Amazon’s All or Nothing with Rams

OK. This looks awesome. "All or Nothing: A Season with the Los Angeles Rams – Official Trailer" https://t.co/63p8F7ifL4

— Matt Miller (@nfldraftscout) May 10, 2017

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"That's football. Only one quarterback can play at a time" -Case Keenum. Stream #AllOrNothing 6/30 on Prime Video. pic.twitter.com/nA33e9xcve

— All or Nothing (@allornothingtv) June 27, 2017

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The entire last episode is 2017. Includes hiring, FA, draft, OTAs and updates on former players/coaches. It's excellent.

— Joe Curley (@vcsjoecurley) June 16, 2017

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Just finished @allornothingtv. It's great. The production value is top notch, and the tone is perfect.

Hits Amazon Prime June 30.

— TurfShowTimes (@TurfShowTimes) June 20, 2017

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I thought I had seen enough of the Rams' 2016 season. But I started watching this, and it is fascinating. https://t.co/jYom9Gqtbu

— Sam Farmer (@LATimesfarmer) June 26, 2017

GreatRamNTheSky wrote:

Attended screening of All or Nothing LA Rams

They screened the 1st episode of this new series about the 2016 Rams last night at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. It was about 30 minutes and frankly the language is pretty salty. They don’t bleep anything out. Its very well done as it is NFL Films.

For me personally it was interesting because there are some appearances by Rams fans I know from Bring Back The Los Angeles Rams. That made it fun.
However rehashing a losing season is not my cup of tea.

I would recommend you getting Amazon Prime and watching the series though it looks very good.

What about the Athletic Club? The place looks like your classical Old Money Hangout. Plush to the max in a 1930s way. Beautiful like a mansion that a Rockefeller would have owned. Every floor is plush. The stair cases are plush and carpeted. Wood on all the walls. Mirrors all over the place. Huge conference rooms, huge banquet rooms, Outstanding looking bars that a President would drink in.

The free beer was flowing. The free horderves was flowing. Large schrimp, broiled chicken on a stick, small shredded beef sandwhiches, small enough to fit two in your hand. And they had a cash bar for the hard stuff.

Wall to wall Rams fans wearing their jerseys.

. This was for fun, pure and simple. I received and invite from ESPN LA and decided why the hell not? It might be a blast and it was.

The whole series is produced by NFL Films and other then coaches and players dropping F-bombs all over the place, if you watched Hard Knocks last summer this is kind of like Hard Knocks on steroids. There is a lot of good in game action stuff to watch. CLOSE UP and personal you see the grimaces on the face of Todd Gurley as he’s getting smacked around by the Seattle Seahawks in the Coliseum. Its great theater but there is no real added insight in my opinion. I may watch the series then again I may not. I have access to Amazon Prime and the series premiers tomorrow June 30th. But like I told friends of mine in attendance Tuesday night. I don’t relish rehashing a losing season.

Reality show on Rams season shows players took blame for Jeff Fisher’s firing

Alden Gonzalez

http://www.espn.com/blog/los-angeles-rams/post/_/id/34122/all-or-nothing-showed-players-cared-for-jeff-fisher-blamed-firing-on-themselves

LOS ANGELES — One team official compared the streaming of Amazon’s latest “All or Nothing” series to “watching the Titanic sink.”

The Los Angeles Rams were bad in 2016, their first season back in Southern California, and the last thing they want to do is relive it all. It’s all available for public view now, though. And like a bad car crash, it is painstakingly difficult to look away.

“All or Nothing: A Season with the Los Angeles Rams” became available for streaming for Amazon Prime consumers on Friday. It is the second installment, following the chronicling of a far more successful 2015 Arizona Cardinals team last summer.

The series, produced by NFL Films and narrated by Jon Hamm, began with the move from St. Louis to Los Angeles in early 2016 and ended with the hiring of Sean McVay in early 2017. It included everything in between — the drafting of Jared Goff, the infamous “7-9 bulls—” speech, the demoralizing Monday Night Football loss, the 3-1 start, the sudden spiral, the sluggish offense and, most prominently, the Jeff Fisher firing.

