Who Will Replace Fisher?

wv wrote:

Well, like i said i wouldnt let him ‘buy the groceries.’ I’d pair him with a good personnel guy and just let Martz handle the game stuff.

But this is all academic message-board silliness (which is fine), coz Martz is not gonna be the next coach, and Kronkenstein is gonna keep Fishbrain for another year or two. …which should make some fans…um……is there a word for raging-homicidal/forlorn-suicidal ?

I like Martz more than you, btw, because I like FUN football
and YOU like Boring football.

w
v

BTW, threads work better when instead of just hitting “quote,” posters use their cursor to blue out the part they want to quote, and THEN hit “quote”…and then all the mess is left out, and your poor overworked mod doesn’t have to do so many fix-it silent edits.

That aside.

Paragraph 1. I think Martz had flaws in the game stuff too, he was just working with superior talent, which of course he maximized.

Paragraph 2. I too think that SK keeps Fisher. I also want to avoid the raging-homicidal/forlorn-suicidal posting types on that …. which isn’t here, we’re too balanced (and small) to let the Knights Templar dominate. We’re more into the “informal poll” approach.

Paragraph 3. I like boring football only when it’s fun.

Five years, no winning seasons. SK is a ruthless businessman. Do you really believe he would allow his companies to drift under a stubborn, intransigent leader like Fisher?

I don’t think so.

But don’t all of Kroenke’s sports teams suck?

nittany ram wrote:

Five years, no winning seasons. SK is a ruthless businessman. Do you really believe he would allow his companies to drift under a stubborn, intransigent leader like Fisher?

I don’t think so.

But don’t all of Kroenke’s sports teams suck?

I believe the Avalanche won a Stanley Cup under his ownership.

In any event, as an owner, Kroenke has no bearing on the team’s performance. His responsibility is limited to the decisions for hiring people to run the show. He isn’t a meddlesome owner. He hires people to run the teams for him while he deposits checks.

If this was baseball, there might be a case that he prefers mediocrity because it is more profitable. But football has a salary cap, and the Rams spend to the cap just like everybody else. So he doesn’t save money by losing and avoiding big contracts for players like a baseball team might. In fact, the more he wins, the more he will sell in merchandise, the more tickets he will sell, the more concessions, etc. The more the value of the team goes up.

Ozoneranger wrote:

I’d be shocked if he were extended at this point. Why wait? Why let him twist in the wind?

He’s had his chance to build a winner. He’s thrown an immense amount of resources at the offense, then hires coaches with little or no imagination for offense. Okay, so he lost a QB to injury. So what? Look at this team at this moment in time. We cannot score points. The scheme is tantamount to drawing plays in the sand. It’s a 1970s offense. And to quote that scene in Cool Hand Luke…”that’s the way he wants it.” The last four games bears this out. Hell, the last five years bears this out

I used the blue out funtion Zn..pretty sweet

Zone…good points and I actually agree with most of what you posted here…I just think he’s gonna be back next year.

As to why he’s twisting in the wind, I don’t think he is I think he’s well aware of where he stands contract wise and it allowed him to be overly cautious with Goff.

I think he gives Fisher another year minimum for Goff. He saw first hand the revolving door of coaches and OC’s Sam had to deal with and it sure didn’t help and may have hindered his development some.

I think the O is beyond basic…Miami was sitting on the slant route and Goff still completed several. In the pre-season I saw them sitting on the slant and CK went over the top to a streaking Kendricks down the middle…where is that play?

I’m hoping, maybe not believing so much, they have more plays in that book just aren’t running them yet.

InvaderRam wrote:

zn wrote:

I am not putting Foles at anyone’s feet. No one predicted anything like that meltdown. Because it was not predictable. Fisher is about as responsible for that as he is for Bradford’s injuries, or as responsible McCarthy is for Rodgers declining, or as responsible Arians is for Palmer declining.

that’s what he’s paid to do. he was wrong on foles. no one can predict anything. but this is not the same as bradford’s injuries. it’s not the same as palmer or rodgers declining. we differ on that. he’s just not who they thought he was.

he got the receivers wrong. he just did.

the oline has been a revolving door.

now maybe one or two of them i can understand. stuff happens. all three have been a disaster so far. hopefully, goff comes good. but almost all aspects of the offense have been a mess for five years, and he hasn’t been able to fix even 1 unit. except maybe rb.

