St. Louis Rams still searching for an offensive coordinator
By Ben Carter
At the beginning of the offseason, St. Louis Rams coach Jeff Fisher told the media that he “wasn’t anticipating any coaching changes with his team”; which may have come to the dismay of many Rams fans. However, just a week later, offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer unexpectedly took the same position at the University if Georgia, leaving the Rams with a coaching vacancy. Rams fans had Schottenheimer’s bags already packed for him as the Rams offense didn’t rank above 20th in the league under his tenure with the team.
Out of the gate, a lot of interesting names have been thrown into the pool of replacements for Schottenheimer; including Kyle Shanahan and Greg Roman. These names were very intriguing to a lot of Rams fans seeing how they are both very aggressive, and high profile names with ties to the Rams organization, however, just mere days later both had landed jobs elsewhere with different teams.
This week, the Colts assistant coach Rob Chudzinski’s name was thrown around as well. Chudzinski was a candidate for the position before the Rams brought in Schottenheimer, and seemed like a great candidate again, but, as of Tuesday, will be returning to Indianapolis next season.
This leaves the Rams with not too many more options if they were to look outside of the organization. One name that has been circled around was Nathaniel Hackett, who was the Bills’ offensive coordinator but replaced by Roman. Hackett was brought in last Thursday for an interview and is scheduled for another interview in St. Louis this week. This is a promising sign that the Rams are close to finishing this whole ordeal, but it isn’t necessarily written in stone.
The Rams have a lot of things that are spiraling around them that make them less appealing to the rest of the league. Wether it be the lack of stability at the quarterback position or the relocation to Los Angeles saga, it’s hard for the team to really sell themselves to potential candidates.
This is Jeff Fisher and the rest of the Rams front office are looking in-house to maybe solve this. Quarterbacks coach Frank Cignetti, who was previously interviewed for Cleveland’s offensive coordinator opening, and tight ends coach Rob Boras, are both linked to the job. This may be the most attractive option for Jeff Fisher seeing how the two are already coaches on his staff and they understand the scheme Fisher has laid out for this offense, however it isn’t necessarily attractive to the fans seeing how they aren’t the biggest names on the board.
With options dwindling down to Hackett, Boras and Cignetti, the Rams need to be looking to solve this situation sooner rather than later because other than the 49ers, the Rams are the last remaining team to hire an offensive coordinator.