Jim Haslett and Steven Jackson are Fine, Ready to Concentrate on Playoff Run

Earlier in the week in camp Ram, there was slight a tiff between Coach Jim Haslett and his star running back, Steven Jackson. It was evident the tension stemmed from a preseason holdout by Jackson, and Jackson was seemingly growing tired of hearing insinuations that his holdout meant he wasn't conditioned as well as he should have been for this season.

Now, a few days later, the Rams' two biggest names seem to have put this behind them and they are ready to focus on steering this stellar 2-10 ship to a successful conclusion.

"We're fine," Haslett said Thursday. "There's no issues at all, nothing at all. He's a good guy, works hard, and we're just glad to have him back and ready to go."

Said Jackson:

"Me and Coach Haslett, we're good. We've been able to kind of look back at that (sound bite) and just laugh about it. Everything's fine. ... He explained it to me like he explained it to you guys. He was more talking about the quad muscle fatiguing and not so much my lung capacity."

I did find it quite curious how paranoid Jackson was on the conditioning question. Does he know -- deep down inside -- that he wasn't as ready for this season as he had been in the past? If he was a little tired in terms of lung capacity after sitting so many weeks with a leg injury, there's no reason to blame the preseason regimen as much as the midseason layoff. There shouldn't be such paranoia unless a twinge of it was actually true.

As far as the thigh injury, Jackson's going to be just fine this weekend in Arizona. I like him to compile a good stat line, as the Rams are embarrassed in the desert by the high-powered Cardinals offense. You know, the one being led by the quarterback who wasn't good enough to retain his job over Marc Bulger.