Could this be the week Rams fan see more explosive plays in the passing game? Nick Wagoner assesses

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Jim Miller joined Kevin Wheeler to talk about the Bears/Rams matchup, where the Bears can take advantage, and vice versa.

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ESPN NFL analyst Herm Edwards discusses the coaching style of Jeff Fisher and Gregg Williams

zn wrote:

Aren’t those a big set of problems to overcome? Yet they were in that game.

Zooey wrote:

Rams are solid enough all around that a game manager will be good enough to win a lot of games. But not good enough to beat the elite teams. I just don’t think Foles is good enough. Though I would like to see what he could do with a true #1 WR. Something I’ve been asking for now for 3 or 4 years.

Obviously we disagree. I do not share your limitless patience with Fisher’s teams breaking down or your blithe conviction that they will be better given time. Our ideas of how much time is appropriate are pretty different.

I have no idea how much time is appropriate.

But I see their history this way. They did build a team that was going to turn the corner, and injuries to the qb and OL waylaid that. So in 2015 they started over with a new qb and a new OL. So I don’t see 2015 as year 4, I see it as a start-over on offense.

To me that’s just a realistic analysis. You obviously disagree.

Oh and I said nothing about your right to express yourself. In fact I said nothing about you expressing yourself at all, one way or another. I was talking about me expressing MYself, and how I view THAT. It had nothing to do with what you mistakenly took it to mean: Please stop lecturing me on how important it is to understand that other viewpoints are OK and that you virtuously recognize my right to express myself.

As usual I said and did no such thing. Ironically, I was trying to cue you that my intentions were not negative…. Anyway ironically you took me saying that as doing what I was trying to tell you I don’t do.

Now I have to speak directly as a mod. These kinds of exchanges either stop or I up the ante and go directly to mod options, like locked threads or if need be, deletes. The board doesn’t allow personal antagonisms, and I can’t be fair to everyone else and allow them to continue with you. If you don’t like what I say (and invariably I am baffled at how you take some things), either email me and straighten it out, or just don’t say anything. If saying that damages our friendship, which is far from what I want, I am just going to have to take that hit. I promise not to respond to your posts at all anymore, since it seems to lead to this kind of thing. You have no idea how much I regret having to say that. Oh, and, if there is any response to this post, please stick to football…any continuation of this personal stuff will be treated the way the rules say I have to treat it. So “the end” on that kind of thing in our exchanges. Thanks.

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Mike Zimmer and Rodney Harrison: Hypocrisy Exposed

Bernie Miklasz

http://www.101sports.com/2015/11/10/247281/

If any of you have graciously taken the time to read some of my work over the past few years, you’ll know that I haven’t held back in scrutinizing / criticizing Rams head coach Jeff Fisher and team defensive coordinator Gregg Williams on the subject of penalties.

I’ve written multiple pieces on the topic, and repeatedly cited statistics about the number of personal fouls and roughing-the-passer penalties called against Fisher-Williams defenses. Their teams play with an edge, push the boundaries and have crossed the line at times.

This isn’t always the case; in some coaching seasons Fisher and/or Williams had relatively low penalty counts on the rough-stuff penalties. But yeah, the coach and his DC encourage aggression. And it isn’t always easy to control aggression.

Over a 10-season period (2001-2010) in Tennessee, Fisher’s defense had at least 10 personal fouls in all 10 seasons. And in seven of those years the Titans finished among the top 5 in the NFL for most personal fouls. In six of those seasons the Titans were in the top 5 for most roughing penalties. The Titans had the league’s highest roughing-the-passer count for three consecutive seasons (2007-2009) and committed the most personal fouls in a season on three different occasions.

Williams ran the Fisher defense in Tennessee between 1997 and 2000, then moved on to become head coach in Buffalo, with subsequent stops as the defensive coordinator in Washington, Jacksonville and New Orleans. Williams’ defenses were on the chippy side in Buffalo, but did nothing outrageous.

With Williams coordinating the defense in Washington (2004-2007) the Redskins had double-digit personal foul counts in all four seasons, and finished sixth in roughing-QB penalties in two of those years.

During Williams’ raucous three years in New Orleans (2009-2011) the Saints twice finished among the top three for most personal fouls, and had the most roughing-QB penalties in ’11. And of course there was the infamous “Bounty Gate” which resulted in Williams sitting out a one-year league suspension.