Throughout, “All or Nothing” portrays a team that stuck together and often struggled with what became a nomadic 2016 calendar year. It gives one a sense for the insane hours the assistants put in and how drastically their lives change when a head coach is let go. It showed how much the players appreciated Fisher and how responsible they felt when he was dismissed.

Below are some of the new developments from the eight-episode series, which aired nearly a year after HBO followed the Rams through training camp with “Hard Knocks.”

Fisher’s apex: The Rams had easy motivation heading into their Week 4 game. It was against the Cardinals. “We don’t like these guys,” Fisher told his coaches in the week leading up to it. “Do not like these guys.” His staff feasted on that for motivation. In a meeting with his position group, defensive backs coach Dennard Wilson played a soundbite of Cardinals coach Bruce Arians from his postgame news conference after a win over the Rams in 2015, in which he said, “There’s an 11-3 team and a team that’s always 8-8. You figure it out.”

Said Wilson: “This m—–f—– does not respect you.”

The Rams implemented a quick-snap cadence called “cheetah,” which caught the Cardinals off guard and set the tone in their victory. They were 3-1 and coming off back-to-back road wins, in a position few would’ve foreseen. But Fisher sensed looming danger because his team was having a hard time stopping the run and getting it going on the ground.

“We’re frustrated right now — not at 3-1, but just frustrated because we have to do better,” Fisher told his coaches. “We stay doing what we’re doing. We’re not going to win another f—ing game.”

He had no idea he’d come so close to being right.

Goff’s chance: The show dispelled any thought Rams owner Stan Kroenke, or anybody else, pushed Fisher to start Goff in Week 11 against the Dolphins. Before the Week 10 game on the road against the Jets, Fisher broke the news to Kroenke himself. “Either way today, I’m going to go with the rook next week at home,” Fisher told him. Case Keenum was making his final start at quarterback that day and didn’t even know it.

In the next team meeting, after the announcement had been made, Fisher reminded everyone Keenum was voted a captain before the start of the season.

“You’re still a captain,” Fisher said to Keenum. “I want to thank you for your energy, your leadership, your commitment, your passion, your desire — everything you’ve done to this point.”

Downward spiral: As the weeks went on and the losses mounted, backup running back Benny Cunningham huddled the team together in the middle of the practice field.

“This is how I feed my family,” Cunningham told the rest of the team. “If we lose the rest of these games, guess what: I’m not going to have a job. You’re not going to have a job. You’re not going to have a f—ing job. So pick this s— up.”

The Rams never did, of course. They finished the season with seven straight losses. After a 3-1 start, they dropped 11 of 12. During one four-game stretch, they lost by a combined 93 points. Their most demoralizing loss came at home against the Falcons, who beat them 42-12 in Week 14, four days before the Rams had to travel to Seattle to play a Thursday night game. After the game, Fisher told the team, “If you care about each other, if you care about yourselves, if you care about me, you gotta suck it up.”

Veteran defensive end William Hayes then addressed the team.

“He put us before he put himself, and this is how we’re f—ing repaying him, man,” Hayes said. “Y’all don’t realize how f—ing good we have it, and then a new m—–f—– comes in, and he wants not one of you m—–f—–s around here.”

The firing: “All or Nothing” aired two Fisher meetings in the wake of his firing on Dec. 12: with the coaches and with the players.

“OK, you’re going to have some challenges this weekend with respect to injuries,” Fisher begins to tell the coaches. “Reggie [Scott, the head athletic trainer] will keep you abreast. Unfortunately I won’t be here this weekend. I was just fired.”

That’s it. Fisher said he would meet with the players at 11:30 and that they shouldn’t be told anything until then. The room was stunned and silent. Assistant coach Mike Singletary stood up, looked Fisher in the eyes, shook his hand firmly and said, “Thank you.” Later, the coaches all came up individually to hug him.

