Every year multiple coaches open up the season on the so-called “hot seat.” The odd thing about this year is that there are surprisingly few, but that could have a lot to do with the amount of coaching turnover we had this last offseason.
Who’s in trouble? Jay Gruden of the Washington Redskins, but that has more to do with the fact that he should never have been given a head coaching job in the first place. Joe Philbin of the Miami Dolphins is another obvious choice as his team’s have significantly under-performed to expectations. Mike Pettine will live on the hot seat as long as he’s in Cleveland but that’s nothing new. It’s just Cleveland.
But the dean of this year’s “hot seat” class is none other than the St. Louis Rams’ Jeff Fisher, who is entering his fourth season as the team’s head coach and has never finished better than 7-9 in his previous three.
Coach Fisher talks with @IamSecond.
Watch: http://t.co/B8GDWax4n3 pic.twitter.com/09CE6A8WZh
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) August 8, 2015
The Rams are just the second team Fisher has head coached in his lengthy career. Fisher has amassed a 167-153-1 record coming into this season and a postseason mark of 5-6, all with the Tennessee Titans. The hallmark of any Jeff Fisher team of the past, regardless of what any pundit wants to say, is mediocrity. Fisher’s career record is pretty good, a good 14 games over .500 and that’s with rebuilding the Titans from the ground up more than once, but the reason that record is so good Fisher’s teams are rarely bad. They’re also rarely good.
In fact, Fisher’s teams have gone 8-8 five times in his 19 full seasons as a head coach. Only four times has a Fisher-coached team won fewer than seven games and all that would seem impressive if you didn’t also realize, with your math skills, that Fisher has only coached six winning seasons in his entire career. His best season was his first winning season, a 13-3 campaign with the Titans in 1999 that saw them barely lose the Super Bowl to the same team he now coaches.
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He never made it back to the Super Bowl. He never even made it back to the AFC title game.
The problem with those Fisher teams in Tennessee was the same all the way through; he never really had the quarterback he needed. Steve McNair was by far his best quarterback, but he’s also had Vince Young and Kerry Collins as his starting signal-callers. Fisher knew this and when multiple teams courted him to be their new head coach in 2012, he chose the Rams specifically because they had the quarterback he’d always lacked in Sam Bradford.
Jeff Fisher talks with @AndrewSiciliano about @TG3II and the #Rams dominant defense.
WATCH: http://t.co/W4jM8V6MTJ pic.twitter.com/HMnGCK2yd6
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) August 7, 2015
Bradford got Fisher to take over the team, but it was consistent injuries to that same quarterback that made the Rams look just like those mediocre Titans teams of Fisher’s first stint as coach. People always say Fisher wants to run the ball, but that’s wrong. He wants to be physical, sure, but if you think he didn’t want the next Peyton Manning or Aaron Rodgers or Kurt Warner when he took the St. Louis job, you’re crazy. He wants to throw it. He wants his offense to be explosive. He wants the kind of offense that consistently beat him every year in Tennessee, especially in the playoffs. Fisher’s teams were “running teams” because that’s what they had to be to do anything. Just like his last two seasons with Sam Bradford sidelined with knee injuries.
For the first time now, ever really considering Bradford barely saw the field in two calendar years, Fisher seems to have fixed his quarterback problem with Nick Foles, a Pro Bowl talent who can throw the ball 50 times a game if he has to. Around him Fisher has created a team with big, strong wide receivers and speedsters, with two starting caliber running backs. The offensive line is only suspect because its players are so young, but if they play up to their ability, they’ll be fine.
JUST IN: Rams coach Jeff Fisher announces Nick Foles has signed a 2-year extension with the team. pic.twitter.com/C60NzbGHiU
— NFL Network (@nflnetwork) August 8, 2015
There’s every reason now for Fisher to put together one of his winning, playoff seasons with arguably the most talented team he’s ever fielded in his 20 years as a head coach. With the team likely moving to Los Angeles next season, there’ll be no patience for underachievement in this group. There are no excuses anymore. Jeff Fisher is on the hottest seat in the NFL simply because anything out of a significant playoff run with this group would show, ultimately, that he is the problem. That mediocrity wasn’t a hand he was dealt in Tennessee, but the one be brought to the table.
