Time to fire Fisher.

TrenchRam wrote:

Part of building a winning team, however, is acquiring enough depth to remain competitive when injuries inevitably occur. One of Fisher’s problems IMO is a lack of balance in managing the roster. Look at the D. Star players are injured in every unit, but there’s incredible depth there and the D is still playing very well.

The offense has no depth anywhere except at RB. This is a theme. Fisher repeatedly goes into seasons with drastically sub-par starting units (Pead/Richardson), the (almost) all-rookie OL, our receiving corps (who played above their heads last year and made him look like a successful gambler, but have reverted to form this year) and no depth behind them.

I don’t know if it’s Fisher or Snead, but they suck at evaluating offensive talent. Gurley and Austin are their only real hits. Fisher seems to have a real weaknesses for impressive athletes who aren’t good football players on the offensive side of the ball: Cook, Britt, Quick, Robinson, Foles (a good trade, but a bad decision on the long-term deal) etc. I don’t foresee this changing, and I agree that the keep-it-close-and-hope-for-a-big-play philosophy is unlikely to produce anything better .500 mediocrity.

I would have fired him after last season.

Well, apparently, Fisher relies on a FIVE year
plan, Trench 🙂

Sigh.

Year five, comin up.

w
v

wv wrote:

TrenchRam wrote:

Part of building a winning team, however, is acquiring enough depth to remain competitive when injuries inevitably occur.

wv wrote:

Well, apparently, Fisher relies on a FIVE year
plan, Trench

AND that’s not real. When entire units are wiped out, particularly the OL, no one in the league…no one…has the depth to make up for that. Not to make up for multiple simultaneous injuries. That was the case with the Rams in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2014.

Really, look around league history and point out all the teams that thrived on offense after losing multiple OL starters at the same time.

In other words, this is one of those things people say as if it’s true, but then can’t demonstrate that it’s true. Namely, the good teams have depth number. No, they don;t, as a rule, if an entire unit gets compromised.

Imagine for example if next year they lost Quinn, Donald, Brockers, Fairley, and Hayes. Do you think any team would have the depth to make up for that? Well that’s what happened to the Rams OL several times over the years.

Actually (IMO) it was a 3 year plan and it was working. Until 2014, which wiped out the OL and cost them Bradford. That’s a lot to make up for.

2015 was starting over. It was year 1 of that offense.

And btw as I said before, people can still say I don’t care I don’t like Fisher anyway. So it’s not as if this discussion can settle the issues.

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Zooey wrote:

The OL has just been Guernica.

Yeah and we remember the old days, long ago, when the Rams OL was just an endless list of healthy pro bowlers

I also think that Fisher’s penchant for gambling on potential rather relying on proven production on O is an enormous and undeniable problem. I’m not a draftnik at all, but I was really worried about the Robinson pick when they made it because everything I read talked about his athleticism and his upside. There was very little buzz about how he played football. Spending a #2 pick on upside is IMO almost always a stupid move. Even if it pays off at times, the percentages are low. This offense if full of athletes that have never shown more than flashes of the ability to actually play football at a high level.

You don’t see that at all on the D. They seem to have a real knack for finding the guys who can play. Donald is the anti-Robinson. Measureables scared other teams away, but the Rams took him because of how he plays football. Compare Hayes and Barron to Cook and Britt; Sims to Quick. Wherever you look, there seems to be a real willingness to invest in potential on O. It really looks to me like a very different approach to me – not just different results.

My view of Fisher is that if Foles had been what we thought he was based on 2014, then they win 2-3 more games.

But my view of the team is, if they replace him, the new guy inherits a lot. It would be similar to Harbaugh going to SF and inheriting a pro bowl team in terms of talent.

Still, I favor continuity. Plus of course unlike Linehan JF did not lose the team. The team believes in him. And also, GW is the best defensive coordinator the Rams have had (IMO) since Malavasi, Carson, and Shurmur. It would be a pity to lose THAT, I think.

I see the argument being made that Fisher has a primitive offense, but I never buy that take. My view is always this–if you have the personnel and can execute, you can win with a variety of different offenses in the NFL. The OL has to mature, they have to execute, and it would help if they had a consistently decent qb. But that kind of offense wins. Plus, I don’t think the critics are right about what that offense IS. The offense is supposed to do more than just pound it out and throw short. It’s supposed to set up a number of big plays per game, and not just passing and not just off of play action.

I also never count the record as a sole and absolute reason for anything. I always want to know WHY the record is the record. Is it a good team held back by this or that circumstances, or is it actually a weak team? Like I said, if Foles pans out the way he was supposed to (and he was not going to be Tom Brady, he was supposed to just be effective) then this team is ALREADY a winning team. There’s always contexts. For example, Linehan too had to deal with massive qb and OL injuries, and I acknowledged then that those kinds of injuries—to that extent—make it difficult to play. But I didn’t care, there were reasons I didn’t like Linehan as a HC anyway. To me Fisher is the opposite of Linehan. He has had to deal with the same bad circumstances but I actually think he IS an effective HC. Either way, to me, if you’re analyzing a head coach, contexts count. Otherwise, to me anyway, you’re not really accounting for what’s there.

Having said all that, this time in 99 I was very passionate about keeping Vermeil.

With Fisher, I will defend him (and actually I don’t ever see the criticisms of him I myself have). But if they replace him, I won’t lament it, because the new guy—assuming he’s any good—inherits so much that it has the chance of being one of those illusory quick turnarounds you see in the NFL. That’s where the new coach is supposed to be the absolute reason for the turnaround when the fact is a lot of it is because he inherited a team loaded with good talent.

I think the Fisher critics have a lot of passion invested in their position. I don’t agree with them, and the passion sometimes makes discussion go off the rails, but, I do believe the Rams are set up well no matter what happens with the coach next year. So to me there’s no such thing as a Fisher diehard. Most of the people I see defending Fisher would be okay with a good replacement, too. Either way.

wv wrote:

Prettymuch agree with all that.

But what are YOUR criticisms of Fisher?

“…With Fisher, I will defend him (and actually I don’t ever see the criticisms of him I myself have). But if they replace him, I won’t lament it, because the new guy—assuming he’s any good—inherits so much..”

w
v

My BIG criticism? He was too inconsistent in what they were doing because he gave too much rope to his coordinators.

So for example, he never should have let Schott talk him into running a spread offense in 2013 with those receivers and Richardson at RB.

They start that year with play action and a real back and they would have been strong.

It is true that he fixed things overnight in that case, with only Bradford’s injury tripping that up.

And letting GW run wild in 2014 from the get-go was not such a hot idea either. GW claimed to know the team and what they could do but he obviously didn’t. If they were just playing basic solid defense from the get-go in 2014 they would have won in spite of having a mash unit OL and Davis and Hill at qb.

I also do not like the mickey mouse stuff like the coin toss against Washington. And letting the team be so chippy and self-destructive early on in the Finnegan days. And of course he is way too loyal to his guys, like Cook. He believes he can right those guys, but then, he overestimates his power to do that sometimes.

BUT for me, that’s all alongside some very good things. And the criticisms do not overbalance the good things, for me.

IMO the worst Fisher attribute is bad luck.

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