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Twice in Fisher’s coaching career, its taken him
Four+ years, to build a winner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Fisher(Not counting his 94 team where he came
in halfway thru the season),
In the 90’s it took him FIVE years to build a Winner:95 he was 7-9
96 – 8-8
97 – 8-8
98 – 8-8
99- 13-3and then in the 2000’s it took him
Four years:
2004 5-11
2005 4-12
2006 8-8
2007 10-6
(2008 -13-3 )With the Rams its been
2012 -7-8-1
2013 7-9
2014 (6-7)
2015Jeff Fisher has never had
three winning seasons in a Row.w
vBernie Byte: The Rams as betting favorites
• By Bernie Miklasz[www.stltoday.com]
Despite being 6-7, the Rams are a four-point betting favorite over the visiting Arizona Cardinals, who lead the NFC West with an impressive 10-3 record.
Other than the obvious thing — the betting line is directly related to wagering trends — why are the Rams favored?
Let’s take a look:
• The Cardinals are unbeaten at home but only 3-3 on the road. The Cardinals rank 24th in the NFL with a road-scoring average of 19.7 points per game, and they are 26th with only 11 touchdowns from scrimmage in road games. They rank 29th with an average of 3.3 yards per carry in road games, 25th in net passing yards per road game, and are 31st in average yards from scrimmage (299.3) when away from home.
• Home or away the AZ offense has slowed, scoring only two touchdowns in the last 15 quarters of play.
• Arizona QB Drew Stanton is 1-3 on the road with a 63.5 passer rating. That 63.5 road passer rating is the worst among NFL quarterbacks. At least until now, Stanton has been a different quarterback on the road. He’s been very good at home, having gone 4-0 as a starter with a 97.7 passer rating.
• The Rams defense has pitched two consecutive shutouts; that hasn’t happened in the NFL since Dallas did it in 2009. And the two consecutive shutouts are the first for the franchise since the Cleveland Rams pulled it off in 1945.
• The Rams defense is now second in the NFL (to Seattle) for fewest points allowed. This counts ONLY the points scored by the opposing offense against the defense. It excludes INT and fumble returns for touchdowns, and TDs scored on special teams. Anyway, Seattle has allowed 219 points from scrimmage, and the Rams defense is a close second with 221 points given up.
• Since Nov. 2, which spans six games, the Rams defense has produced an impressive set of rankings:
– The Rams have allowed the fewest number of touchdowns from scrimmage, 6.
– They have the most sacks, 29.
– They are tied for 1st for most takeaways, with 15.
– They are tied for 2nd with nine interceptions.
– They are tied for 2nd in third-down stops, with opponents converting 29.6 percent.
– They are 2nd in fewest rushing yards given up per game (58.7) and are third in average yield (3.26 yards) per rushing attempt.
– They are 6th on the list of the lowest opponents’ passer rating, at 76.7.
So you can see the basis for gamblers thinking that the Rams have a good chance of winning.
I suppose this is another sign of the Rams making progress: when the gamblers start believing in you, then you’re probably on the way to becoming a good team.
This is a rarity, by the way.
The Rams will be favored to win for a third consecutive game. That hasn’t happened since the final three games of their 2010 season.
This will be only the 10th time that the Rams entered a game as the favorite since Jeff Fisher became head coach in 2012.
In their previous nine betting-favorite games under Fisher, the Rams went 5-4 in covering the spread. That includes the team’s consecutive wins over Oakland (52-0) and Washington (24-0.)
When the Rams are the betting underdog, they’ve gone 21-15 against the point spread with Fisher as coach.
Thanks for reading …
— Bernie
One interesting PFF stat.
Hill is ranked 3rd in accuracy percentage under pressure.
This ranking includes only qbs who have thrown 100 or more passes.
