RAMS ’89 : Q&A; WITH JOHN ROBINSON : Rams Have Had a Steady Plan, Says Team’s Winningest Coach

It has taken John Robinson six seasons to break every significant coaching record in Rams’ history. And this is a franchise that has been around 52 years.

He’s the all-time leader in wins (58), losses (44) and games coached. Robinson led his team to the playoffs five times in that span and won the National Football Conference Western Division title in 1985.

Yet, he’s also been haunted by the brilliance of coach Bill Walsh and the San Francisco 49ers, who have captured two NFL championships to Robinson’s none since 1983. Robinson learned that being good wasn’t good enough in the NFC West. Robinson took the Rams to the mountaintop once, in 1985, but was squashed in the NFC title game by the Chicago Bears.

Getting back hasn’t been easy. The blockbuster trade of Eric Dickerson in 1987 knocked the organization off its feet, but Robinson made sure the setback was temporary. The team rebounded from that 6-9 season and returned to the playoffs in 1988.

This year, Bill Walsh has moved to the broadcasting booth. And some think Robinson has his best team. During a recent break in training camp, Robinson discussed the upcoming season. Question: What’s it like going into the season with so many young players?

Answer: I think it’s equally exciting and scary. I think we’re a club that’s definitely on the rise, we have an awful lot of pieces of the puzzle. Fitting them together seems to me to be the main issue at hand. We have a lot of young people that desperately need experience and the opportunity to play before they’re really ready to contribute.

Q. Considering the 80-man roster limitations, injuries and the prolonged holdouts of Greg Bell and Damone Johnson et al, this seemed to be your most difficult training camp. I mean, how does an NFL team run out of tight ends?

A. Ironically, our injuries have come right in the same spots our holdouts are. It’s the obvious things, if you got a guy missing, the people there have to take more turns and are more vulnerable to injury. But as we get closer (to the start of the season), things begin to fit in together a little bit. We either have the player who’s holding out, he either settles his deal, or you have to go on without him.

Q. As the coach, though, you’re stuck on the fence in negotiations between loyalty to management and loyalty to your players. How do you cope with that?

A. It’s a very volatile time in pro sports, and there’s no other place for the coach to be but somehow trying to be a link between those two things, or trying to hold those two parts together. It’s folly to assume that management of any pro team is going to give players just what they want. It’s also folly to assume that players aren’t going to keep demanding more salaries. That’s a constant battle that goes on now.

Q. But can you really stay loyal to both?

A. I think so. The big struggle that comes here is that the amount of money has increased, and there’s always a third party in terms of an agent. Other issues become involved. And you’re dealing with very young people, and you’re dealing with egos. And everything is in the newspapers. You’re not intimately involved with the negotiations of a major entertainer with Caesars Palace, or some casino in Las Vegas. You don’t hear, ‘Well, they upped the offer to $10 million.’ But in pro sports, you hear it on a daily routine.

Q. But prolonged holdouts only hurt the product of the Rams, which only hurts your chances to be a successful coach. Doesn’t that hit close to home?

A. The solution oftentimes for some people is ‘Why doesn’t management just pay them?’ Well, that’s not the right solution. Neither is it all the way on the other side: Why doesn’t the player just come in and work? It’s a normal process in our society--to bargain for work. It just so happens this happens to be public and more volatile then we’re used to.

Q. Conversely, though, some would say that San Francisco 49er owner Edward DeBartolo doesn’t care how much money it takes to win. And he’s won three Super Bowl championships. Does it hurt the Rams to be fiscally responsible?

A. That’s one of the unique things about this business. People are prepared to lose millions to win. I think we’ve done well, when you look at us over the last couple of years. Our players have been in. We haven’t had long holdouts. I think we’ve provided some standards. It’s my personal observation, and I don’t know that much about money, that this thing becomes erratic when management and players behave erratically. And we certainly haven’t behaved erratically in any of this. There’s been a steady plan the Rams have been on and we haven’t gone off the cliff one way or another on our behavior. And I think that’s one thing this league needs to do is to behave in a steady manner.

Q. But some of your players think the 49ers do what it takes to win and the Rams don’t. That has to be frustrating?

A. I think you can become insecure if you begin to see yourself as No. 2. They become a very in-focus goal. They’re right there, we get them twice a year, they’re our rivals. That makes your goal pretty clear. . . . There are times when you can get caught in that. I worked a year with the Raiders in 1975 and they had the Pittsburgh Steelers right over them. They could never quite get there. They were frustrated because Pittsburgh was champions four times. But when they did get past them, then it was their turn. They kept pushing it and pushing it, not falling back, and all of a sudden they were able to get past Pittsburgh and they were a championship-level team. But there was frustration.

