Fisher pushing for fix to penalty problem/Wagoner

Fisher pushing for fix to penalty problem
By Nick Wagoner

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/10675/fisher-pushing-for-fix-to-penalty-problem

EARTH CITY, Mo. — Before last Saturday’s preseason game, St. Louis Rams coach Jeff Fisher told his team if it committed seven penalties or fewer against the Green Bay Packers, he would break training camp early.

By late Monday afternoon, Fisher stood before the St. Louis media openly acknowledging he’s coaching a team still in the throes of camp.

“We’re still in camp,” Fisher said. “I’m a man of my word. We are still in camp. We’ll be breaking camp on Wednesday.”

The opportunity to end camp early went by the wayside against the Packers when Fisher’s team committed 10 penalties for 76 yards. The punishment is only three more days as the Rams will call it a camp after a Wednesday afternoon practice. Of course, the preseason will continue but the camp portion means longer days with more meetings and more time staying in a local hotel for players with fewer than four years of NFL experience.

In the big picture, though, a few more days of training camp is beside the point. In Fisher’s two years in St. Louis, the Rams have been penalized 251 times, 15 more than the second-most penalized team in that span. Through two preseason games, the Rams have racked up 22 penalties, which actually isn’t that many compared to what’s been going on around the league but is still a concern heading toward the regular season.

The endless rain of falling flags around the league has drawn plenty of attention in the preseason as officiating crews have put additional emphasis on illegal contact, defensive holding and illegal hands to the face infractions.

According to ESPN’s John Clayton, there has been an average of more than 23 penalties per game, which is about 10 more per game than the 2013 preseason.

But Fisher doesn’t expect the start of the regular season to coincide with some sort of lax enforcement of the rules. In fact, he’s made it a point to say that he and his coaching staff are going to continue to emphasize the points of emphasis to his team.

“We have to assume it’s going to continue,” Fisher said. “We’ve got to teach our players to avoid those things. The committee looked at a lot of plays, talked to the players association, talked to physicians, and the safety panel and everything and we’ve got to get the hands down off of the headgear and those types of things.”

As Fisher is also quick to point out, many of the penalties called against the Rams through the first two preseason games have been against depth players, many of whom won’t be on the Rams’ roster when the season begins. Fisher also notes that there’s a learning curve for officials who might be looking too hard for infractions that aren’t there.

“As is the case any year with points of emphasis, there are going to be things that look like them that weren’t and that’s what we’re dealing with now,” Fisher said. “We had several (Saturday) that weren’t hands to the face and we had several contact plays down the field that the contact was so minimal. But, nonetheless we’re going to have to continue to work with our players.”

Alas, the team’s recent regular-season track record should still be enough to make cutting down on penalties a preseason priority for the Rams.