for Beaker, an article full of snark "Jeff Fisher's problems are never his fault, and he has a contract extension to prove it"
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Nobody in the NFL is as good at being bad at their job as Jeff Fisher, but he’s got a million excuses for that. Let’s review them.
by Ryan Van Bibber Dec 4, 2016, 11:12am EST
The year started off well enough for the Rams. The owner got the green light to move to Los Angeles. After three tries, the Rams finally, maybe found their franchise quarterback, Jared Goff, and traded away a bundle of draft picks get him. Most exciting of all, head coach Jeff Fisher proclaimed on premium cable for all the world to see that he “was NOT fucking going 7-9 ... or 8-8 ... or 9-7, OK?”
Sure enough, the Rams are sitting at 4-7, one loss away from the fifth consecutive non-winning season under Fisher (13 straight for the franchise) and a date with the Patriots looming.
It’s turned out to be a tough season for Fisher and the Rams; this week was the worst of it so far. Sean Payton and the Saints gave them a revenge game beatdown, a public fight with the team’s most prominent alumni left Fisher looking petty, and a conference call in which Fisher didn’t seem to know who the Patriots running backs were.
Yet, somehow, the Rams still came out in support of their head coach. COO Kevin Demoff spent the week parroting the team’s party line on Fisher, that it’s unfair to judge him by his record. They’re paying him $7 million per year to not be judged by his perpetually mediocre results.
The Rams’ team headquarters is such a judgment-free zone that the Rams gave Fisher a two-year contract extension earlier this season, one that will pay him $7 million in 2017 and $9 million in 2018.
Nothing new for Teflon Fisher. He’s coached 22 years with only six winning seasons and three losses away from having more than any other head coach in NFL history. When a nuclear explosion rids the world of humanity, there will only be Jeff Fisher organizing a group of 53 cockroaches into a 7-9 insect football team.
How does he do it? How does he still have a job in the NFL? How is he going to survive a fifth consecutive losing season with the Rams?
For one, there’s the well-established theory that he’s a stooge for league interests. But that’s not giving him enough credit. Jeff Fisher may not be a very good football coach, but he is an outstanding excuse maker.
Week 12 vs. Saints
Let’s start with last week’s 49-21 thrashing at the hands of the Saints. That one wasn’t Fisher’s fault for two reasons.
First, an old familiar one:
“We’ve been through a lot. It’s not an excuse, but we’ve been through more than any other team in the National Football League this offseason and the moves and the travel and all those things. We’re dealing with those as best we can.”
Second:
"They had an extra three or four days to prepare for us, having played last Thursday night," Fisher said.
Strangely enough, there is actual data to suggest the advantage the Saints had, the one that Fisher claims excuses the loss, is not an advantage at all.
Week 11 vs Dolphins
The Rams actually had a 10-0 lead over the Dolphins until the last four minutes of the game. It looked like Goff was going to get a win in his long-awaited season debut. But alas ...
You see, Fisher knows they needed to make more downfield shots, but the refs made it impossible!
“There was constant pressure. The coverage didn’t allow it. We had some shots. He (Goff) made a good throw to (WR) Kenny (Britt), and we didn’t come up with the ball. We would’ve liked to have seen pass interference called on that play, which is a field position change.”
It’s pretty amazing that a long-time member of the league’s competition committee can get away with blaming the refs as often as he does.
Week 9 vs. Panthers
The officials were part of the problem again in a 10-13 loss to Carolina, too.
“Yeah, statistically, we had 10, I would acknowledge maybe six of them,” the coach said.
Penalties and Fisher go hand in hand. The Rams have committed more penalties than any other team since hiring Fisher in 2012. The fact that they continually have a young team is something that Fisher likes to hold up as an excuse as well.
But it wasn’t just the refs. Mother Nature screwed over Fisher’s Rams, too.
A missed touchdown throw happened because of the sun.
“But no excuse...the sun was in his face. He turned back around, vision’s obscured a little bit. The head came around, the ball was there, and he just couldn’t finish the play.”
He even put the blame on his defense, a unit that allowed a measly 13 points in that outing.
“You know, you can’t ever say your defense is playing good enough to win, because they can always play better. So that’s what we’ve been stressing.”
Week 7 vs. Giants (London)
Mother Nature wasn’t to blame for this one, but the facilities in London were clearly a problem Fisher’s team couldn’t overcome.
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Joe Curley @vcsjoecurley
On his radio show, Fisher said Keenum lost a TD pass to Quick in London because pass hit the skycam cable. @CVRamsClub #NFLUK
7:33 PM - 7 Nov 2016 · Thousand Oaks, CA
Retweets 3 3 likes
Traveling to London is no quick hop. Fisher brought out his standard chestnut to excuse his team’s play after a trans-Atlantic flight.
Jet lag, travel, adjusting to the time change. “That’s the hard part of international games.” Fisher had that one in the bag.
