[hockeystl]

From Bernie Miklasz, columnist of the STL Post Dispatch....


On Martz:

This year, he's been erratic and uneven and distracted. I figured trouble was setting in when he started doing bizarre paranoid stuff with the media, in October. Martz became convinced that someone with the media was watching plays in practice and telling other teams, just because the reporter kept walking out of practice, talking into a cell phone. Nothing could be further from the truth; Martz was cracking. Martz also banned a Rams intern from practice because the Rams were getting ready for Tampa Bay and the young man had briefly interned for Tampa Bay. Nuts. Sad.

And it doesn't impact me whatsoever, so please refrain from your theories about this is why I've been harder on Martz. It simply does not matter to me, because I have no interest in watching practice or wasting afternoons at Rams Park. But I know Martz enough to be able to have a good instinct for when he's going into the real Mad Mike mode -- mad as in a little crazy. And his media stuff is usually the first warning sign, and indicates a larger problem.

(When Martz is freaking out and heading into the meltdown mode, it always surfaces first with his media relations. He gets really strange; starts to do control-freak stuff that's transparent and comical. I last saw it in 2002 but he pulled his head together over the offseason and was ready to coach again in 2003).

Anyway....

Shaw is on the case.

Martz is already talking about giving Fairchild more responsibility in 2005.



************************

Martz and the Rams will have a meltdown on MNF. Phil +3 seems like stealing.