“I’m going to do my best to hold it together and thank the team,” Fisher said. “I appreciate everything you guys have done for this football team and for me and the loyalty that you’ve shown. It’s a freaking shock. Sorry if I let you guys down. You guys didn’t let me down. You busted your ass every single day for me.”

Below is the speech Fisher gave to the players …

“We’ve had some great team meetings over the years, man. Some great ones. This is one that you’re probably going to remember because I’m no longer your head coach. I just wanted to say that I love you guys. … I’m going to walk out of here with my head up high, and I want you guys to do me a favor: finish strong. And this becomes the end of my legacy here. I’m sorry if I let anybody down. I don’t think I did, nor did the coaches. But this business is based on wins and losses. I’ll tell you this: You have to cherish it every day. Every single day, you have to cherish it. Opportunity to play in this league, and be part of the National Football League, nothing better. Nothing better. Every single day, cherish it. Love your families, love each other. I love you guys. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But I’ll be fine. I’m going fishing.”

Rams COO Kevin Demoff then addressed the team. He said the team had great players, great coaches and it merely came down to the wins not being there often enough. He didn’t want them to carry any guilt, but they did. All-Pro punter Johnny Hekker spoke to the group while in tears and said they all ruined an opportunity with Fisher. Hayes, who spent eight of his seasons playing under Fisher on two teams, said: “That’s our f—ing fault, man. Y’all just lost the greatest thing next to this team. Y’all ain’t never going to play in front of a head coach like that.”

Carrying on after Fisher: Todd Gurley, his head down, was crying in the meeting when Fisher announced he had been fired. The Rams had three games left in their season, including a quick turnaround in Seattle, and the message to the players was to finish strong for their former head coach and their personal pride.

During one of the practices, offensive coordinator Rob Boras told Goff: “No matter who’s coaching you, these guys are gonna do whatever you tell them. It’s your team. I don’t care who the head coach is. I don’t care who the coordinator/position coach is. It’s your team. They’re gonna do what you tell them. So set the standard now.”

“I know,” Goff told him. “I’ve been thinking about it for weeks.”

Fisher, with a puppy in his arms, was standing in front of the gate at the team facility when the buses left for the airport a couple of days after his firing, saluting his former team. The Rams never won again. John Fassel, the special-teams coordinator who served as the interim coach, addressed the team after the final game, a 44-6 loss to the Cardinals. His voice cracked.

“For me, the past three weeks and the opportunity to be here in front of all you guys is an opportunity that I’ll never forget and an opportunity that I’ll never take for granted,” Fassel said. “And it just goes to show that at all times, you gotta be ready to jump in and do something that maybe you weren’t expected to do. And how you conduct yourself at all times matters. … I’m proud to be a Ram, men. I’m proud to be a Ram.”

McVay and Snead: At one point in the draft room, McVay turned to general manager Les Snead and said, “If the minicamp is any indicator, we hit on our free agents.” The series then showed Snead’s thought process for his eventual trade with the Bills, in which he moved down from 37th to 44th in order to attain an additional third-round pick. “You don’t want to pick early second [round] often,” Snead told McVay. “But when you’re picking early second, never fall in love with a player. You’ll always get an extra third[-round pick].”

McVay, barely three months into the job, later went around the room, reassuring Demoff about what they did in the second and third rounds and then addressing Kroenke. “This will be good,” he told him.

Fisher, in the aftermath: In the final episode, “All or Nothing” caught up with Boras, Hayes, Keenum, tight end Lance Kendricks and defensive coordinator Gregg Williams in their new cities. The series ends with Fisher, alongside his wife and two of his dogs, at his home a half-hour outside Nashville. He will be a grandfather in September, and because he won’t work in the NFL this season, he’ll get to be there when the baby is born.