He even triaged his next excuse, saying in the same breath that it’s tough to prepare for your next opponent coming off an international game. Never mind that teams are 19-10-1 after losing in London.
Go back a week earlier and Fisher was talking up how well-prepared they were to play in London. They adjusted their meeting times, moved around their schedule and took extra precautions to prepare for the time difference.
“So, that’s not a concern of mine,” Fisher said.
Week 6 vs. Lions
AND he said earlier that they’d be prepping for it since the offseason. That was his excuse for losing to the Lions the week before.
“This will be our first experience traveling three time zones, and kicking the ball off at 10 a.m. our time (PT). That in itself is a challenge. The statistics over the last five years, they don’t reflect a great deal of success when the West Coast teams are playing the 1:00 (ET) games on the East Coast. Those are things you talk to them about. So, we adjust our schedules a little bit. Not that that can be an excuse, but hey, you know, the approach needs to be, and it is with us, is whenever they tell us show up and play, we’re going to play.”
I’m starting to think that Jeff Fisher might not be all that great at preparing for anything. Shocking, I know.
Week 5 vs. Bills
This time it was a rash of injuries to his defensive linemen that contributed to a 30-19 loss.
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Liz Habib ✔ @LizHabib
#Rams "We don’t make excuses, but 3 of our starting 4 starting defensive linemen were watching the game today." Jeff Fisher after loss
12:08 AM - 10 Oct 2016
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That he consistency prefaces his excuses with bullshit like “we don’t make excuses” is testament to his brazenness. He sucks, and he knows it. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT???
Fisher didn’t just have excuses for the loss. He found himself defending terrible coaching decisions, too.
Down by a touchdown with five minutes to play, the Rams kicked a field goal instead of going for a touchdown.
"The reason for the points was I was playing to win," Fisher said. "We had plenty of time and had three timeouts left. So take the points, get a kickoff, get a drive stop on defense, go down and a touchdown wins the game for you."
Later in the game, with desperation setting in, Fisher pulled out one of his tried-and-true trick plays. The fake punt later got blown up, but that was because the crowd noise tipped it off ... crowd noise from the home crowd in Los Angeles!
"I like the look, I like the play. We got the look and they made the play. I think their outside guy made the play. He stopped coverage when he heard the crowd roar, so he came back and made the play."
One of Fisher’s own players accidentally called bullshit on that excuse.
“As far as the crowd, I can’t speak to that,” said Bradley Marquez, who acknowledged an opponent for correctly identifying the play.
“He sniffed it out and was able to set the edge,” Marquez said.
Week 1 vs. 49ers
And who could forget how all of this season’s “7-and-9 bullshit” started, with a 28-0 shutout by the 49ers.
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Jim Trotter ✔ @JimTrotter_NFL
Jeff Fisher credited SF. I asked how team could play so poorly w/ 7 months to prepare. Said no excuses but added team moved 4x in 7 months.
12:20 AM - 13 Sep 2016
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I could go back through every terrible season Fisher’s coached the Rams and find the excuses for each and every loss. You know they’re coming as soon as the clock hits 0:00. It’s part of the 7-and-9 ethos.
I do want to take a minute to run through some of Fisher’s meta excuses for the Rams’ terrible play since moving back to Los Angeles, though some of these go all the way back to their time in St. Louis.
The “7-and-9 bullshit” excuse
Fisher did himself a disservice when he ramped up the expectations with his famous Hard Knocks speech about “not fucking going 7-and-9.” He gets asked about it now, too. And you better believe he has an excuse for that.
“I don’t,” Fisher responded when he was asked last week if he regretted saying that.
“We’d had a couple issues in camp like you normally do that I thought were counter- productive, and I had to get my point across to the players,” he continued.
“Everybody’s kind of sinking their teeth into that, and that’s fine. But you know unless you’re here in the building, you really don’t know what’s going on. And we got a good thing going as far as the future’s concerned. We’re building this team to be competitive for the future.”
Okay, let’s put aside how laughable that is. Think about Fisher’s excuse and the players. He’s using the record talk to make a point to the players, but he’s undercutting himself by revealing that he only said it to make a point.
He didn’t really mean that he wasn’t fucking going 7-and-9 ... or 8-and-8 ... or 9-and-7.” He just wanted the players to know that he wouldn’t put up with any hijinks by telling them that, but it’s OK to go 7-and-9, in Fisher’s mind.
The roster/quarterback excuse
You have to give Fisher some credit. He inherited a terrible team. There wasn’t much talent on the roster, and the Rams were coming off a 2-14 season. It’s probably a minor miracle that they did manage to go 7-8-1 in 2012, Fisher’s first season.
And there was hope for better days ahead. Before the 2012 NFL draft, the Rams traded the second pick to Washington for a haul that included a boatload of draft picks, high-draft picks.
It was the kind of deal that remakes a team overnight, the kind of thing that sets up a dynasty in the NFL.
Not for the Rams. Take a look at the players they received over the years for that trade, and think about where they are now.
AND IT KEEPS GOING ON
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