Rams report, 2/18

* Some of the St. Louis paranoia that the Rams could move back to Los Angeles may ease a bit with the news today that John Shaw no longer has an official role on the team. Shaw was swept out of the team president's office two years ago but still had a senior advisory role with the team, officially, up until this year's Super Bowl.

For his instrumental role in moving the Rams from L.A., Shaw's always going to be hated there. Fair enough. St. Louis is more likely to see him in a neutral-to-positive light. He brought the team here, and generally gets the credit for the Marshall Faulk trade, which launched the Rams to a Super Bowl championship. I'd assume he was also behind hiring Dick Vermeil. From there, Mike Martz's drafts, Scott Linehan's career and Georgia Frontiere's passing weakened the franchise to the point that Shaw was necessarily atop the heap of the team's housecleaning in the past couple of seasons, though he earned credit for making the transition of ownership to Stan Kroenke a lot more orderly than it could have been.

John Shaw's widely derided as being a lawyer, not a football guy, something brought up often as the Rams declined during the past decade, (and probably in L.A. in the 90s, too) but he deserves to be remembered, in St. Louis, at least, for getting some big moves right, helping bring St. Louis not only an NFL team, but an unforgettable champion.

* Around the league, a couple of things going on besides the players' union making pretend offers to the owners:
- The Chargers put the franchise tag on Vincent Jackson, which could affect the Rams' free-agency shopping list. Then again, the NFLPA asserts the NFL has no right to franchise players since there's no labor agreement in force for the 2011 season. Union sounds right to me on this one. Maybe the owners are just using pretend franchise tags.
- The Bills cut Marcus Stroud, who could be worth a look from the Rams for his run-stuffing skills. The minuses: he's just a little younger than Fred Robbins, and this year's draft looks very deep at defensive tackle. In other veteran DT news, the Raiders re-signed Richard Seymour for another two years, so cross him off the shopping list.

* RamView's not going to bother with a 2011 free agency preview at this point; the ongoing labor problem makes it pretty pointless. It's hard enough to figure out who's a free agent and who isn't when there is a labor agreement. Hell, I'm going to be lucky to get my Senior Bowl report in before the NFL Combine starts in Indianapolis next weekend.

photo: UPI

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