“I gave it my best shot, had fun,” Fisher said. “Miss the players. That’s what I miss most right now is the players. But they’re staying in touch. I want to get back on the sidelines. Not going to happen this year, obviously, but we’ll just see what happens. In the interim, this is our life.”

I signed up for a free month of Amazon Prime and watched it.

It really is well done.

But, you have to be willing to re-live 2016.

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Interview With Keith Cossrow, All Or Nothing Showrunner
We got to speak with the man behind the show detailing the 2016 Los Angeles Rams

https://www.turfshowtimes.com/2017/6/30/15897496/interview-keith-cossrow-all-or-nothing-showrunner-los-angeles-rams

ll or Nothing Season 2

I had a chance to speak with Keith Cossrow, Coordinating Producer and showrunner for All or Nothing, NFL Films’ show about a year in the life of an NFL Franchise.

Last night, the second season of the show launched on Amazon Prime Video chronicling the Los Angeles Rams 2016 season.

I talked to Cossrow about the show, his role and how the series will move beyond Season 2.

How long have you been with NFL Films? Were you with the show from the conceptual phase prior to Season 1, and how did you come to be a part of this?

Yeah, I’ve been in charge of it from the get go, Season 1. I’ve been the showrunner for both seasons. I’ve been with NFL Films for 20 years since 1997, 20 seasons as we like to say.

So how did the idea of the show, prior to the Rams, how did that develop?

Since Hard Knocks was born, it was viewed as the Holy Grail. “When are you guys gonna do a Hard Knocks on the regular season?”

We always thought it was impossible, because the two things teams talk about most during the regular season are injuries and strategy. You just can’t show that stuff in real-time the way you do Hard Knocks where it’s the preseason with a different set of storylines that can be shared much easier.

So we thought, it’s never going to happen. And even if it does, it’s not going to be very good, because we won’t be able to show anything.

And then this [Arizona] Cardinals thing developed last year, and we started to figure out that maybe we could shoot the whole thing, not tell anybody because we didn’t know how it was gonna turn out, keep it a secret, put the whole thing together and then air the whole thing after the season was over betting that the content would be compelling enough and unique enough and the access would be extraordinary enough that people would be interested in watching it.

We found a partner in Amazon who aligned with that point of view and thought it would fit their audience and what they were looking to do with sports and original programming in the way they like to do on-demand streaming and bingeable content. We had never done a binge show before, so it was really exciting to get into this format with Amazon.

The rest is history.

We did the Cardinals season. It went spectacularly well. Amazon had great results, and it won the Emmy for Serialized Sports Documentary, and we were on to Season 2.

How did that transition work, going from the Cardinals to selecting the Rams? How did that happen?

Well, it’s always a challenge to pick a team whether it’s Hard Knocks or this.

Were you guys under the same constraints as Hard Knocks with the rules like no playoffs, no new head coach?

No, there are no rules for this. It’s so new…

The challenge last year was that nobody had seen the show when we were asking them if they want to do it. We said, “Well, we did this thing with the Cardinals, and it’s coming out soon.” You’re trying to get a team to agree to do it in the spring before they break up for the summer.

And they’re all like, “Are you crazy? The Cardinals didn’t do that.” And we’re, “But they did! We swear! It’s going to drop on July 1st, and it’s going to be really cool!” And teams were like, “Well, call us next year. If it goes well with the Cardinals, maybe we’ll think about it.”

But one thing that was a big priority for the league last year was to document the Rams move to Los Angeles. We thought that their return home to Southern California was an historic story as the first relocation in a generation. More than that, it was the Rams coming back to LA. And it was something we all knew we needed to document. So we started documenting it from the time the move was announced.

Obviously, Hard Knocks happened. Hard Knocks, from a production standpoint and a relationship standpoint, went really well with [Head] Coach [Jeff] Fisher and with the team. They were very comfortable with our crew and trusted us. So we all agreed it would be an interesting proposition to stick around.

