The Riverfront Times’ Keegan Hamilton notes the Rams’ dramatic turnaround under Jim Haslett ; “I see (former head coach) Scott Linehan sitting on his couch in a dirty bathrobe, sporting a week’s worth of stubble..flanked by a half empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Red and an overflowing ashtray, and he has a look on his face like Private First Class Gomer Pyle in the last week of boot camp. The preternaturally stoic Linehan been exposed as perhaps the worst coach in recent NFL history.” Worse than Mike Nolan, apparently.
After Haslett got the interim job, because the team’s defense was so bad I said that it was like the CEO of Fannie Mae taking over Freddie Mac. Now Haslett admits in his postgame comments that Linehan was meddling in his defensive coordinator’s schemes and vetoing personnel changes.
Another writer once joked on this blog about hundreds of high school students “falling victim to fatal boredom” after a Linehan motivational speech. So what did Haslett do before his team took the field against Dallas? He delivered a profanity-laced tirade and threw chairs around the locker room. Guess it never occurred to Linehan to try that — or maybe he did and his players just snickered behind his back.
I’d like to hope that all these factors would lead to Linehan finding a new line of work, but alas, his name is one of many that has been mentioned as a possible replacement for Tyrone Willingham at the University of Washington, where he was an assistant coach during the program’s glory days in the ’90s. As of this weekend, the Huskies (my alma mater) are one of two winless teams in the BCS.
Note to the UW athletic department: If Linehan gets the job, the Huskies will be worse. Not quite sure how, but he’ll find a way.