Where do you stand on Fisher as of now?

Disappointed, but he and his buddy get to keep their heads.

“Where do you stand on Fisher as of now”?

I’m standing on his neck, I think.

Yelling, quite loudly, ” Now! Now is the time to put together a winning season, and a playoff berth”!

Very excited when they hired him, great expectations for sure. The past is what it is, I guess. I can forgive the losing seasons where injuries certainly had a major impact on the ability to win. Starting QB lost for almost 2 seasons, OL getting hit hard. Timing was bad, as well. The injuries happened at a time when the division was going from weak to very strong. Mebbe in a weaker division the injuries would not hurt quite as bad. Dunno about that either. Hindsight being what it is, acknowledged.

I am slightly concerned about the various opinions of him being ” too soft”, and an average 8-8 coach, though. I do like a coach that creates a good locker room, and is well liked and respected by the players. More so than a disciplinarian.

If they are able to get through this season injury free, then I guess the Emporers clothes will be there (or not) for all to see, and we’ll have a better understanding of where the team really is.

They’ve got a good base, I think. My glass is always half full, so I am looking forward to a decent season.

But still, with my boot on his neck.

I’m still all in with Fisher though with the pick of Gurley I’m warily optimistic.

I think Fisher protects his players so much in preseason and plays so basic that in effect, the first game of the regular season is another preseason game. I think this puts him behind, cause winning game one is just as important as any other game. They all count one game.

zn wrote:

Agamemnon wrote:

I think Fisher protects his players so much in preseason and plays so basic that in effect, the first game of the regular season is another preseason game. I think this puts him behind, cause winning game one is just as important as any other game. They all count one game.

Fwiw, I am actually one of those who doesn’t endorse the holds back/starts slow argument. I think if you look at the last 2 seasons, the reasons for not being at least 2-2 before game 5 has to do with other stuff.

We disagree then. No big thing.

I judge him from a different standpoint, I think, than many of you might do. I am not worried about W/L as such.

I think a HC is responsible for 1 thing: running an organization that prepares and leads a bunch of guys to compete with discipline, competitiveness, and consistency. To lift a group of individual players to play at or above their ceiling, individually and as units. This will lead to wins. How many will depend on resources. A HC at a mid-table college may not have the resources to beat the dominant programs, but he can run a program that consistently finds the synergy to compete as well as it possibly can.

In this regard, I am deeply disappointed in Fisher. When he came in, I thought he would excel in that area. I figured that, during the rebuilding process, he would establish a team identity that was “winning,” that would maximally utilize talent and convert opportunities at a high level.

In this I think Fisher has been remarkably unsuccessful. I think he has developed a very poor track record with the Rams in terms of competitive discipline.

That’s a big reason why I go on about my obsessions. When people say, “I don’t blame him for losing with all the injuries, yadda, yadda,” I think that misses the point. I don’t blame him for missing the playoffs last year after Sam and Long went down.

I do blame him for fielding an erratic team. You’ve heard my arguments ad nauseum. But I’ll just mention one.

EVEN WITH THE INJURIES … we held winning positions in several early games last year. Then we collapsed and got blown out in the same games.

Well-coached teams don’t do that. Well-coached defenses with near-elite talent don’t play as erratically and inconsistently as ours did. And you can’t argue injuries or playing rookies for our defense. Our 2 best defenders last year were rookies and the defense as a whole had a lot of experience. Fisher failed to coach that team to maximize its best assets, minimize its liabilities, and battle for every game.

The fact is that, despite all the injuries and problems, we were probably a dozen plays from making the playoffs last year. This is what WV was on about in his thread of the other day. But for me, the real diagnosis has little to do with freak big plays and far more to do with team discipline. A competitively disciplined team with the defensive talent we had would not have lost those winning positions against DAL and SF. And even with the injuries, we would have been on the cusp of the playoffs.

That’s what I hold Fisher responsible for.

I think Fisher has a lot of virtues as a coach. He’s good with players. He doesn’t panic when things go bad. I think he has a quality vision of winning football.

But I have yet to see him run a Ram team out there that had its shit together and said to its opponents, “You’re going to have to beat us. We ain’t gonna beat ourselves.” That’s a pretty damning indictment of a head coach.

rfl wrote:

For me, last season was screwed the minute Bradford went down.

I would just note, again, that even with the injuries we held winning positions well into a number of games in the 1st half of the season, only to collapse.

Bradford’s injury hurt badly. But, we let down our own demonstrated abilities as well. Discipline could have won a couple of more games.