Well except all personnel people including coaches are paid to find players, and sometimes, in fact a lot of the time, the player doesn’t pan out.

So to me what they’re actually paid to do is to keep doing it until it works. (Though if it KEEPS not working, then, you have to account for that). Anything else, to me, is just an unreal standard, given the way the reality works.

To me, it doesn’t amount to any kind of criticism to say Foles crashed. There was no way anyone could have predicted that—there was nothing in his past to indicate he would fall to pieces THAT much. To me, that’s no different from not perceiving in advance that Bradford would suffer not one but 2 knee injuries to the same knee.

Just as there was no reason for Arians to assume Palmer would go south this quickly.

zn wrote:

Martz inherited a built team and then destroyed it.

Damn I sure wish some young aggressive offensive genius would come and destroy the Rams to 2 Super Bowls 5 trips to the playoffs in six years 3 consecutive seasons over 500 points again.;) Martz is a pipe-dream though too old and health concerns, I doubt he’d take the job.

To be honest I don’t remember the Linehan implosion , I think I just went remote ,lots of bow hunting but I do remember the Spags/Fisher transition and resulting “Is it a rebuild or just a few players debate and your position was the latter . It’s seems like you are extremely hard on Martz , the winningest coach in Rams history as compared to anyone else ?

if they do decide to go in a different direction, i can say that this should be an attractive gig. a talented defense, talent in the backfield. and i credit fisher for that.

one other thing i was thinking is they keep fisher and hire a new oc. maybe a hot oc candidate who fisher can hand the reins to in a couple years when fisher steps down to a cozy front office job…

one can hope anyway.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by InvaderRam.
• This reply was modified 8 years ago by InvaderRam.

My problem with JF THIS year specifically, is this offense has been built from the ground up by JF/Snead and again the Rams have a bottom 5 offense, very possibly THE worst offense in the entire league. There have been almost NO injuries on the offensive side of the ball. Sure the offensive line is young and inexperienced, but having said that, I think we all certainly had higher hopes for the line to be at least adequate.

In actuality all we needed was an offense around 20th-22nd in scoring and we’d be right in the middle of the playoff race…instead its close to dead last in almost every category once again.

ZN, you’ve made your case on injuries to the Oline and QB over most of JF’s tenure, which has obviously affected the offense’s success and the teams overall W/L record. Well that hasn’t really played a role in this year’s offensive ineptness. If JF gets the extension that your in favor of, why do you think that the offense will improve next year? Will they hire another coordinator? Will the Oline improve to the point that the offense will make a big jump?

sacram wrote:

My problem with JF THIS year specifically, is this offense has been built from the ground up by JF/Snead and again the Rams have a bottom 5 offense, very possibly THE worst offense in the entire league. There have been almost NO injuries on the offensive side of the ball. Sure the offensive line is young and inexperienced, but having said that, I think we all certainly had higher hopes for the line to be at least adequate.

In actuality all we needed was an offense around 20th-22nd in scoring and we’d be right in the middle of the playoff race…instead its close to dead last in almost every category once again.

ZN, you’ve made your case on injuries to the Oline and QB over most of JF’s tenure, which has obviously affected the offense’s success and the teams overall W/L record. Well that hasn’t really played a role in this year’s offensive ineptness. If JF gets the extension that your in favor of, why do you think that the offense will improve next year? Will they hire another coordinator? Will the Oline improve to the point that the offense will make a big jump?

I think you are right about that in large measure. There is no injury excuse this year. The OL has just under-performed in run blocking. Pass protection seems okay.

I am more in the Blame Boras camp, though. He is not getting as much out of Gurley and Austin and they did last year. Now, last year, we lamented the fact that Gurley and Austin seemed to be the only weapons. This year, those guys aren’t even weapons. The only thing that is going well consistently on the offense is the slant to Britt.

