Over the past few days, most of the brand-name, top-shelf coaching prospects who would command those eye-popping $5 million to $8 million price tags have basically taken themselves off the market. Bill Cowher says he wants to stay in television. The recently "devastated" Mike Shanahan wants to heal his emotional wounds and count Pat Bowlen's money until next year, when free-spending owners in Dallas and Washington are in the mood to upgrade to flashier models.

And now the last of the proven "big names" - Marty Schottenheimer - has said that his year-old retirement from the NFL rat race has become permanent.

So we're right back to where we were when this whole process started a few weeks ago, which is that the next Rams head coach is not going to be a name that registers big with the populace.

No pricey brand names. No headline-grabbing mega-personalities. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Devaney and his search committee of Football men have been doing their homework, carefully scrutinizing coaches with the sort of due diligence that will allow them to separate the best candidates from the not-ready-for-prime-time players.

When real Football men are asking the questions, this coaching search will go beyond the superficial; this search shouldn't be susceptible to uneducated guesses and unsophisticated conclusions.

So while there may be a popular groundswell for Baltimore defensive coordinator Rex Ryan, the Rams' search committee is likely to dig a bit deeper than the NFL stat sheets that rank Ryan's defense second in the league. What they might be a bit more interested in is how Ryan will fare differently as a head coach than his predecessor, Mike Nolan, who also was in charge of a ferocious Ravens defense but experienced little success as an NFL head coach.

What due diligence will uncover are the tough answers to tough questions.

Do Ryan's schemes make the magic or do those incredible players make Ryan's X's and O's magical?

This is not to say that Ryan isn't the man for the job. He very well could be. There's no better defense in the NFL right now than the Ravens. They play exactly the way the Rams ought to play, with a fearless, aggressive, tough guy image that rattles offenses and creates game-changing plays. Ryan's schemes are creative and unpredictable, and it's fun to watch Baltimore control a game. But there's a difference between X's and O's when Ed Reed, Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs are creating havoc and when Corey Chavous, Quinton Culberson and Fakhir Brown are running around.

I'd like to know the reason he finished out of the running for at least two head coaching jobs a year ago, and if there is anything about him now that has upgraded him from also-ran status to true contender this time around.

Those are fair questions that Ryan ought to be prepared to answer. And Devaney and his search committee are smart enough to seek answers to those sorts of questions and a whole lot more. Ryan and Jim Fassel, who comes to town Thursday for an interview, are intriguing names, and I wouldn't be surprised if Brian Billick gets a look at some point, too. Fassel and Billick both have Super Bowls on their coaching r?sum?s, and recent history tells us that there's nothing like a good head coach on his second tour of duty (see: Bill Belichick and Tony Dungy).

But I still won't be surprised if at the end of all the questions, the search leads back to the man who is still occupying the upstairs corner office at Rams Park, Jim Haslett.

He took over an impossible situation after four games with a roster bereft of Pro Bowl talent and turned it into a hard-working group of overachievers. He has already clearly articulated his plan for how to turn this organization around in a hurry to the people who matter most. It includes critical changes in his coaching staff and detailed evaluations of the entire roster. He also has a proven record to fall back on that validates that he is up to the task (he took over a 3-13 team and turned it into a 10-6 division winner in his first season in New Orleans). That's precisely why he has been ushered to an automatic berth into the finals for this job.

Haslett's not the exciting choice. He's not the popular choice, either. But smart Football people won't be fooled by such superficial stuff, which is why Haslett's candidacy is still very much alive.