(For the record: I admire the way Williams served his time, never complained, and used his season away from the game to take a hard look at himself. Given the NFL’s shaky handling of the Bounty case, and the way some of the Saints were railroaded, it would have been easy for Williams to cast himself as some sort of innocent man, given a raw deal by commissioner Rodger Goodell. But Williams didn’t do that; he owned it and took the hit to his rep without protest. I’m not claiming he’s a “changed man” and all of that. But he is more enlightened.)

I don’t think anyone has ever categorized Fisher and Williams as angels; not unless they’ve been described as angels with dirty faces. So when a seething Minnesota Vikings coach Mike Zimmer took some post-game shots at Fisher and Williams after the Vikings’ 21-18 overtime win Sunday, there was at least some basis for his complaints.

The Vikings and their coach were offended by a Lamarcus Joyner elbow to the head — intentional or not — that knocked QB Teddy Bridgewater out of action with a concussion. Joyner was flagged with a personal foul and will draw a fine from the league office.

Of course, Zimmer had a chance to directly confront Fisher with his accusations in their brief post-game excchange, but Zimmer gave Fisher the quick, drive-by handshake and peeled off — saving his rippage of the Rams for his media conference.

Speaking to Vikings flagship station KFAN-AM, Zimmer said, “I agree that it was a cheap shot. His (Williams) defenses are all like that.”

And speaking to reporters after the game, Zimmer threw this out there: “If we were out in the street, we probably would’ve had a fight.”

Naturally, the coach spit out the tough talk about fighting in the streets after Fisher and Williams were already off the field, at safe distance, getting ready for the team’s flight home.

There’s only one problem with Zimmer’s little fit …

The coach declined to look at his own team.

Zimmer apparently has no interest in discussing the Vikings’ elevated penalty count for roughing the quarterback and personal fouls in 2015.

Or perhaps Zimmer was busy or distracted and forgot to look up the numbers.

Yeah, that must be it.

Penalties for Personal Fouls, 2015

Minnesota with 9 … only six NFL teams have more.

St. Louis with 5 … which is tied for 20th.

Penalties for Roughing the Passer, 2015

Minnesota with 4 … which is tied for third.

St. Louis with 2 … which is tied for 13th.

If you add the two categories together, the Vikings’ defense has 13 “cheap shot” penalties this season compared to 7 by the Rams.

It’s OK for an opposing coach to hold Fisher and Williams accountable and air his grievances.

But not this coach. Not Zimmer.

Naturally, the intense Zimmer was upset by the Bridgewater blow. But before he starts flinging those dirty-play accusations in press conferences and taking cheap shots at Williams, Zimmer might want to talk to his defensive players about doing a more honorable job of playing a clean game. Zimmer might want to address his defense and demand that the players cut down on their penalized abuse of quarterbacks and stay within the rules instead of being so reckless with personal fouls.

When a coach is in charge of a team that has 13 combined roughing-QB and personal foul infractions, he probably shouldn’t be delivering lectures to the coaches of a team that has only 7 such penalties.

As a longtime NFL defensive coordinator before becoming the Vikings’ head coach in 2014, Zimmer’s defenses showed up plenty of times on the league leader boards for most personal fouls and roughing-the-passer penalties.

In his 14 seasons (total) as the defensive coordinator in Dallas, Atlanta and Cincinnati, Zimmer’s defenses ranked among the league top 10 in personal fouls eight times, and finished in the top 10 for roughing seven times.

This includes two appearances among the top five in personal fouls, and six top-five finishes for roughing the QB.

And now we have the 2015 Vikings, who are among the league’s worst offenders in both categories.

So when Zimmer looks at the Rams and begins carping about their dirty hits on quarterbacks, I guess he qualifies as an expert, because his defenses have a fact-based history of frequent cheap hits on defenseless quarterbacks.

Zimmer’s hypocrisy is amusing.

But the undisputed champion of unmitigated hypocrisy is the one and only Rodney Harrison, the dirtiest player I’ve watched since I began covering and reporting on the NFL in 1982.

As you know, Harrison called out Fisher on NBC Sunday night, taking the coach to task for his teams’ history of dirty play.

This is priceless, coming from a guy that rarely hesitated to go cruising for attacks on a defenseless quarterback or receiver during his NFL career as a safety (1994-2008) with San Diego and New England. Harrison’s victims included Rams quarterback Trent Green during the 1999 preseason. Harrison lunged at Green’s knees, and Green suffered a season-terminating knee injury. (Enter: Kurt Warner.)

There is a reason why Harrison was named the NFL’s “Dirtiest Player” in a poll of league coaches in 2004, 2005 and 2008.

