Rams name Paul Ferraro LB coach

The Rams made Paul Ferraro their linebackers coach last week. This brought a sigh of relief from a Rams Nation concerned he was being hired as the Rams' special teams coach, since the Ferraro-led special teams at Minnesota gave up a ridiculous seven TDs in 2008. (Though, to be parenthetically fair, special teams fared well for him there in 2006-07 and in Carolina in 2005.)

RamView looked hard to find qualifications for Coach Ferraro beyond the fact he played on the same Springfield College football team in 1979 as one Steve Spagnuolo. Ferraro's only been in the NFL four years, all as a special teams coach. The most significant lines on his 23-year college resume are as Rutgers' DC from 2001-04 and as Bowling Green's DC from 1991-98. Not exactly BCS powerhouses.

Then again, from 1991-94, BGSU's defense sounds like it was the dominant one in the MAC, allowing under 17 points a game and having 12 players named to the all-conference team. Don't laugh at Bowling Green - they won the 1991 Raisin Bowl! OK, you can laugh at that.

If anything makes Ferraro's resume, it's his time at Rutgers, under the highly-respected Greg Schiano. That group turned a traditionally dreadful football program into one successful enough for Tony Soprano to want to show up at their games, and no, I don't mean the Dolphins' HC this time. I mean Tony Freakin' Soprano. In 2004, the traditional league doormat led the Big East in sacks and takeaways. The Colts have the most notable players from Ferraro's Rutgers days - LB Gary Brackett and DE Eric Foster, who played for him as a freshman. Both are starters in Indianapolis.

So at some level, Paul Ferraro knows how to turn around a defense, and he had to have played a significant part in turning around a historically-dreadful football team. I think it's fair to ask how a bunch of mainly small-school experience makes Ferraro a desirable candidate - we'd ask the question of a small-school LB, why not ask it of a LB coach? - but Ferraro gets some benefit of the doubt for now on the strength of his record helping turn around bad teams and bad defenses.