that now he might lose.

BY THE NUMBERS
CARSON
Manica
Boss Alex Spanos, Dean Spanos and family, Chargers owners, net worth $1.689 billion, and Raiders owner Mark Davis, net worth $500 million. Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger, who oversaw the project.
Capacity 65,000
Planned Completion Date 2019 (but won’t be built now)
Cost $1.8 billion, privately financed
Total Area 168 acres

Focal Points and Perks 850,000 square feet for commercial, entertainment and other uses, a farmers market and a 350-room hotel.

OWNERS AND EXECUTIVES say the following weeks were among the wildest they had seen. They called and texted each other daily with sales pitches, demands and gossip. Almost nothing was out of bounds. Some Carson supporters weighed ways to try to jam up Kroenke, such as forcing him to pay the entire $550 million relocation fee up front while giving Spanos and Davis a payment plan. Undecided owners considered the price of their vote, whether it was changing their division and conference alignment, horse-trading a vote for a promise of future support for an ownership succession plan or a new stadium of their own. Others were convinced that some owners didn’t even know where Carson and Inglewood were located. “Owners were all over the place,” one team executive says.

By most estimates, Carson had managed to cobble together 18 votes, shy of the 24 required for relocation. The Rams moving alone to Inglewood had only about seven votes. Many owners thought Kroenke was hell-bent on trying to reach nine, just enough to prevent the Carson project from reaching 24 votes and keeping him in the game. The silent majority preferred the Inglewood site but liked Spanos better than Kroenke. Most owners wanted to avoid a Raiders return to Los Angeles, owing to Al Davis’ burned bridges and the co-opting of the team apparel by gangs, concerns so deep that some wouldn’t even consider Carson. “It’s hard to get owners to move,” Iger says now. “Each one is a boss in his own right.”

And so the battle for Los Angeles became a battle between Richardson and Jones, two Jerrys with dueling powers of persuasion. Jones mostly worked the phones, trying to broker a partnership for the Rams and Chargers in Inglewood. On Nov. 27, Kroenke wrote a letter pledging to allow a partner, though it would not extend to the stadium’s design or the surrounding development. It was a major concession, encouraged by Jones after calculating that Kroenke likely wasn’t going to get 24 votes on his own. Spanos and Davis still refused to consider it, but Jones continued to push for support, convinced that the membership silently preferred it.

Richardson flew his private plane to visit several owners. Everyone around the league called it the Jerry Tour. He insisted that Carson was the better site and that the league not only would regret leaving St. Louis for a second time but would set an awful precedent by turning away the estimated $477 million in public funds for a new stadium that the state of Missouri was poised to offer. At times, Richardson’s hard-charging style, delivered with a threatening tone and citing favors he had done for them, offended some owners. “He bullied people,” a team executive says. “Some were turned off by his forcefulness.”

It was clear that the owners were playing by their own rules — and, as a league insider working with all three teams later said, “They make up the rules as they go.” A news report said that the league would pledge an extra $100 million to help St. Louis finance a new $1.1 billion riverfront stadium — a move that McNair, the Texans’ owner and a Carson supporter, predicted would prevent the Rams from meeting the league’s relocation guidelines. But days later, Goodell wrote a letter saying that the $100 million would not be available. And the night before St. Louis voted on the stadium package, Grubman called in to the show of local radio host Bernie Miklasz to describe St. Louis’ new stadium proposal as “suboptimal” and say that Kroenke was “going to keep his options open.” It seemed to validate what many had long suspected: He wanted the Rams to move.

It was chaos. The spectacle of NFL leaders undercutting St. Louis’ attempt to keep the Rams, and the uncertainty in San Diego and Oakland, was becoming another public-relations disaster. Goodell privately expressed frustration about all three owners — if they were elite, they wouldn’t be trying to relocate in the first place, he told a friend — but in the end, the commissioner supported their efforts to leave. A few days after all three teams filed for relocation, Goodell issued a 147-page report that called the efforts of all three markets to keep their respective teams “unsatisfactory and inadequate.” It was an official green light for all of them to move, knowing that at least one team would be forced to crawl back home.

Soon news broke that Kroenke would build a stadium in Inglewood no matter how the owners voted, a charge the mayor of Inglewood denied but some around the league believed to be true. Many Kroenke supporters were furious that he would risk alienating owners so close to a vote. “There it is,” said one executive of a pro-Inglewood team. “A big middle finger to the league.”

All three teams privately vowed to abide by the membership’s vote, and each of the three owners had to sign an agreement pledging not to sue if his relocation proposal was rejected. But by then the LA derby had become an open war, beyond anyone’s control. Before a late-season AFC game, two owners met in a luxury box and wondered how the LA vote would turn out in Houston. “I don’t know,” one owner told the other. “Stan is more interested in blocking Dean than he is in finding 24 votes.”

The Fred Roggin Show

Thursday, February 4th

Fred talked about the Dodgers and their terrible deal with Time Warner Cable. Fred talked about the Clippers loss to the fledgling Timberwolves last night. Fred discussed how he likes Dean Spanos’ new public approach about the Chargers working out a deal in San Diego. Les Snead: Fred and Les talked about moves the Rams might make this offseason and the expectation LA football fans will have for their new team.

