Key chapter in the Fisher Era

wv wrote:

For better or worse, rightly or wrongly, I figure
Kroenke will give Fisher a fifth
year, as long as he hovers around .500 this year.

I mean, a change now, might make things worse. Ya know.
The players know this system — would they play better
if they had to learn a new system?

At any rate, yeah, the team has an opportunity
here to make a run. If they dont, I’m gonna
be quite disappointed. They have the talent.

Run Gurley, run Tavon, dont turn it over.

w
v

sometimes change can be good though. i’d guess that a lot of it would depend on who was available. i mean wouldn’t just make a change to make it but if there was a good young candidate available i would consider it.

but it’s too soon to even consider something like that.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 2 months ago by InvaderRam.

InvaderRam wrote:

if there was a good young candidate available i would consider it.

but it’s too soon to even consider something like that.

To be fair. And painfully honest. Though I am not aiming this at anyone in particular. It’s just an impression of mine.

But, historically, I have found that discussing coaching candidates is by far the least valuable thing posters do, as a rule. They just have no idea, really. They just rely on what the media knows, and the media knows nothing. For example see if you can think of anyone who in advance named a long list of successful coaches, like McCarthy or Arians. It’s just not something we posters do well.

Here;s the way I see it. Fwiw.

So far they have played 4 teams PFF ranks in the top 10: Green Bay (1), Arizona (6), Seattle (7), Pittsburgh (9). They beat 2 of them.

The same 4 teams all have top 10 defenses: Green Bay (6), Arizona (7), Pittsburgh (9), and Seattle (10).

3 of those teams have top 10 offenses: Arizona (1), Green Bay (5), and Pittsburgh (10).

So as I said they won 2, and in the other 2, they were actually visibly in the games and in fact the games were there for the taking.

They did that with a new coordinator, a new qb, and a new young OL which, as any new young OL would be, is struggling. Their receivers are not in sync, and they only had Gurley for 2 of the games.

Young OLs do get more in sync, the qb will get more in sync, there’s Gurley, and the receivers can settle down.

If even some of that happens, a team with as much working against as the Rams had in the 1st 4 games will be….to use the simplest, most obvious word…better.

A team that played like that in the first games while stumbling over their own deficits and problems has a good future. All they have to do is get more in sync in a couple of areas, and so stop beating themselves.

It’s here, it’s arriving, you can see the postman at the mailbox.

NewMexicoRam wrote:

Yep, the players know Fisher’s system well.

Stuck at .500 play over the last 3 1/2 years.

My view is that that is not the coach. Fact is they had back-up qbs for 25 of those games, and multiply injured OLs for 28 of them. The times when they had a running threat, a relatively healthy OL, and a starting-caliber qb they did well. Actually though that’s only 11 of 48 games. In those 11 games they were 6-4-1 and that included 6 games against top 10 defenses.

As I said elsewhere, they built a line in 2012/13 and it got injured.

I always think it’s a mistake to not account for crucial things like (multiple, simultaneous) OL injuries.

An equivalent would be a young line. Do you think Foles and the Rams in general would have done better so far if they had a solid, veteran line to start with? Like they had in 2013. Well it’s the same thing from 2012-14, except it’s multiple injuries and not youth, and except for it’s mostly not Foles-level qbs, and also except it’s across 37 games.

.

wv wrote:

InvaderRam wrote:

that’s pretty much how i feel. as of now, i’m happy with him as the head coach. and i fully expect this team to finish with a winning record.

but i might feel differently when the season ends and no progress has been made.

—————————-

Sometimes it just depends who’s available. I mean
if Sid Gillman or Bill Walsh is available,
I’d probly be in favor of a change, myself.

My own view of Fisher is on record — I think
he can definitely build a “winning team” ie.,
a team that can win a division. I just dont
know if he can be more than a Shottenheimer-Chuck-Knox
type. I dunno.

My biggest concern is with his ideas about Offense.
I am not sure about his notions in regard to the
passing-game. I dunno.

w
v

ummm. yeah. i don’t know either. should be an exciting next 11 games.

Well, I just thought I’d put in my 45 cents. (Hey–inflation!)

I don’t know if folks have an accurate sense of my view of Fisher. I don’t consider myself a basher. I am not committed to removing him. Some folks in this thread do well to say, yeah, but who would replace him? And I can easily imagine worse.

I think his greatest contribution is to stabilize an organization. I dunno know much about what he did in TENN, but I understand stability under transitional duress is a big part of his success there. With us, he has established team stability under a lot of duress. That’s important.

My biggest problem with him is different from what seems to come through to folks reading my stuff. It is not about W/L record. Never has been.

It’s about his failure to lead the Rams as a team to play with discipline and consistency at or near their ceiling. They just do not compete at a high level in relationship to their talent and capability.

I think that’s damning to a guy making a claim to be a quality HC.

And, one more time, albeit briefly, I recall last year. When Sam went down, a winning W/L record probably went out the window. But even WITHOUT SAM, our defense, which was talented and not injury-riddled, was a roller coaster ride of performance. And we repeatedly lost games from winning positions.

That’s not something that can be blamed on injuries to QB or OL. It’s on the team’s discipline and performance. And in football, a coach’s game, that falls on the HC.

Looking ahead … he needs to establish his ability to lead a team to play at or near its ceiling on a consistent basis. He has not done it yet and hasn’t done it this year.

WV’s original post is right. This year is his test. He needs to raise the PERFORMANCE level of the team on a consistent basis. There is reason to hope, but I’m pretty doubtful that we won’t continue to see the same old mistake-riddled, undisciplined gyrations of performance that we’ve seen this year and the 3 foregoing years.

If that continues, he needs to go. And, again, I’m not putting a W/L record on it. Hell, we may get more injuries. But I want to see a team that competes every damn week, even if we lose. (And BTW, we competed against GB in a sense, but not really. We shot ourselves in every limb we had.) It Fisher cannot get this team to play its heart out every week, he doesn’t deserve to be a HC.

Of course, Zooey is right. Doesn’t matter what happens–Stan won’t fire him. When I say “He would need to go,” I am under no delusion that it would actually happen.

wv wrote:

Assuming for a moment you are right about them being “undisciplined”,
do you think Fisher trades “fierceness” for discipline ?

w
v

I don’t. No.

The ill discipline I see is about execution breakdowns. Consider the challenge of stopping the run. If we were a fierce team, we ought to be able to do that consistently. But half the team, we play 3 across the front and everybody just wanders off. When that is happening, the guys aren’t playing fiercely. They’re scurrying around in a daze.

Seriously. Do you ever get the sense in one of our bad games that we played too fiercely? I don’t. I get the sense that we weren’t ready to play.

And BTW, this is all different from the little I remember of TENN under Fisher. That team did play fiercely, as I recall it. And you knew you were in for it. Only in a few scattered games have Rams under Fisher seemed like that.

I just get the sense that he is coasting. Half the team, his team sure as hell is.