Q. The 49ers have won two Super Bowls since you joined the Rams in 1983. And, except for 1985, you’ve always been second best?

A. It makes the pain of losing more acute, when you can almost see it. But it also makes you understand that it’s up to you to improve yourself. I don’t think you do many things in life where you set your standards by ‘Boy, I hope they all disappear, so I’m the only guy left.’ You have to try and get better.

Q. What about the pressure of winning in the NFL?

A. You become very aware here that winning in terms of championships, in terms of the top echelon, is a struggle. You’ve got to get the best out of yourself. There is something very stimulating about that, knowing that if you don’t do it right, you’re not going to be successful. We’ve had good success, not great success. Once you achieve great success, then you got to look for something else, either a different way of life. But right now, the excitement of competing in this league is something.

Q. Your friend John Madden, and Bill Walsh went from the Super Bowl into broadcasting. A lot of people say you’d make a great color commentator. But don’t you have to win it all first?

A. I see those things as what you do after you do what you do. What I am is a football coach. Whatever else you’d do, would be after the fact. Ultimately, all those men stopped doing what they did, (which is) what they’d built their own personal worth and success on. But that’s certainly no goal. I’m more interested in simply winning, and having my team do well. Just for our own personal satisfaction more than anything. I’ve achieved some things in coaching. I’m certainly competent at it, I make a good living at it. The thing that sticks most in my mind is the fun of winning, not winning for a record that you can wear on you chest, although there’s always that. The best moment of winning--and I’ve often thought about this--in the truly big games, a team is robbed of its moment together after a game. I would love, though I probably couldn’t do it, but if we get to the Super Bowl and win it, I’d love to not let any cameras in there for five minutes so everyone could walk in there together and look at each other and say, ‘We did it.’ That moment, that sense, that look that we did it. . . . You talk about the rings, but the rings aren’t as important as that moment.

Q. You’ve always been one of the best coaches at dealing successfully with the media. What’s your secret?

A. No one understands how important the newspaper business is until the newspaper is writing about you. Then, all of a sudden, boy, it becomes important. And it is shocking to have somebody call you an idiot or whatever. You’re not prepared for it. But you have to assume that people that are writing are neither for or against you. We all get in trouble when we assume the paper should be for us--write something positive about us. And that isn’t the function of the press. Coaches get off track. Your relationship starts with an obligation to impart information. If you went away and never came back, our business would dry up, no question about it. We wouldn’t be publicized, our salaries would all go down. It’s a necessary part of this whole process.

Q. You seem to have great restraint with the media, even in times of despair.

A. If you fumble three times, it is not an insulting question to ask what happened, how come you fumbled three times? What makes you angry is that you’re wondering, too, and you get defensive. And it’s hard not to be.

Q. Has your image as a public-relations man hurt you as a football coach? I think few people know that the Eagle defense was actually your idea.

A. At times, I get perplexed when people describe you as that. But that’s someone who doesn’t know. At times, I want to go educate that guy, but say, no, wait a minute. What I try to do in this organization is to make sure that everyone has a role and that everyone is given credit for the role that they have. This isn’t the Fritz Shurmur defense or the Ernie Zampese offense. It’s all of ours. Every once in a while, I’ve had to make sure they understood that they weren’t the head coach of the tight ends or the linebackers.

Q. Maybe you’d get more respect if you weren’t so outgoing?

A. Yeah, the aloof guy must be thinking. The guy who’s talking . . . maybe there’s some truth in that. It’s hard to talk and think at the same time. But I love audiences, I love being able to communicate with people, I love to be able to persuade people with my ideas. I love the excitement of that. But that has to be on the periphery.

Q. Your team had a better road record last season than at Anaheim Stadium. Some players have described your fans at games as being out for Sunday brunch. Have you no home-field advantage in Orange County?

A. In a short-term sense, you would wish you had a stadium where you had a clear advantage in your home stadium. But I can’t imagine wanting to live somewhere else, of going to the environmental disadvantages that have home-town advantages. It always amuses me when people talk about living in Southern California; they almost act like they feel sorry for you, when it’s the greatest place in America. I mean I get up every morning and it’s 70 degrees. There also isn’t the ugliness here (at games) that can happen in some of those places, too. All in all, I’ll take it as it is.