is it a rebuild?

Remember that old question? Unfortunately in Times Past it got sucked into the “Spagz sux/2011 was all about injuries” vortex. It was like, if you said no, it got seen solely as a way of defending spagz–which complicated the discussion. I just don’t think anyone has a real deep need to debate spags anymore, so I think that part of it has withered away.

Okay my honest opinion.

I thought Fisher arrived in St. Louis with a “win now” attitude which precluded any “start over from scratch” move like they did in 2009 or 1997.

But after letting go of Jackson and Mikkel and Amendola and Gibson, this became a notoriously young team. However you do have to ask why they didn’t just unload those guys right away. If they had they would be closer to my “did they start over from scratch” benchmark. No…instead, they took this on a year at a time. Went with what they had, gathered in the off-season, assessed and acted accordingly.

The issue to me, then, is, did Fisher ever “start over.” I think THAT question is much murkier.

To me though they never just burned it down and started over. For example as of right now, Carrol only has 2 players left from before he arrived in 2010. Now there’s some starting over for you.

Fisher has more than that, and in fact has extended or re-signed twice that number (Long, Laurinaitis, Sims, Saffold) and will probably extend more (Bradford, Quinn, maybe Kendricks).

And those are key players.

So I will say this…Fisher benefitted from inheriting some key starters and significant role players, and took advantage of it. Fact is, if you look at the Seattle drafts before Carrol got there in 2010, it’s pretty much a wasteland. Seattle in 2010 was much more like St. Louis in 2009–they did not really inherit anyone.

As a minor point, sometimes people go, well, look at the 30 players Fisher cut who are no longer in football. Actually that one is very misleading. More than half of those players were a combination of career ending injuries (like Clayton), guys who left football in spite of having offers (Brown, Bell), AND in-season injury replacements. The Rams had a long, long list of in-season injury recplacements in 2011, and those guys are ALREADY out of football when you sign them or they wouldn’t be available IN-SEASON in the first place, PLUS as a rule in-season injury replacements don’t get kept by anyone, including the regime that signed them. Actually the truth is there were more that 30 players that made the roster initially in 2011 who are STILL in football. And the players who initially made the roster in 2011, got dumped by Fisher, and are no longer in football? It’s half that number.

But there was dramatic change. The secondary is entirely new, the DTs are entirely new, most of the OL is entirely new, and the RBs and WRs are entirely new.

At the same time though they did take advantage of what they inherited–something Carroll couldn’t do in Seattle because again like the 2009 Rams he didn’t inherit anything.

So yeah, from the perspective of the 2013 off-season, they rebuilt…but they never burned it down and started over. You don’t extend guys (as they have and will) if you are writing off inherited assets.

So one way to look at it is this–Fisher was lucky to come to a place where some key players were already on the roster, and he made them a big part of his plan. The Rams could not say that to that extent in either 97 or 09.

That’s a qualified statement, but then history has to map the qualifications or it’s not history, it’s a series of slogans.

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