The Rams are stepping up their search for a general manager this week.
Jim Thomas of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the team will interview a pair of candidates on Monday. Joey Clinkscales, vice president of college scouting for the Jets, and George Paton, the Vikings director of player personnel, will both interview for the job. Thomas also reports that an interview with Cardinals director of player personnel Steve Keim was pushed back from the weekend to this week.
None of these candidates currently have “final say” in their organizations and it remains a mystery whether they will have that power in St. Louis. When Jeff Fisher was hired as head coach, there were questions about how much of a role that power played in his choice to go with the Rams over the Dolphins. There were reports about Fisher having a role in hiring the next general manager when he became Rams coach and one would assume he will favor a candidate who is willing to give the coach great leeway in personnel decisions.
Ironically, the presence of G.M. Jeff Ireland in Miami was seen as one of the reasons why Fisher chose St. Louis. The Dolphins hired Ireland away from the Cowboys by giving him “final say” when it was widely known that Bill Parcells held that power in the Miami organization at the time of the hiring.
The Rams will have to give that power to one of these hires in order to take them away from their current teams, but the haziness of what that actually means makes it hard to know if the team will be adhering to the letter of the law or simply the spirit of it.