The crew, the footprint is much smaller for All or Nothing. We managed to get through this entire second season without anyone knowing what we were doing. That’s in large part because of how small the crew is. It’s by design. We don’t want people talking about this show during the season if we can avoid it.

The Rams were terrific to work with from the top down. [COO] Kevin Demoff, [General Manager] Les Snead, Jeff Fisher and his staff. The players were great.

And you know, the season started so well, and we thought, “Holy moly. We might’ve caught lightning in a bottle for the second time.”

And then it took a turn, and things changed.

You said you like to pick a team in the spring. Have you picked one for Season 3?

Not yet. We’re working on it, talking to a few teams. Hopefully, we’ll have one lined up pretty soon. When we do, we’ll probably keep it quiet for a while.

But it’s a long process and a serious decision for a team to make. We have to respect that process and go through it and have a lot of conversations with a lot of teams to get there.

You mentioned the 3-1 start. Things looking good. Was there a sense of how things were going to go for the season overall? Did you notice anything different about the Rams compared to the Cardinals from the showrunner’s standpoint?

No, nor did our directors in the field, Shannon Furman or Pat Harris.

No, we thought this team had a lot of talent. Obviously, there were questions on the offensive side of the ball, but the defense was so good. And they were playing genuinely good football that first quarter of the season.

It’s interesting if you go back as you watch the show even through London and even beyond that with the Carolina game, they were losing every one of those games on the last possession. You know, they could have very easily been 5-2 heading into their bye after London.

We might have very easily been talking about a different season.

Yeah, the line really often times seems tenuous. I do wonder what makes the difference between a winning and losing team, especially with the Cardinals season on the NFL Network right now. It’s just so hard to perceive the difference between a winning team and a losing team off the field.

Isn’t that so interesting though? I think that’s one of the real mysteries of the show is how fine that line is in the NFL.

We start this season out with the notion that what you’re about to see happens to 7 or 8 teams every year. And it’s not that these teams don’t have good players. It’s not that their coaches aren’t working their asses off every second of the day, sleeping in the office. It’s not that they’re not brilliant football coaches. They’re the very best in the world at this.

Twenty teams don’t make the playoffs! That is by definition a failure in this league where the expectation is to win every year. Thirty-one teams aren’t going to reach the ultimate goal. Twenty aren’t going to make the playoffs, and about a quarter of them are going to fire their entire coaching staff. Every single year.

And when you stop to consider that, you start to realize how much is at stake for these guys every single day when they come to work. Because if things don’t go well, lives are going to be upended. Families are going to have to relocate. Careers are going to end. It’s a totally different world when you begin to understand it from that perspective.

That’s why the title of the series is All or Nothing.

Yeah, I appreciated the framing with Fisher’s firing up front to start the entire season almost like Sunset Boulevard where we know what’s going to happen but it’s the process that’s most interesting.

I think people are going to walk into this wondering, “Are we going to see what happens really with Jeff Fisher and the coaching staff?” I think there’s that element of the elephant in the room, so I think it was important to give the audience a glimpse of that right out of the gate.

But you know, to go back to your original question about noticing anything different, the answer really is, “No.”

You probably experienced it binge-watching it, there’s not a moment where it’s like, “Oh man, it’s over.” They’re 3-1, and then they lose a close game, and then they lose another close game. It’s not like they did anything different. One different play each of those games and you’re 5-2 or 6-1.

That’s the NFL. It’s that close.

Instead, you’re 3-4. Your offense is really struggling. You’ve got a fan base that wants to see their rookie quarterback. And all of the sudden, things start changing. A couple more losses on top of that, and now you’re starting to get desperate.

It’s not like you feel like you’re watching a train wreck. It’s all unfolding in real time almost in slow motion as a viewer.

Yeah, it’s not like a train wreck. It’s more like a slow train derailment.

How much stuff did you guys have to leave on the cutting room floor either by your decision or by request from the team?

Not that much. Being able to air it six months after the season gives us an opportunity to air so much more of what happens.

