Les Snead and Michael SchmidtI were sitting in his office, a glorified temporary trailer at his team’s glorified temporary training facility in suburban Los Angeles, when he brought up the idea of failure and the powerful permanence of it.

The Rams general manager and I were speaking last week about a wide range of subjects when the conversation turned toward winning it all and what it took to get there. Then Snead suddenly veered away from all the glory talk.