I like Hill a lot, and was pleased with the signing,
but the INT in the Viking game, and that INT
in the Charger game were horrendous. (i know some folks
think the viking-INT was due to the thigh injury, but i
dont see it that way)Now one of my Favorite plays in the Washington game —
was a play where Hill actually got sacked. The rams
were in the redzone. And Hill got sacked once, If i remember
right, but then its third down and rather than risk another
horrendous INT, Hill just basically did a duck-and-cover move
very quickly. He didnt try to ‘make something happen’ and he
didnt take any risks — he was gonna settle for the easy Three
(which legatron missed). But i loved the fact that Hill
seemed to have gotten the message from BS and Fisher — if the
game is close just dont LOSE it. Manage the game. Let
the defense and Tre Mason win it. Make the plays that are there
to make but dont risk INTs.Thats how i interpreted that sack, anyway. I
thought it was a great play.w
vhttp://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11978096/after-ferguson-sports-stars-waking-up
The “anti-jordans”Howard Bryant
This story appears in ESPN The Magazine’s Dec. 22 Interview Issue. Subscribe today!
AFTER THE BLOOD AND FIRE of Ferguson, the video of a killing in New York that went unpunished and a 12-year-old shot dead in Cleveland, a wave of protest is rapidly defining America, awakening athletes once considered too busy with their stock portfolios to notice much of anything. It isn’t just the St. Louis Five, the Rams players united in the wake of the Ferguson non-indictment, but also Saints tight end Ben Watson speaking out on Facebook. It’s Pacers forward David West on Twitter, more invested in the black lives that fall at the hands of the police than in how his words might risk his brand. It is LeBron James and the Heat in hoodies after Trayvon Martin’s death last year, and Kobe Bryant this year indicting not Michael Brown nor Darren Wilson but an entire broken system of justice that in many ways created both of them.
The awakening represents the arrival of the anti-Jordans, the athlete as a living, breathing, thinking citizen and not just a sneaker pitchman. If the aftermath of September 11 politicized the ballfield by valorizing American militarism, athletes after the non-indictments in Ferguson and New York now reject the public demand of shut up and play. They see that America, divided by race and class, could not be less “post-racial,” a term intended to bury yesterday and soften tomorrow. It is an awakening in which some black athletes see no reward for being dutiful front men, for saluting the police as heroes at halftime; they instead see themselves reduced to a pre-racial place, no more American or human for their loyalty, so convinced that black lives don’t matter that they’ve joined the national movement demanding that they do.
These anti-Jordans know their enormous sums of money can shield their children from attending a broken public school system or from living in a neighborhood with no services, no self-determination and no hope. But they also know they cannot shield their friends, their aunts and uncles, from those same realities, and they cannot be sure that following all the rules will keep their loved ones from being shot by police. Money cannot shield players from their own consciences, or from the video of a New York policeman killing Eric Garner with a choke hold. Players’ silence has kept them tethered to systems they now find they must protest. Violence has shattered the post-racial myth and finally ended the silence.
Rams receiver Kenny Britt’s message on his taped wrists-“Mike Brown” on the right, “My Kids Matter” on the left-directly challenged that tethering, a severing of those ties. The patronizing aftermath-the St. Louis Police Officers Association demanded the NFL discipline Britt and his teammates-validated Britt’s voice, the massive overreaction connecting protected black players to the abandoned black poor.
The racial divide in this country is most powerfully demonstrated by white America’s ironclad belief in a legal system that black America views as hopelessly, oppressively broken. Ferguson flayed open the division. For African-Americans, race is personal, all day, every day, legally and emotionally the defining characteristic of our American existence. For whites, race is often but a topic, one to be debated and engaged or dismissed as whining and tabled for another day. It is a gap that cannot be bridged by flimsily blaming hip-hop culture or demanding that blacks need to be more responsible, for black responsibility is inseparable from blockbusting, redlining, and the other government and cultural forces that created the debilitating conditions in the first place.
The current awakening confronts the intersection of race and power, but if players successfully challenged power by toppling Donald Sterling, and if they now feel emboldened to protest police brutality, domestic violence is a reminder that the activist male player should not get too comfortable. Men must now confront another power, and that power is themselves. The next awakening will be in discovering just how many of these dots players choose to connect, for the trinity of class, race and gender is inseparable. The masculinity system, like the justice system and the racist and classist elements that fuel today’s protests, now requires reform. Players’ actions will tell us whether they are more than just a commercial. If so, maybe their awakening will be complete.
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