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Vermeil's mission accomplished
Posted: Thursday February 03, 2000 02:41 PM
Just two days after coaching the Rams to a win in Super Bowl XXXIV, Dick Vermeil retired. CNNSI.com caught up with Sports Illustrated's Peter King after Vermeil's announcement and the magazine's senior writer spoke about the coach's legacy and the Rams' future under the leadership of Mike Martz. CNNSI.com: Peter, you called it the day after the Super Bowl, but didn't it seem like it came a little quickly? Peter King: It seems that he's had his mind made up for some time now, that he was going to retire. Some of the people close to him have told me not to listen to what he said about coaching until 2002. They told me that if he won the Super Bowl, it was better then 50-50 that he'd retire. Now, because Vermeil is such an emotional sort, I didn't take this as gospel. But I do think, as I said in my MMQB yesterday, that Vermeil got back into the game to win a Super Bowl. He did it, he was tired, his wife wants to move back to Pennsylvania and I think he said to himself: mission accomplished. CNNSI.com: Because his coaching stints were so distanced by time, is his career a fractured one, or is there a legacy that he leaves as a coach? PK: Vermeil's legacy is that nice guys can finish first. You don't have to be a screaming lamebrain to win Super Bowls. He has also proven that you can be imaginative and you can still learn things as you go through your coaching career. Case in point: he became convinced that Mike Martz's pass-first, run-second approach would work last summer after some exhaustive research and talking to Martz, so he changed. At 63, he changed. I hope that's a lesson that isn't lost on some of these my-way-or-the-highway guys today. CNNSI.com: You mention the emotion that Vermeil took to the job, will that missing element be a problem? PK: I think his trademark emotion was something that really helped this team at different times over the past three years. But missing that emotion isn't the thing I would be worried about right now if I was the Rams. The biggest single problem facing this team, in my opinion, is the fact that every coach on this staff is a Vermeil guy. They went through wars with Vermeil, some of them for years and years, before they even met Martz a year ago. Martz is not your typical gung-ho general type anyway. He's smart, he's bright and he's creative. But because football is a macho world, my biggest question is this: How are a bunch of guys who've never been commanded by Martz, many of whom would not be chosen by Martz if he were starting a coaching staff today, going to mesh when they try and accomplish the most difficult thing in sports -- which is to repeat as Super Bowl champions. CNNSI.com: But are they better off as a team with Martz as the head coach? PK: The one thing that's good about the switch, in my opinion, is that Martz will have more freedom to call plays the way he wants to call them. His way, obviously, works. Martz proved in 1999 that you can win -- and win big -- without establishing the run first. He had Kurt Warner throw in 80 percent of the downs Sunday and the Rams won a Super Bowl that way. So now he's not going to have a quasi-skeptical coach, like the traditionalist Vermeil, questioning whether what he's doing is always right. CNNSI.com: So are we going to see an even more air-it-out offense, if that's possible, next season? PK: Maybe a little, but it's always harder when you're trying to repeat as Super Bowl champions because every opposing team studies the heck out of you to see what they can steal. The NFL is a copycat league. And unless I miss my guess, defensive coordinators, particularly in the NFC West, will spend two or three weeks apiece in the offseason breaking down every piece of Kurt Warner's game. One other thing: the last eight quarters are proof that defenses are starting to figure out how to stop Marshall Faulk -- particularly on the screen pass that he made such a dangerous art form of this season. Faulk was stopped regularly in the last couple of weeks. Revving him back up might be a problem against good defenses. CNNSI.com: What does the future hold in terms of the team's coaching staff? PK: I don't know if there are any changes in store, but the Rams said that the coaching staff will stay intact. It sounds like Martz will live with what is there now. CNNSI.com: Will Vermeil's retirement put the Rams in a better or worse position to defend their Super Bowl title? PK: I'm not sure it's going to be a huge factor, except in one respect. Martz hasn't been a head coach in college or professional football. Vermeil was a head coach -- it seems -- forever. No one will know if Martz has the requisite toughness or discipline until he gets on the job.
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