I think it’s more a balance of trying to figure out what is going to make the most compelling story for an audience. If you go too heavy on the strategy and the Xs and Os, you’re going to lose a lot of the audience, the casual fans. If you ignore all of the football, then you’re going to lose you, the avid fan.

We want to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. We want people who are tuning into Amazon to watch Catastrophe or The Man in the High Castle to want to watch this show. You want to appeal to broad audience that loves premium television or content in that serialized, addictive, character-driven storytelling. That’s what we’re aiming to do here.

So you’re trying to hit a lot of categories at once. That’s the balance. It’s not really a question of, “We better leave this bit of strategy on the cutting room floor because it didn’t work out.” It’s more just that we don’t want to bore you. We want you to be interested in what happens next.

It’s a balance. The whole show’s a balance.

Clearly, a big part of the story was just about the return of the NFL to Los Angeles, something that was both new and familiar at the same time. Did you guys pick up on anything from the city, the market that was distinct, on how LA was reacting to the Rams and not just the other way around?

I think everybody noticed in that first month that there was genuine excitement. When they filled the Coliseum for that Seattle game and you had the [Red Hot] Chili Peppers playing…

We made a decision to cover that game as if it was a playoff game. We mic’ed more people than we probably ever have in a regular season game between the players, wives and coaches. So we really covered that game, and I think it shows. We spent about 15 minutes on that game.

The excitement was genuine. LA was ready for that team and for football, and I think LA was really responding. When you see Case Keenum going in to be on Ryan Seacrest’s show with his wife, they were riding high.

But it’s LA. There’s a lot to do there. If you’re not winning, they’re going to find something else to do. The imperative in LA is that you have to win pretty consistently. Every sports team in that town knows that. The Rams are no exception, and the Chargers will find that out pretty quickly.

Once you get there, you have to win.

What have you guys as a production team learned from these first two seasons that you’re going to do differently moving forward?

Good question.

We’re constantly learning. From Year 1 to Year 2, this show got technically much better.

We had a lot more cameras in the right places that allowed us to capture, say, the day Jeff Fisher was let go. That made a huge difference. We had more cameras on the practice field, more players and coaches mic’ed up during practice.

We shoot everything from a distance. We try not to be up in everybody’s face, because we don’t want them to be aware of us. We really want to be the proverbial flies on the wall. “You guys have your football season.

We’ll be here off to the side documenting it.” You can always get better at that, but that’s sort of been our project at NFL Films for 55 years: how to capture these people and their lives as a team doing their thing as well as it can possibly be captured.

We’re constantly looking for better ways to do things. We’re already investigating better ways to capture sound in those meeting rooms and some other technical advancements that will help us in Season 3. We’re always looking for ways to improve the product.

One of the areas of improvement this year from Season 1 to Season 2, we didn’t have a camera in the Cardinals’ coaches booth until very late in Season 1. We knew from Hard Knocks that those add a lot, add a dimension. We got a camera in the coaches booth in the playoffs in the Arizona series in the last couple of episodes.

But here, we got a camera in the coaches booth very early in the season, and we kept it there the entire season, home and on the road. It’s very complex to rig those up in every different stadium the team travels to. But you can see watching it how valuable those shots are.

Those moments when they lose the game in Detroit and you sit there with [Offensive Coordinator] Rob Boras in that booth after Case Keenum throws an interception at the end on a pass attempt to Lance Kendricks and you sit there with Boras as he actually apologizes to the other coaches in the booth and then just sits there for like a minute…

you’re right at that moment at a place that it’s impossible to not understand how much these people care, how hard they’ve worked, how much they’ve invested and how much is at stake for all of them in these games.

You know, we sit there at home. We watch these games. We scream at our TVs. We want to call up the radio station or write on our blogs and in our papers this coach has got to get fired and that coach isn’t up to the job. When you actually see these guys do the job in a moment like that?

How helpless they are that far from the field? When they call a play and it gets executed and it doesn’t go right? It’s excruciating. And it can’t help but change your perspective of all this a little bit.

