In your daily dose of comedy, Los Angeles Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff stated that Rams head coach Jeff Fisher has done a “model job.”
Demoff praised Fisher in a article by Steve Wyche of NFL.com.
“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.”
Glad to know that alienating team legends, stumbling to a 4-7 record that is worse than it actually works and being three losses away from becoming the losingest coach in NFL history was a model job.
“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 told me. “It was different than any team in the NFL.
To be fair, yes, the Rams did move. Their players and coaches had to move. It happens. Take the Tennessee Titans for example, who also happened to be coached by Jeff Fisher at the same time as they moved from Houston to Nashville.
In what seems like a very similar scenario, the team drafted a star running back (Eddie George in 1997, Todd Gurley in 2015) who revitalized the offense and led the team into a new city.
That new Tennessee team finished 8-8, which is par for the course with a mediocre coach such as Jeff Fisher.
The Rams are on pace to finish roughly 5-11.
The Oakland Raiders moved to Los Angeles in 1982. They won the Super Bowl next year.
Making excuses for a mediocre coach and attempting to sign him to a contract extension (more on that here), rather than holding him accountable for his poor decision-making on multiple levels is what leads a team to be a perennial cellar-dweller.
Changes need to be made, from the general manager position all the way down to the head coach and roster. But with the front office continuing to support mediocrity, the Rams may never make it back to their glory days.