This year there has been consistency in personnel. They aren’t putting a different OL arrangement out there every week, or running through players anywhere. The only thing that is different that I can see is Boras. It’s not that I have any evidence to back that up. All I got is that there seems to be no other explanation.

Darrell Bevell or Matt Patricia.

I think Josh McDaniels has grown some since his time in Denver, and I would love to see him implement the Earhardt-Perkins offense with Goff and these receivers we just drafted. Thomas, Higbee, Cooper, and Britt/Quick/Spruce would fit perfectly within that scheme, and I think Austin would have a markedly different role. Like Edelman.

Zooey wrote:

sacram wrote:

My problem with JF THIS year specifically, is this offense has been built from the ground up by JF/Snead and again the Rams have a bottom 5 offense, very possibly THE worst offense in the entire league. There have been almost NO injuries on the offensive side of the ball. Sure the offensive line is young and inexperienced, but having said that, I think we all certainly had higher hopes for the line to be at least adequate.

In actuality all we needed was an offense around 20th-22nd in scoring and we’d be right in the middle of the playoff race…instead its close to dead last in almost every category once again.

ZN, you’ve made your case on injuries to the Oline and QB over most of JF’s tenure, which has obviously affected the offense’s success and the teams overall W/L record. Well that hasn’t really played a role in this year’s offensive ineptness. If JF gets the extension that your in favor of, why do you think that the offense will improve next year? Will they hire another coordinator? Will the Oline improve to the point that the offense will make a big jump?

I think you are right about that in large measure. There is no injury excuse this year. The OL has just under-performed in run blocking. Pass protection seems okay.

I am more in the Blame Boras camp, though. He is not getting as much out of Gurley and Austin and they did last year. Now, last year, we lamented the fact that Gurley and Austin seemed to be the only weapons. This year, those guys aren’t even weapons. The only thing that is going well consistently on the offense is the slant to Britt.

This year there has been consistency in personnel. They aren’t putting a different OL arrangement out there every week, or running through players anywhere. The only thing that is different that I can see is Boras. It’s not that I have any evidence to back that up. All I got is that there seems to be no other explanation.

I agree that alot of the issues point to Boras, BUT how much input does JF have into his game plans and even his play calling on game day? And lets assume that the offense is 100% Boras with ZERO input from JF….at what point is JF held accountable for the multiple failed OC hires hes made? To me it seems very hard to field one of the worst offenses year after year, regardless of the circumstances, and the common denominator has been JF.

I don’t see Schott as having failed.

I think Cigz was fired because of behind closed doors stuff.

I am not convinced Boras is a problem. I think a lot of things are going on.

Fisher, like all head coaches who aren’t their own coordinators, has a lot of say over the offensive approach. And rightly so. But that’s league wide. Heck, Vermeil promised Martz that the offense was exclusively his, but then when he was miked, you could hear DV saying stuff about the general approach to things and about situational football. So I don’t see Fisher as being different from anyone else when it comes to that.

Calling Schottenheimer’s tenure with the Rams as being positive is definitely debatable, but I don’t think there is much doubt that Cignetti’s and now Boras’s tenures have been train wrecks. This version of the Ram offense is as bad as any Austin Davis/Kellen Clemens/Shawn Hill (injury riddled) led offense in previous years. This team has had the (For the Rams, unicorn type) rarity of nearly perfect health while compiling the 31st ranked team in total YPG, 32nd (Dead last in the entire NFL) in PPG, 29th in both Rushing YPG and Rushing YPA, 28th in Passing YPG….there is more, but I don’t even want to look its just too depressing.

Obviously, Goff is a very possible bright spot in the near future, but with the continued offensive ineptness year after year with this coaching staff, I simply don’t have any confidence that they could even approach just “average”. If we didn’t see a marked improvement this year, why should we expect significant improvement going into next year? We don’t have any real premium draft picks, and the offensive FA signings under this regime have been very underwhelming. I just don’t see it….

