LA Rams must hire Mike Pettine as LB coach ASAP

From high school to highly regarded

Pettine was actually plucked from a successful stretch as a high school football coach in Pennsylvania by former Ravens’ Super Bowl-winning coach Brian Billick. He started out by doing the mundane stuff, the grunt work of an NFL team, with the lofty title of “coaching assistant for quality control”.

That’s a fancy title that translates into a Swiss Army knife sort of coaching position where you did all the critical behind-the-scenes stuff. He was Billick’s A/V guy – rolling tape in the film room, breaking down and dissecting game-day film, opposition video analysis, helping to develop playbooks, advising the coaches on the weekly game plan, and building scouting reports on opposing teams, draft prospects.

Pettine spent seven years with the Ravens eventually working his way up to defensive assistant, then outside linebackers coach where he coached-up the likes of Terrell Suggs and Adalius Thomas.

When Rex Ryan became the head coach, he quickly became known as Ryan’s trusted right-hand man, his most capable assistant, Batman’s Robin. When he followed Rexie to New York, it was Pettine who was credited with being one of the main reasons the 2009 Jets had the No. 1 defense in the NFL.

Perhaps the most important quality he would bring to the Rams staff is that he has consistently shown the ability to lead his players to improvement and success, at every stop in his NFL coaching career.