Snead Interview Starts at 22:00

Pro Football Focus Ranks Rams’ Trumaine Johnson, Janoris Jenkins As #5 And #6 CBs In Free Agency

http://www.turfshowtimes.com/2016/2/10/10959808/free-agency-los-angeles-rams-st-louis-trumaine-johnson-janoris-jenkins-pro-football-focus

The Rams’ two starting cornerbacks have expiring contracts. It may not even be up to the Rams to whether or not they can keep both…

There might not be a more interesting angle to the Rams’ free agency dealings this year than how they approach the cornerback duo of Janoris Jenkins and Trumaine Johnson.

Both selected in the 2012 NFL Draft, the first under Head Coach Jeff Fisher and General Manager Les Snead, the two headline the group of Rams with expiring contracts this offseason. It of course sets up a hypothetical issue of having to pick one or the other.

Now it’s entirely true that the Rams could manage to re-sign both, but there is a fair question to ask if it’s worth the money to do so with Lamarcus Joyner and E.J. Gaines on the roster as well. And if the Rams were to look at the value and decide to only keep one, it’s going to be a very tough decision.

The toughness of which is reinforced with Pro Football Focus’ rankings of the cornerbacks who might be hitting the free agent market in a month. In those rankings, Tru comes in at #5 while Janoris is the next CB listed at #6.

Here’s what they had to say about Tru:

Johnson is the lesser known of two free agent cornerbacks for the Rams, but he had his best season as a starter and ranked 19th at his position with an 82.2 overall player grade. Johnson allowed a 55.0 passer rating when targeted, second to only Norman this season among corners. He still needs to prove that he can sustain that level of play for more than one season, but the arrow seems to be pointing up for Johnson.

And for ClampSeason:

We’ve come to expect big plays when quarterbacks target Janoris Jenkins, but those could be either good plays made by Jenkins, or big plays that he has allowed. Over his four-year career, Jenkins has allowed five or more touchdowns in every season (22 total), and missed 56 tackles in 60 games. However, Jenkins has also had 13 or more combined interceptions and pass defenses in three of his four seasons. He has improved over time, and is coming off his highest-graded season in coverage, where he ranked 30th among cornerbacks. Jenkins will make some impactful plays on defense, but he has shown over the last few years that he is susceptible to giving them up, as well.

It’s a tough call to make, and could certainly be one the Rams have to in the coming offseason. Of course depending on the suitors as both are unrestricted free agents, there may be thirstier teams out there who make offers far beyond what the Rams would even consider. That might make it easier for Snisher to just remove one from calculation.

Otherwise, the Rams could well be facing a terribly difficult Sophie’s Choice this year.

wv wrote:

Thats kinda
what Martz seemed to do — the “lets just do
what WE do best” approach…

The difference is, Martz set it up so the Rams would not have readable tendencies.

Worked like this. The way they called passing plays combined different routes. So the players only had to know the routes–not the plays per se. That meant he could install up to a 100 plays per game, with each player just knowing what they individually had to do. This allowed him to vary the plays endlessly.

When Saunders was the OC in KC, he did the same thing, and talked about it at length.

So Carolina was just running the same pass plays, and therefore showed tendencies. They counted on execution. Martz and Saunders would make it so there were no tendencies…they focused on the playcalling, not the execution (because you can’t practice 100 plays per week).

They also both relied on sight adjustments so that the play would change depending on what the defense did.

This is something about Saunders and how they worked that:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/20/AR2006012001673.html

In terms of play calling, Redskins fans will recognize traits of the Saunders offense, an example being personnel groupings that feature Gibbs staples such as two-tight end sets and three-receiver formations with pass patterns coming out of bunch alignments (a combination of tight ends and/or wide receivers lined up in a “bunch” on one side of the formation).

One key difference is that while Gibbs veered toward a more conservative, ground-oriented approach when he left San Diego to take over the Redskins in 1981, Saunders’s philosophy begins with aggressively pushing the ball downfield and then mixing the pass and run to keep defenses off-balance.

Gibbs sees virtue in running a play until the defense stops it, but Saunders preaches unpredictability. With that in mind, the Chiefs often ran out of the shotgun formation and passed out of traditional under-center formations, and would often run on third and five or longer and pass on second and short. Saunders almost never called the same play out of the same formation twice in the same game — or even in a string of games.

Perhaps more than any team in football, the Chiefs used pre-snap shifting and motion by players to create mismatches, particularly for Gonzalez, who always draws extra attention from linebackers and safeties. It wasn’t unusual for the Chiefs to be snapping the football as the defense still adjusted to the last shift or motion.

And Green almost never changed plays at the line of scrimmage. Saunders’s philosophy is that any play he calls should work against any defense because of the options within the play. Saunders would call a play from the coaches’ box, it would be relayed to Green from the sideline and Green would call it in the huddle. Like all veteran quarterbacks, Green sometimes would have liked to have had the option to change a play, but one major bonus of the system was that the Chiefs were rarely hit with delay-of-game penalties.

Saunders’s unpredictable play-calling style was epitomized by a 40-34 victory over Green Bay at Lambeau Field during the 2003 season. On the first possession of overtime, Saunders ran Holmes nine consecutive plays and then, after the Chiefs missed a field goal but got the ball back on a fumble recovery near midfield, Green dropped back and hit wide receiver Eddie Kennison for the winning touchdown.