At a time when more and more signs are pointing to a return of the Rams to Los Angeles in 2015 or 2016, the 2014 Rams claim that’s not one of their concerns.
"[W]e’ve got too much going on, too much in front of us and way bigger fish to fry,” quarterback Austin Davis told reporters on Wednesday.
Coach Jeff Fisher made it clear that the locker room generally isn’t thinking about a possible move from Missouri to California.
“There’s no issues whatsoever with the players,” Fisher told reporters. “We’ve not discussed anything with the players. Their focus, as well as the staff’s focus, is on the Arizona Cardinals.”
It makes sense, for several reasons. First, the players and the coaches have no control over whether the team eventually stays or goes. Second, the players realize they work for a company that has 32 branches throughout the United States. At any given moment, any player can go from working for one of those branches to working for another. Eventually, they’ll each be working for none of them, and for most players the separation isn’t voluntary. Third, coaches live a life of moving from place to place, going wherever the work is.
For the Rams, if the work goes to L.A., the coaches and players will have to follow.
It’s still unclear if/when the Rams will move. Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch takes a thorough look at Governor Jay Nixon’s Wednesday conference call, and Miklasz comes to the conclusion that it’s too early to reach any conclusions.
He’s right. But conclusions will be coming sooner than later. The moment the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission lost the arbitration hearing regarding the upgrades needed to put the Edward Jones Dome in the top 25 percent of all stadiums and then opted not to do what the arbitrators decided should be done to prevent the Rams for acquiring a year-to-year lease, the dominoes began to fall.
Eventually, the dominoes will stop at the doors to a new stadium -- the only question is whether the new stadium will be in St. Louis or Los Angeles.
