The last time Jeff Fisher coached his team to a winning record was in 2008 with the Tennessee Titans. As Fisher coaches his way down the stretch of what looks to be his sixth-straight losing season and fifth-straight with the Rams franchise, he continues to have Rams execs doing what they can to defend him in the public light.
“Everybody will want to judge Jeff through the prism of just the record, but that’s totally unfair when you look at the set of circumstances he was handed this year,” chief operating officer Kevin Demoff said to Steve Wyche for a featured piece on NFL.com. “It was different than any team in the NFL.”
Umm, OK. Your team moved from St. Louis to Los Angeles this year. How does that suddenly excuse the four losing seasons before that? But go ahead, please continue.
“We moved halfway across the country, then had OTAs in Oxnard. Training camp was in Irvine, now we’re in Thousand Oaks. We moved coaches and players and families. To provide leadership and consistency, he’s done a model job.”
Understandably, the relocation of an entire franchise can be a challenge, but that all has little effect on the actual performance on the field. Fisher may be a swell guy, but six seasons without a winning record speaks for itself, and you cannot use relocation of a franchise to excuse it all.
“He’s a terrific leader of men,” Demoff said. “Players, coaches and staff — he has their complete respect in the way he runs the franchise. It’s easy to talk about the record, but you have to take a snapshot of everything this year and give him the credit that he’s due.”
OK, let’s take a snapshot of the Rams right now. The Rams are 4-7 and play at New England this week. Fisher and the Rams waited a really long time to have No. 1 overall draft pick Jared Goff ready to make his debut. The Rams are 29th in the NFL in passing offense, 29th in rushing offense, and 32nd in scoring average. What credit does Fisher deserve here, exactly? Perhaps “blame” is the more appropriate word to use.
“The past two years, he’s had to deal with the specter of relocation. This year, the actual relocation. A couple of coaches have had to deal with the specter of relocation. No coach has had to deal with an actual relocation. You have try to understand what this team has been through and the success he has had.”
Stop it. Coaches coach, regardless of location. Fisher wasn’t brokering stadium deals in L.A. while trying to develop a game plan to take down the Seattle Seahawks the last two years. And he certainly wasn’t the one figuring out where the Rams were going to play while a new stadium gets built. He’ll coach wherever you tell him he’s going to be, whether it is in St. Louis, or Los Angeles, or the Mojave Desert.
Stop making excuses for Fisher, Rams.
[NFL.com]
