Leadership & Adversity

Don’t ask me to care about the ridiculous flag thrown on Kendricks. A HC with any integrity would have said that after the game.

Did the call matter? Sure. It killed us. But the blame for that doesn’t lie with the damn ref.

Look at the sequence from the AZ point of view. They …
– Had been frustrated offensively all day
– Lost their franchise QB to an ACL
– Given up a bad INT in scoring position
– Given up a long return on the INT
– Given up a long pass into the Red Zone
– Given up a 1 down in FG range even after the bogus flag

OK, how did AZ respond?

– A stop with a sack driving us out of FG range
– A long TD from a backup QB
– A defensive surge with 3 turnovers
– 2 TD returns off a fumble and INT
– In the end, a blow out win

That’s how a well led team responds to adversity.

Adversity in any area tests leadership. Good leaders thrive in adversity. Sports teams. Armies in battle. Corporations. Any field of endeavor. Leadership brings up the heads of members of an organization and leads them to thrive.

A group that collapses as readily as the Rams are doing is a group that is poorly led. A group that thrives under duress with limited talent, as AZ is doing, is superbly led. We SAW it on SUN. AZ was led by an actual, honest-to-God coach, and it showed. The Rams were led by … Jeff Fisher. A fraud.

A coach, a real coach, leaving that game would not tolerate the slightest discussion of the flag on Kendricks, not in pressers and not in the locker room. He would have sent a clarion message to the world, his team’s fans, and his team. We lost that game because we collapsed after a tiny pin prick of adversity. Even AFTER THE FLAG we had 1st down in FG range to extend our 4th Q lead. A real coach would have told the world that a team that allowed itself to be defeated by one flag was a team that didn’t understand how to win. Such a coach might have said it diplomatically or harshly. But he would NEVER have indulged himself in whinging about a single play. It’s the oldest cliche in coaching. I’ve been personally led by A HS coach who knew enough to say, “We didn’t lose the game on 1 play.” The way the Rams fell apart Sunday was utterly unacceptable from a team comprising professionals paid to compete.

I’ve been saying it now for a couple of months. Fisher is failing. He is coaching a team mired in failure and he lacks the ability to turn things around. His leadership is being overwhelmed by the slightest moments of adversity. 2014 is a failure. Fisher has led this failure. He has squandered opportunities to achieve some progress because he has failed to lead his players to compete under duress. It’s time he spoke up, on the record, about his failure and that of his staff instead of whining about flags. It’s time he said what good football coaches throughout history have said: “What we are doing is not good enough. It’s not acceptable. We have to do better. It has to be on us, not on a referee’s flag.”

Next year? It won’t be a matter of talent acquisition, other than somehow finding a decent QB. We have plenty of talent. Put Bruce Ariens in our locker room and I promise we’d have won 4-5 games this year even without Bradford. We won’t be competitive until we have a coach who can lead us to deal with adversity. And Fisher has forgotten how to do that.