I’m surprised. When you talked about what you learned, I thought you guys would have learned to watch out for falling goalposts with the wind.

(I was alluding to a moment in episode 6 where heavy winds blew some goalposts down; it’s also the episode in which Fisher got fired.)

We learned a lot. How about that day with the wind all in the middle of everything…

You know, show 6. Here’s one thing to note with that episode. We anticipated that some people are going to want to tune in and just watch that episode for obvious reasons. So we did construct that episode in such a way that it can stand on its own.

Even if you haven’t watched the first five, you can watch that one and get it. Now I think if you take the time to watch the first five and understand how they arrive at that moment when Jeff Fisher is fired, I think you’ll get a lot more out of it.

On one level, that was something we thought might be pretty important with that episode that it be a standalone episode. We know it’s the moment that people are going to talk about most and remember.

You know, nobody ever told us to stop rolling the cameras that day. And that’s a testament to our directors Shannon Furman and Pat Harris and the crew that was on site that day that Coach Fisher and the team trusted them to that degree.

Having the cameras where they are, you’re able to not be in the room with them and just roll. We operate those cameras remotely. And I think what emerged is something very powerful.

There’s been a lot of these access shows over the years, 24/7, Hard Knocks, other sports that have dipped their toes into the all-access waters. A lot of them have been excellent. But there’s never been a show until All or Nothing that spends every day of an entire season with the team. This season, we shot 1,200 hours with the Rams.

When you get to that moment and you build up the trust and the relationship, they’re used to it. They trust. They’re going about their business, and we’re able to capture something none of those shows have ever captured. I don’t think any show has ever captured a coach being fired in the middle of the season.

And it’s not just the moment that Jeff Fisher gets fired that’s important. It’s the fallout. It’s what happens after he leaves the room, and you’re left in this silence with this group of people who now have to pick up the pieces and are, really, traumatized. It’s a horrible moment in all of their lives. And you have to handle it very carefully.

Our goal is to show the world a side of the NFL that no one has ever seen, but to do it in such a way that humanizes all of these people and gives us an opportunity to understand the life that they’ve chosen. How challenging it is. What’s at stake for them. What can happen when it does go bad, when a coach does get fired.

When you see the emotional response, I would think it’s pretty powerful for everybody.

NFL Films explains omission of Jeff Fisher’s firing from All or Nothing

Mike Florio

NFL Films explains omission of Jeff Fisher’s firing from All or Nothing

When it comes to the firing of Rams coach Jeff Fisher and its aftermath, the second season of All or Nothing was closer to all than nothing. Still, as to the actual firing of Fisher, we got nothing.

NFL Films coordinating producer Keith Cossrow recently explained the omission of the actual Fisher firing from the eight-hour extravaganza.

“I think anyone who understands the nature of documentary filmmaking knows that it’s impossible to capture everything,” Cossrow told Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times. “You can have 10 cameras rolling 24/7 and you would still miss a thousand important moments. That’s just the nature of the beast. So I think the fact that [director] Shannon [Furman] and the crew were able to capture so much of what happened the day Coach Fisher was fired, and that no one ever told us to turn off the cameras once they were rolling, is an extraordinary achievement and a testament to the job they did in the field building trust with the team.”

It would have been obvious, however, if the cameras had turned off during the various meetings that happened as Fisher revealed his fate to coaches and players, and after Fisher made his exit. And people like me would now be pointing out that the Rams/NFL had restricted the process of capturing the tense, emotional, and chaotic moments that occur as a coach makes an unexpected exit.

So it’s hard to give the Rams and the league credit for not avoiding one of the obvious potential consequences of having cameras and microphones present for a full football season. And it’s even harder to simply shrug at the failure of the show to catch the defining moment of the season by saying “it’s impossible to capture everything.”

Indeed, inherent limitations to the filming process made it impossible to capture the firing of Fisher.