You’re right. However all coaches have bad games. Fisher’s best game last season (my opinion) was beating Seattle in St. Louis. Yet that game was a bad one for Carroll who took his team to the super bowl the past two years. The loss to San Diego last season is the one that still makes me mad and supports your position.

wv wrote:

We been waiting a long time RFL — I’m tellin ya, this is our year 🙂
Top seven D. Efficient O. Great Special teams. Playoffs.
You’ll see.

w
v

LOL. Well, I hope to hell you’re right! It’d be nice for the Rams to earn respect again.

i’ll say this for fisher and snead. they’ve added a whole helluva lot of talent to this roster. the rgiii trade was brilliant. they’ve got a defense stocked with explosive athletes. a strong backfield (at least on paper). they managed to trade for a solid qb prospect.

not so great at wide receiver. but then. that’s pretty much met my expectations considering this is fisher. still. there’s some promise there as well as on the offensive line.

have to get the results on the field though.

wv wrote:

rfl wrote:

Whether or not it’s disagreement, I think we see it differently.

I am often skeptical of “trajectory” arguments in general. I think that, each year, numerous teams are either better or worse than a “trajectory” projection from the previous year would suggest.

Ok. Always a pleasure reading your thoughts, RFL. We probably see some
things differently, sure.

I’ll tell ya, the Giant game and the Cardinal game were major disappointments for me.
Really annoying. The Seattle game…well, playing Seattle in Seattle is just a nightmare
so i didnt expect much in that one.

We been waiting a long time RFL — I’m tellin ya, this is our year
Top seven D. Efficient O. Great Special teams. Playoffs.
You’ll see.

w
v

Although the NYG and Arizona game annoyed me,the KC and Eagles game really burned me up.After the Dallas game I felt that Davis was obviously in over his head.To me that was a disturbing trend by Fisher to be loyal to a fault in the wrong player i.e. Wells and that turnstile guard Joseph and it ended up costing us.I hope this year he spends more time developing the offense as I am not completely convinced with Foles.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by cgsuddeath.

I love Fisher’s style of football and he’s done a lot of impressive things. I really do expect the defense to do amazing things this year as long as the CB play holds up. Drafting has been solid if not spectacular. He has his players’ respect and – for the most part – has kept them from collapsing through some pretty bad stretches.

I worry about the slow starts, and I don’t think it’s being soft. He just keeps going into the season with disastrous plans: the spread offense, relying on Richardson and Pead to run the ball, last year’s abysmal start on defense and the iffy OL depth. The wideout play was actually pretty good last year, especially before Quick got hurt, but it still seems to me like part of the trend of taking big chances. While that gamble paid off, it was still a pretty big gamble to go into camp with the options that they had.

The lack of discipline really concerns me, too. I feel like it’s a Fisher thing. Personal fouls, constant mental errors, and players out of position just seem like symptoms of teams that lack discipline. I love smash mouth football. I love seeing an OL and a great back just break down a D. I love seeing defenses win games even more. You’ll never hear me complain about a hard fought 7-3 game involving 2 great defensive teams. The thing about that approach, though, is that you can’t make big mistakes and win consistently. Fisher teams seem to make a lot of big mistakes.

Finally, It seems to me that Fisher’s staff are poor tacticians. They so consistently play strong first halves only to get beat up in the second half. I don’t know Xs and Os well enough to have an informed opinion on this, and I only watch the games live these days so it’s especially hard to tell. They just seem to be outcoached in a lot of second halves.

I have hope for this year, but I have worries too. This could be an 10-6 team, but it could be a 6-10 team too. If we don’t see something much better than what we’ve seen so far, he should go.

TrenchRam wrote:

I love Fisher’s style of football and he’s done a lot of impressive things. I really do expect the defense to do amazing things this year as long as the CB play holds up. Drafting has been solid if not spectacular. He has his players’ respect and – for the most part – has kept them from collapsing through some pretty bad stretches.

I worry about the slow starts, and I don’t think it’s being soft. He just keeps going into the season with disastrous plans: the spread offense, relying on Richardson and Pead to run the ball, last year’s abysmal start on defense and the iffy OL depth. The wideout play was actually pretty good last year, especially before Quick got hurt, but it still seems to me like part of the trend of taking big chances. While that gamble paid off, it was still a pretty big gamble to go into camp with the options that they had.

The lack of discipline really concerns me, too. I feel like it’s a Fisher thing. Personal fouls, constant mental errors, and players out of position just seem like symptoms of teams that lack discipline. I love smash mouth football. I love seeing an OL and a great back just break down a D. I love seeing defenses win games even more. You’ll never hear me complain about a hard fought 7-3 game involving 2 great defensive teams. The thing about that approach, though, is that you can’t make big mistakes and win consistently. Fisher teams seem to make a lot of big mistakes.

Finally, It seems to me that Fisher’s staff are poor tacticians. They so consistently play strong first halves only to get beat up in the second half. I don’t know Xs and Os well enough to have an informed opinion on this, and I only watch the games live these days so it’s especially hard to tell. They just seem to be outcoached in a lot of second halves.

I have hope for this year, but I have worries too. This could be an 10-6 team, but it could be a 6-10 team too. If we don’t see something much better than what we’ve seen so far, he should go.

Always good to hear from you,
Trench.

w
v