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Rams: Secrecy is in, media are out


Rams' POLICY As of Tuesday, practices are closed to the media after the first half-hour. Other teams Closing workouts is a trend. Only nine of the NFL's 32 teams open all of practice.



Rams players stretched and then worked individual drills Tuesday morning as game week officially began for the season opener against Denver.

At precisely 11:30 a.m., or one-half hour into practice, a horn sounded. As players jogged over to the next drill, members of the media were escorted off the sidelines at Rams Park and away from the practice field.

A new era in Rams football, at least in the way the organization deals with the media, was under way. Beginning this week, all regular-season workouts are closed to the media after the first half-hour of practice.

Except for a three-game blip under Mike Martz at the start of the 2002 season, it's the first time any part of practice has been closed since the Rams moved to St. Louis from Southern California in 1995.

"The Pro Football Writers of America, while recognizing that 30 minutes is the NFL minimum, is very disappointed that Scott Linehan has decided to change years of established St. Louis media policy," said David Elfin of the Washington Times, the president of the PFWA. "Obviously, the Rams are not ignoring the media, but they're giving you as little as they possibly can. And it's an unfortunate occurrence."

Greg Aiello, vice president of public relations for the NFL, did not return a phone message Tuesday. But the NFL's minimum standard for open practices is 30 minutes, or until the squad goes into "team" or 11-on-11 work.

The Rams have had a reputation for being media friendly, dating back to the franchise's days in Los Angeles. But Linehan has made several changes to restrict media access since being hired in January. Among them:

According to the PFWA's annual survey, the Rams were one of only seven teams in the NFL to have extremely limited access, or no access, to assistant coaches.
The Rams were one of only four NFL teams, according to the survey, that did not hold a pre-draft press conference in April. MORE RAMS
Rams president John Shaw declined to comment Tuesday when asked about Linehan's decision to shut down most of practice.

Linehan offered this explanation:

"You're able to keep a lot of the things that you're doing, not necessarily confidential, but there's a lot of things in practice that you try to keep (private)," he said. "And I know (it's) none of you, but it's really more people outside the organization. You never really know what eyes are watching.

"We instituted the exact same policy at Minnesota. It was a little more extensive, I guess, at Miami, to say the least. I really hope none of you take it personal. It's just what we're comfortable doing at this point."

Linehan was offensive coordinator in Minnesota from 2002 to 2004 and held that same post at Miami last season before being hired to replace Martz as Rams head coach in January.

The number of teams shutting down most of practice has grown since Bill Belichick led New England to three Super Bowl titles in four seasons earlier this decade. Belichick is known for his restrictive media access policies, and Linehan is part of Belichick's extended coaching tree. He worked last season in Miami for Nick Saban, who once was an assistant to Belichick.

According to the PFWA's annual survey, only nine NFL teams open all of practice to the media, but two of them -- Pittsburgh and Seattle -- played in the Super Bowl last season.

Until now, the only exception to fully open practices in St. Louis came in 2002, when Martz shut down all of practice for the first three weeks of the regular season. Why? He was working on an unbalanced line blocking scheme for New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan, who had a monster game the year before in St. Louis. Martz closed practices out of fear that word might leak out about that strategy.

To avoid suspicion that anything special was planned for the Giants, Martz closed practices for three weeks, even though the Rams played New York in Game 2.

One of the PFWA's main organizational objectives is to work for media access, particularly local media access as conduits to the fans in each NFL city.

"I speak every year to the agents, to the coaches, and of course to the (team) PR people," Elfin said. "And I always tell them, you can talk all you want about the Internet, you can talk all you want about ESPN and whatever, but your local (media) is still the main way that most of your fans find out about what's going on with your team. So you're really cutting off your hand to spite your face -- whatever that cliché is -- by ignoring the local media."

In St. Louis, Elfin said the region's considerable financial commitment to lure the Rams to the Midwest is even more of a reason the media should be allowed greater access to report on the team locally.

"We're pretty disturbed," Elfin said, "especially with those kinds of teams where the fans have, I don't want to say more at stake, but have invested more of themselves financially, that they would choose to go in this direction. I also think this is a manifestation of Scott Linehan having worked under Nick Saban, who believes the media shouldn't even be tolerated."

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