“We don’t have cameras in the coach’s office at all, and that’s one difference between Hard Knocks and All or Nothing,” Furman told Farmer. “After the Falcons game, Coach Fisher and [assistant head coach Dave McGinnis] were together on Monday morning, prepping for the Seattle game. They were in Coach Fisher’s office. I touched base with Coach Fisher, and then left to grab a smoothie for breakfast. I got a phone call from my production assistant who works the robotics cameras, and he asked, ‘How far away are you?’ I said, ‘I can be there in three minutes.’ He said, ‘Coach just told the staff he was fired.’”

In other words, if they’d had cameras in the coach’s office during All or Nothing — cameras that routinely document the firing of players during Hard Knocks — we may have seen the Fisher firing or, at a minimum, the moment when he got word to go to someone else’s office to get the news. And if the trust built with the Rams was truly significant, Kevin Demoff or someone else in upper management would have tipped someone off to the looming termination, allowing them to plan for covering it properly, up to and including lobbying to have a camera in the room where the firing took place.

As a result, the moment wasn’t expressly censored during or after the fact. The infrastructure of the show essentially pre-censored it.

Of course, that explanation doesn’t account for the failure of the show to mention that Fisher’s contract extension, which apparently had been signed months earlier and deliberately concealed from the public, was leaked and then announced not long before he was fired. Likewise, Cossrow’s explanation doesn’t address for the absence of any mention of the reports of internal dysfunction that emerged days before Fisher was fired or his subsequent vow to find the leaker.

None of this changes the fact that All or Nothing was, all in all, entertaining most of the time and flat-out compelling in certain key spots. But it could have been better. If enough people point that out this time around, maybe the next time they do the show it will be.

CraigMatson wrote:

There was a lot I got from watching all the episodes.

Those injuries to Hayes Quinn and Tru Johnson killed them in the Buff and Detroit games.

Case played better when the gameplan was up tempo and Gurly was used as a receiver.
He absolutely had a great game against Detroit,

Brian Quick should have had a great year but flubbed some plays against The Giants at the end and in Seattle that made both Keenum and Goff look bad.

Goff looks like he just doesn’t have the fire in his heart to get his troops up. Sorry I believe he’s going to have to be exceptional in other important areas of preparation recognition and execution because personality wise he comes across as a more of a nice guy softie follower type rather than a captain that is going to push anyone hard.

I also think defences will continue to attempt chopping the ball out so he is going to need to build up awareness and hand strength.

Tree is athlete at MLB and if the Rams get up On teams enough to force more passing plays they will play to his strength.

Neither he or Barron are great in run support in a 4-3 set and could be even worse as inside backers in a 3-4 so its a bit scary.

Brockers role in run defence this year will be colossal along with Barwins.

The injury to Bennie Cunningham and failure to have a productive 3rd back or consistent running game from Gurly was a huge part of the sub 500 season.

There were however flashes of heart and burst from Gurley on the wet turf in the Dolphin game. ..?? Maybe they should wet the field down for him more.

I really wanted to get the inside dope on the foible on the Detroit goaline. ..They skipped it like it never happend . There must have been loads of over the top language or specific blame that had to be cut to avoid embarrassment.

Fassels personality is very unique and he does connect with his troops well, and just seems to be one of the guys.He instructs well, is somewhat light in his meetings brings some fun with the focus DOJO Fridays: ) for example with headbands and power quotes and film study.
He has the ability to keep his charges attention and precision up.

Plus he had lovely footage with his wife and kids. A lot of the show was family orientated and that was great.

Groh, Wienke and Boras personalities or methods all seemed a stitch off what was needed .
I thought much more of Groh going into training camp but of the three he seemed the least invested and between he and Boras first of them to become enraged in the pressbox when something went wrong.Position meetings shown with him underwhelmed and that surprised.

I think some may come away believing a bit more in Weinkes competency.

More I could say but I’ll finish with episode 8 leaving me with good feeling for future.