After Harrison “won” the award for the third time, Indianapolis receiver Brandon Stokely said, “I would have bet life savings on that.”

Harrison was suspended by the NFL for his vicious and gratuitous helmet-to-helmet assault on Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice in 2002 — and understand that Harrison’s gutless hit came at a time when NFL players could get away with the kind of filthy stuff that isn’t tolerated now. So his assault on Rice was especially heinous.

According to multiple media reports, Harrison amassed more than $200,000 in league fines for scuzzy play during his career.

Harrison also produced an impressive exacta: getting suspended for his on-field transgressions and for violating the league’s performance-enhancing drug policy.

In 2007, Harrison admitted to purchasing HGH (human growth hormone) “more than once” when questioned by the Albany (N.Y.) District Attorney’s office during an investigation of an HGH-peddling ring.

Harrison’s dig at Fisher was business as usual. It’s been his media strategy to change the subject — namely, his chronic habit of harming opponents that couldn’t defend themselves at the point of impact.

Harrison has a history of pointing the finger at others instead, and he has no shame or embarrassment about playing the role of victim.

After Harrison publicly called him a “dirty dude” former Tennessee center Kevin Mawae spoke out in a 2009 interview:

“If Rodney Harrison wants to accuse somebody of being dirty, tell him to look at his 16 years of highlights. I guarantee he got fined more in one year than I have in my entire career.”

On NBC, Harrison accused Fisher of laughing on the sideline during a 2006 game after Harrison suffered a season-ending knee injury on a low hit from Tennessee wide receiver Bobby Wade. Fisher vehemently denied this, and called Harrison a “meathead” on Monday night’s Jeff Fisher Show on 101 ESPN.

In that same 2009 interview, Mawae denied that the Titans were laughing at Harrison.

“Maybe it’s just the way to deflect the attention away from himself,” Mawae said. “I think everybody knows that’s been in this league a long time that he may be the dirtiest guy that’s ever played this game … I think somebody forgot to tell him that that long wide, three foot white line on the sidelines, we play inside those. He spent a lot of his time playing outside of those.”

Earlier this season Harrison predicted that the Miami Dolphins would attempt to cheap shot New England quarterback Tom Brady to take him out. (They didn’t.)

Also this season, Harrison criticized Minnesota linebacker Anthony Barr for a hit on Detroit QB.

Harrison — imagine this — simply wouldn’t tolerate such a cheap shot on an NFL quarterback … yeah, even though Harrison was guilty of many such QB bombing runs in his days as an irresponsible missile-safety.

Harrison said he would have “punched that young guy right in the face” for the “cheap shot” on Stafford.

Barr was penalized for a personal foul.

And just to add some additional humor to this … the same Mike Zimmer that was so high and mighty in criticizing the Rams claimed that Barr’s hit was clean.

Sure, coach. You betcha.

Your players are saints.

A pure as that Minnesota snow.

Speaking a guest on Boston radio station WEEI on Tuesday, Harrison was asked if he’d like to rebut Fisher’s lengthy criticism. Earlier Monday at Rams Park, a prepared Fisher dismissed Harrison by citing Harrison’s prolific penalty count as a player.

Harrison initially begged off, saying “I would love to really go in like I really want to do in my heart and soul but the guys at NBC, the higher-ups told me, ‘Please don’t respond to it,’ so they’re the guys that sign my check.”

But of course, Harrison immediately contradicted himself by responding to Fisher — seconds after saying he wouldn’t respond to Fisher.

“But I will say this, if anybody knows about a dirty hit, it’s me,” Harrison said.

(Rodney should have stopped right there. Finally, some truth.)

“And that’s all it was. It was about addressing the issue,” Harrison continued. “It was a dirty hit (on Bridgewater.) That’s what I said. And I referenced to back what I experienced with his teams and what other players have told me coming from his team, and other people. People around the league know the truth, bottom line. I’m not going to get into any details because I’m just not going to go there. I was asked not to go there. But the bottom line is, if you’ve been in the league, you know the truth.”

Later, Harrison whined, “They always want to bring out the negative. It’s not because I didn’t do it to personally attack (Fisher.) I didn’t do it to evoke a response. I said it because it was in my soul, it was in my spirit and it was something that I experienced, first hand. I knew that it was a dirty hit, what Bobby Wade did to me. I looked up and saw on the sidelines guys laughing and joking, OK?

“(Fisher) can point out all the dirty things that I’ve done or the penalties, but the bottom line is this, you can’t take away what I’ve accomplished in my career. And the funny thing about it, when you play against those type teams, afterward coaches come up to you, ‘Man, I wish I had you on my team. Man, I wish you could bring that physicality with us. We need a guy like you.’ It’s the same coaches. It’s the same coaches on the staff coming to me wishing that I was on their team.”

