Jeff Fisher should be fired at the end of the season. He won’t be.
Listen, we’re all friends here. We know there are two ways to be a fan of a team. The first is to root for your team to win, celebrate their victories and agonize over their defeats knowing that everything that could have been done for a positive outcome was done. They left it all on the field and you mourn with the players, the coaches and the fan community as a whole at their downfall.
Then there’s another way to be a fan of a team. And it’s reserved for the real fans. Fans who see the big picture beyond that Sunday victory. Fans who look into the future and see a cavernous gaping maw, a magnetar pulling all your hopes and dreams down into an endless cosmic Waffle House toilet.
A true fan sees that and knows what he or she must do; wish nothing but defeat on his/her favorite team until ownership steps in, sees the carnage, and clears the building of all the offending parties. For a while it looked like the St. Louis but soon to be Los Angeles Rams would be forced to do just that. Then, confoundingly, the Rams started winning. The bastards.
There was a moment during the Sunday Night Kick-Off show where Dan Patrick remarked to Tony Dungy on how frustrated Rams fans must be to see the team playing like this (they’d just soundly defeated the playoff-bound Seattle Seahawks for the second time this season). Yes, Dan. We’re pretty pissed about it.
For a while it seemed that Fisher’s firing was pre-ordained. He’d made all the moves that usually get a coach fired. First, he benches his starting quarterback, Nick Foles, who he himself had pursued in the offseason in a trade with the Philadelphia Eagles. Then a few weeks later after that didn’t work he fired his hand-picked offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti, the guy he’d been selling all offseason as the answer to the Rams’ offensive woes. Fisher appeared to be toast.
Add to that season ending injuries to all-universe defensive end Robert Quinn and the writing was on the wall. This was the best Rams roster since 2003 and Fisher was terrible at doing anything with them. He should have been fired then. He wasn’t. Now the Rams are stuck with him.
No one owns 8-8 in the NFL like Jeff Fisher. It's uncanny. He is literally the most average coach possible.
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 28, 2015
New offensive coordinator Rob Boras obviously should have gotten the job to begin with and didn’t, I’m sure, because he actually likes to call plays that attack a defense, not just hand the ball off to Todd Gurley two times, throw an incompletion on third and long, then punt. Case Keenum is doing a fine job as the Rams quarterback and has earned an open competition entering next year’s camp, but frankly, I still like Nick Foles. Foles made some plays early in the season I’ve only seen Aaron Rodgers make (in the Seattle and Arizona wins). I think he’s the guy and if the Rams cut bait with him and send him somewhere else, he’ll be back in the Pro Bowl.
There’s a hope now, as things seem to be working for the Rams, that Jeff Fisher has learned something. That he’s looked inside himself, realized why he sucks and decided to suck less. Right now, that’s all I can hope for because this Rams team, the best roster in 12 years, won’t be the team that takes the field in 2016.
Jeff Fisher Postgame Press Conference #STLvsSEA
Full Press Conference 📺 | https://t.co/dFjhURLdOl pic.twitter.com/BrXumJxGns
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) December 28, 2015
All their best backup defensive linemen (Nick Fairley, William Hayes and Eugene Sims) are free agents and will rightly be looked at as starters on other teams. They’re all gone. Safety Mark Barron (who has played linebacker since Alec Ogletree went on injured reserve) and has been pretty much the best non-Aaron Donald player on the Rams defense. The Rams need to fight to keep him and that means money. Here’s the problem.
Both starting cornerbacks, Janoris Jenkins and Trumaine Johnson, are free agents and it’s imperative that the Rams keep both of them. Both have turned into elite NFL corners and Jenkins is heading toward Patrick Peterson – Richard Sherman territory. They can’t afford to lose either guy. Greg Zuerlein, Wes Welker, Brian Quick all need to be kept. Plus Case Keenum and Benny Cunningham are both restricted free agents, as is starting safety Rodney McLeod.
https://twitter.com/mikefreemanNFL/status/681274104322850816
By winning the Rams even screw up their draft position, which will probably be outside the Top 10 thanks to what looks like a sure victory over the hapless 49ers next Sunday. Ultimately though, even if the Rams finish with an 8-8 record, their first non-losing season under Fisher, there’s no way to not look at this season like the disaster it was. Owner Stan Kroenke may not want to rock the boat as he moves the team to Los Angeles and Jeff Fisher still has one year left on his contract. Kroenke will likely let him play it out and see what happens next season. God help us all.
