Saturday, January 10, 2009

The return of Mad Mike?

The hot news from the Rams' coaching search isn't a head coaching candidate, it's an offensive coordinator candidate... Mike Martz. In a continuing part of his public campaign to hang on to the head coaching job, Jim Haslett has indicated he'd like to bring Martz aboard as OC. (Way to treat Al Saunders, btw, Haslett, though I certainly agree he merits replacing.) For his part, Martz is VERY receptive to the idea, going as far to say he'd be happy to return to St. Louis as OC, but ONLY if Haslett is head coach.

And though Bernie Miklasz's argument that Martz is a questionable OC selection given the Rams' organizational commitment to the running game has merit, everybody from Haslett on up has to realize what a public relations coup it would be to welcome Martz back. Martz may just be the guy to resurrect the Ram offense. He could fix the very, very broken Marc Bulger. He could make it feasible for Torry Holt to stay around, or Isaac Bruce to even come back, though those both sound like wishful thinking.

The key thing. Where Mike Martz goes, offenses get better. That includes San Francisco this year. He fixed the Ram offense once and got the team to two Super Bowls.

Bringing Mike Martz aboard might be the one way the Rams front office can get the fans to swallow the idea of keeping Jim (2-10, 5 wins in his last 28 games) Haslett as head coach.

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