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by sacram.
• This reply was modified 8 years ago by sacram.

sacram wrote:

ZN, you’ve made your case on injuries to the Oline and QB over most of JF’s tenure, which has obviously affected the offense’s success and the teams overall W/L record. Well that hasn’t really played a role in this year’s offensive ineptness. If JF gets the extension that your in favor of, why do you think that the offense will improve next year? Will they hire another coordinator? Will the Oline improve to the point that the offense will make a big jump?

zn wrote:

Real answer later. Tuesdays are busy for me and in fact this post comes from my phone. Later then.

First I want to note that here, I used the “mod favored” quotation approach–I just blued out the part I wanted to quote and THEN hit “quote.” Less messy.

Okay real answer though it took a while.

Yes this year is different. What happened? OL didn’t progress as we thought it would, or at least as much as we thought it would. Keenum, who IMO is decent as a game manager qb if they have a running game, didn’t have a running game. He was not built to carry the team but then some games passing was all they had. And what about the running game? That one seems to have multiple causes, up to and including Gurley. The coordinator? Well it seems that no team does well after a move, which involves distractions (actually the Al Davis Raiders is the only team that won after a move.) They changed the offense far more than anyone anticipated, so in effect they had to learn a new one. Boras has never installed an offense before, and here he was, a first-time coordinator installing a new offense for the first time, and during a move–and counting on a running game that did not materialize.

So yeah it’s a mess, AND it’s just absolutely not the same mess as the OL/qb injury years.

Can it be improved during the season? They started to click upward a bit in games 3-6 but then that has come back down to earth. Will playing Goff mean an upward click again?

I don’t know what’s going on. It has too many causes. Will the OL ever gel? How much of that is Gurley? How fast will Goff progress? How much real improvement have we seen at receiver? Is Boras ultimately a capable OC?

This all leads to the “get rid of Fisher” sentiment.

On that, I am an agnostic. There’s no such thing as a Fisher diehard. Most people who defend Fisher would be fine with a coaching change IF the new HC is a good one.

If they don’t change the HC, can all the pieces that went the wrong way this year be re-gathered and made to work? In short, can he have a wining season (presumably after this one)?Yeah I think it’s possible. They have the pieces to work next year, but maybe it depends on Gurley. I keep thinking, if Gurley doesn’t come through, then it won’t matter who the coach is next year; if he does come through, then yes Fisher can win.

But then saying that is deceptive, cause how much of the collapse of the running game is on TG personally, and how much of it is other stuff?

zn wrote:

I don’t know what’s going on. It has too many causes. Will the OL ever gel? How much of that is Gurley? How fast will Goff progress? How much real improvement have we seen at receiver? Is Boras ultimately a capable OC?

This all leads to the “get rid of Fisher” sentiment.

On that, I am an agnostic. There’s no such thing as a Fisher diehard. Most people who defend Fisher would be fine with a coaching change IF the new HC is a good one.

That’s fair, but I’m not someone who just stopped looking for reasons for the losses. I can still enumerate the things that happen in a game that would cause a team to lose no matter who the coach was or is. For me, it’s the cumulative effect of these individual losses that has me pining for a change. Jeff Fisher seems to be a very likable and smart guy. I haven’t turned my discontent with him into a seething resentment like others out there have. He’s not an iduot or a relic or any of the other infantile nouns and adjectives I’ve seen attached to him lately. But at the same time, he’s becoming less deserving of my support. Ultimately everything that goes wrong with this team is his responsibility – short of widespread injuries which sometimes effect entire units. My thing with that, though, is that after 4.5 years, there isn’t any real team system in place on offense, and a real reluctance -or maybe even inability- to accelerate young players’ learning curves (not Goff). It’s this guy’s O, then that guy’s O, then the other guy’s O. Compound that with injuries, and you get what you get. Confusion, penalties and lack of execution.

It’s just not fun to watch anymore. But like I said, I won’t stop analyzing these things. And i won’t internalize the results either. It’s just come to the point where change is the only hope I have now. Different is better, and all that.