St. Louis Rams Hire Chris Weinke as Quarterbacks Coach
After creating some fanfare last week by interviewing longtime NFL quarterback Jeff Garcia for their vacant quarterbacks coach job, the St. Louis Rams decided to go another direction, hiring another former NFL signal-caller, Chris Weinke, to fill the job on Wednesday.
The 42-year-old Weinke was the Heisman Trophy winner at Florida State in 2000. His story was quite unique in that he spent seven years playing professional baseball, so by the time he decided to give up on that dream and enroll at FSU, he was 25 years old. He won the Heisman at 28 years old, and after that great season he was drafted by the Carolina Panthers in the fourth round of the 2001 NFL Draft.
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After being Carolina’s starter as a rookie during their dreadful 1-15 season, Weinke was beaten out for the Panthers’ starting job by grizzled veteran Rodney Peete in 2002. He stuck around as a backup in Carolina until 2006, then played in two games for the San Francisco 49ers near the end of 2007.
Weinke worked with the Rams’ new offensive coordinator, Frank Cignetti, Jr., during that season in San Francisco, and they obviously forged a good-enough relationship that Weinke was able to make a connection and find a pathway into the NFL as a coach.
Since 2010, Weinke has been the director of the football division at IMG Academy, an athletically-centric boarding school in Florida which was called the nation’s top high school football facility by MaxPreps in 2013. This will be his first coaching experience of any kind at the NFL level.