No, it wasn't on a football field, but surrounding him were the other NFL head coaches, several of whom are also relative neophytes in the league head coaching business.

Detroit's Jim Schwartz, San Francisco's Mike Singletary and Tampa Bay's Raheem Morris will also be in their first full season as an NFL head coach. Entering just their second years are Atlanta's Mike Smith and Washington's Jim Zorn.

Meanwhile, the average age of this year's eight new head coaches is 42 years old. Spagnuolo realizes the success experienced last season by Smith, Baltimore's John Harbaugh and Miami's Tony Sparano has raised the bar of expectations for new coaches.

But, Spagnuolo knows he has to be methodical in putting together a roster and not compromise his beliefs in an attempt to win some extra games in his first season.

When asked what he hopes from the draft, Spagnuolo joked, "That (general manager) Billy (Devaney) makes all the right picks." He then added seriously, "We just want to come out of it with some quality, character football players."

Don't underestimate the emphasis on character. Dick Vermeil emphasized character when he was the team's head coach from 1997-1999. Previous coach Scott Linehan said he did, but in the third round of his first draft, the Rams took defensive tackle Claude Wroten and tight end Dominique Byrd. Wroten is currently serving his second NFL suspension, and Byrd wasn't signed by anyone after being released by the Rams during the 2008 offseason.

When asked during an interview on Sirius NFL radio about his approach to the draft, Devaney said, "We're going to stick to our approach from last year. Maybe we went overboard, but I thought it was necessary because we busted out the past few years on some guys we took chances on who were of questionable character, and they proved to be really questionable character guys and they're not around anymore. My point coming in to the scouts was -- if these guys ... I don't care what they did, how minor, the least little infraction. If it had something to do with breaking the law, they're going into the 'Do Not Draft' category.

"If we screw up on somebody, it won't be because we misjudged their character. They're either evaluated wrong, for whatever reason, but we're not going to screw up by bringing in a bad character guy, and we're going to do the same thing this year. Zero tolerance. There's plenty enough good guys, plenty enough strong character guys who can play this game. I'd much rather deal with those guys than those other rum-dums."