(Harrison has a point there. Is there any doubt that Coach Fisher loves defensive players that intimidate and rattle opponents with wicked hits?)

True to his nature, Harrison played the victim card on WEEI.

Fortunately, sports-talk radio stations do not use polygraphs during interviews.

“There have been times where I really crossed the line, no doubt about it,” Harrison said. “But there are other times when I felt like I’ve been targeted. When you get a reputation with the NFL, they’re going to look at you, everything single thing you do, from uniform, I’d jog out on the field, ‘Hey Harrison, we’re watching you.’ Man, leave me the hell alone. You’re watching me? We’re in warmups, and you’re telling me. All of sudden, I know that you’re talking about me in New York, so I have no leeway.”

Harrison was targeted?

(Laugh track).

“At times, I didn’t think it was fair, but I understood,” Harrison said. “It was just one of those situations where I understood that the NFL was after me and they were going to fine me for everything and use me as an example and I was just going to play football. If they take 20, 30-thousand dollars from me, I grew up with nothing, so trust me, whatever I’m making above that, I’m OK.”

There’s no question about that. Despite the more than $200,000 in NFL fines for cheap shots, for all of the legitimate stains on his reputation, for the times he was named the league’s dirtiest player, for all of those instances where he showed no respect for the health and safety of a fellow NFL player, and for his suspension for buying and using HGH …

Harrison retired and was rewarded with a great gig on NBC. He spends Sunday nights in the studio where he gets the chance to take whacks at NFL players and coaches for misconduct that doesn’t come close to matching Harrison’s own history of rotten behavior.

The NFL is truly a special habitat, isn’t it?

As for Fisher, he shouldn’t take offense so easily. His teams aren’t exactly meek.

Zimmer and Harrison weren’t wrong to cite the Fisher-Williams reputation. Sometimes the roughness is necessary.

But given their odious histories, Zimmer and Harrison lack the credibility to deliver sermons on unsportsmanlike conduct.

Jeff Fisher responds to criticism from Rodney Harrison

Mike Florio

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/category/rumor-mill/page/2/

After Sunday’s game against the Rams, which included a knockout blow to Minnesota quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, Vikings coach Mike Zimmer threw a dart or two at St. Louis defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Later that night, Rodney Harrison of NBC’s Football Night in America aimed a level higher.

“I wasn’t surprised because it happened to me in 2006,” Harrison said. “[Titans receiver] Bobby Wade came and chopped my knees and tore my knee up. I’m lying on the ground, and I look at Jeff Fisher and he’s smiling and laughing. So this is typical of Jeff Fisher-type teams.”

It wasn’t the first time Harrison said this; in a 2009 appearance on The Dan Patrick Show, Harrison made the same comments.

Six years ago, Fisher didn’t respond. This time, he did.

“I don’t want to say I took things personal, but it was kind of a personal attack on me,” Fisher told reporters on Monday. “I think you have to consider the source. . . . You’re talking about a guy that had a great career. I mean, the guy played a long time. He was hard to defend. He was a really active defensive player. But this is coming from a guy that had 18 unnecessary roughness penalties, seven personal fouls, four roughing the passer penalties, a total of 77 penalties in his career and was voted three times the dirtiest player in the National Football League and was suspended for a hit, a helmet-to-helmet hit on Jerry Rice in 2002. Okay? This is where these comments are coming from. I’ll just say this: Since 2000, it’s been a privilege and honor for me to be on the Competition Committee. Our main focus, as you guys have followed this league for a long time know, our main focus is player safety. So, for Rodney to come out and say that I did something like that is absolutely absurd. So, that’s all I have to say on that.”

Fisher separately was asked whether it bothers him that his teams have been called dirty or chippy.

“I haven’t heard that,” Fisher said. “So, we are going to play fast. We are going to physical and we’re going to play furious and we’re going to play contact football. Okay?”

But the charge of dirty and/or chippy play isn’t new. In 2012, when Fisher became coach of the Rams, Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (via an assist from Mike Sando of ESPN.com) pointed out that, from 2001 to 2010, the Titans: (1) led the NFL in most personal fouls with 163; (2) had 67 unnecessary roughness penalties, leading the NFL; and (3) had 46 roughing the passer penalties, leading the NFL. More recently, Miklasz combined the full Houston/Tennessee years with Fisher’s Rams teams and concluded that Fisher’s teams had 236 more penalties than their opponents, 1,937 more penalty yards than their opponents, 116 fewer first downs via penalties than their opponents.

