As a rookie in 2013, Rams linebacker Ray Ray Armstrong committed nine penalties on special teams but kept his job in St. Louis into this season.
He doesn’t have it any longer. Rams coach Jeff Fisher announced Monday that Armstrong was released after Sunday’s game, which saw him pick up an unnecessary roughness flag for shoving Eagles punt returner Darren Sproles at the end of a return in last Sunday’s 34-28 loss. While Fisher said that the penalty wasn’t the only reason for Armstrong’s departure, he had expressed displeasure with stupid special teams penalties on Sunday and the move should serve as notice to others even if Armstrong wasn’t a “scapegoat.”
“Again, it’s the body of work,” Fisher said, via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “It had been addressed with him numerous times, and that penalty ultimately becomes my fault because when a guy’s making mistakes over and over, and he’s allowed to play, it becomes my fault. So we’re gonna get someone else in there that understands things a little differently. And it’s not the [result of the] game. This was gonna happen win or lose. This is not a scapegoat. You guys know me, I’m not about that. But we need to make a change and go a different direction.”
Fisher said that the team has been called for 16 pre-snap and post-play penalties, which are the kinds of things that can come back to haunt a team that’s lost their last two games by a total of nine points. And also the kinds of things that can help put you out of work.