Last year, Giants linebacker Jameel McClain dubbed the Rams a “dirty ass team” after a fight that broke out following a late hit from St. Louis linebacker Alec Ogletree on New York receiver Odell Beckham Jr.

So it’s hardly the first time someone has called out a Fisher-coached team. It’s also not the first time someone has taken direct aim at Fisher.

In 2007, former Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman suffered a sprained knee on what he dubbed a “cheap shot” from former Titans center Kevin Mawae and former Titans tackle David Stewart. Merriman said that “several” Chargers players told him Fisher had ordered the hit on Merriman. Reprising the remarks with Colin Cowherd of FOX Sports Radio on Monday, Merriman said that he heard Fisher had ordered the hit from Titans players, too.

On one hand, football is football. Players use raw physicality to achieve results, from overpowering the opponent on a given play to intimidating him on future plays. On the other hand, there’s a line between using force to get results and doing so to inflict injury, especially as the NFL attempts to secure its future by promoting health and safety in a game that is inherently unhealthy and unsafe for those who play it.

The problem is that the recipients of physicality aimed at the former often will perceive it as an effort to accomplish the latter. And it becomes difficult if not impossible to get those inflicting the physicality and those absorbing it to agree regarding the intentions.

You know, all this stuff on Foles’s flaws was completely visible at the time of the trade. Here, we have whole long threads on it. Nothing he did Sunday…with a young and injured OL, including one replacement PFF ranked as the worst player at his position for the week (Donnal)…is or ought to be a surprise.

Even in Philly he was good for a complete meltdown game per year.

Meanwhile, he has virtues mixed in with that which people lose sight of in what is (IMO) post-loss lament mode. They beat Seattle without Gurley, came within a dropped Kendricks pass of nearly beating Pittsburgh.

I honestly have not heard a single complaint that wasn’t already there to contemplate, clear and open, before the season started. Heck for that matter, all the same things were visible in the Rams/Eagles game last year. So some of us saying he can be a good qb…with a clutch dimension added in…knew about those flaws before we said it. My repeat mantra was that he can be a good qb if he has both a solid OL and a running game.

And I still think that’s just going to be how it plays out.

Yes Bradford was the better qb, by a lot. And I was one of the ones saying that I thought Bradford had a chance to play after 2 knees and always argued against the “china doll” thing. (I also said I got the trade because that was a kind of risk they couldn’t afford.) But then notice that Bradford struggled up until the last game too. Why? Not because it was Bradford, any more than Foles’s 2 bad games (Vikes and GB) are just entirely Foles. The situation was part of it in both cases.

rfl wrote:

Yeah, right. We’ll get better. Just like that. With poor WRs and a lousy QB … Sure. We’ll get better.

What a maroon this guy is.

I completely disagree. I think that’s exactly what he should say, because part of coaching is the combination of drive to do it and optimism. As for the receivers, every single one of them except Tavon was better last year—at everything. It was the talk of camp and it was the talk of the early season last year. And Fisher’s right…it’s far from being one thing anyway. All I know is, early in the season last year there was talk around about Wms. being a bust as a coach. Now they are rightly considered a top defense even as the injuries mount up. This time last year no one could imagine what they would be like with Quinn out, Long out, and Hayes playing banged up. Yet for all that they went on the road against a good team where they should have been at a distinct disadvantage but came just short of winning it and in fact for a lot of the game I thought they would win it. Well the offense is doing the exact same thing right now the defense was last year—very slow out of the gate. In fact given how slow out of the gate they are, it’s really interesting that they are 4-4.

Bradford, same thing. Struggled for several games in a row in a new offense, and then click, last night it turned on.

I don’t like the world where people tell each other what they are allowed to say and think, and this board does not do that. No one on the board does it. We just respectfully put up opinions and encourage the next guy to add his 2 cents too. So I just consider this another opinion beside yours. I guess the key is, I think yes they can improve because both Foles and the receivers have already been better than this, but adding a new young line to a new coordinator to a new qb is just not going to look top notch at first. If I am right then we will all see them stabilize and be better. If I am wrong then that will never happen. It won’t be too hard to tell the difference.

But I thought what Fisher said was apt, right, and what he’s supposed to say. He’s supposed to believe he can make it work. He wouldn’t be a coach if he didn’t think that, he would be a hospice counselor or something. I have no problem with him saying what he said. Just a different 2 cents.