Like a lot of things I don't think it's black and white.
What I BELIEVE happened was:
1) Fisher thought having Bradford and Shotty together for a 2nd year coupled with the addition of Austin and Cook and the development of Givens, Quick, and Kendricks, would allow the Rams to play a more wide-open Offense and have Defenses pick their poison. The addition of Long gave the Rams what looked like a solid OL with Saffold and Long at Tackles, Dahl playing steady, Wells healthy and able to begin the season with the team, and Williams and Smith battling it out for the other Guard spot. I think he saw Richardson as a change of pace back with Pead spelling him.
Makes sense and I believe this as well.
2) Fisher thought that once he had his hand-picked DC he could run the tye of D he wanted. He had a good/great front 4 with nice depth. He had JL keeping stuff together at LBer allowing Ogletree to learn on the job. He had returning CBs in vet Finnegan, and developing Jenkins and Johnson. He definitely wanted to protect the Safeties but probably thought that the combination of Def front 4 pressure and the ability to play versions of bend/don't break last year would suffice while they rookies found their stride.
I agree with this as well, but, I fear this is the D he wants to run. If the O lived up to, as it turned out, wildly optimistic projections then the D could be successful with this approach.
1) Will the Rams now become a run-first ball control offense as they changed to Stacy and found success with that formula? If so, doesn't that somewhat negate having an alleged franchise QB in Bradford who would appear, if that were the case, to just be a distributor? Does that scheme best utilize the skill sets of Austin and Cook?
I dont think it is an either or situation really. With Cook you can pass out of run sets, the personal on the field may take some tweaking, but, run first doesnt mean the end of the passing game or big plays.
2) Who are they Defensively? They run a passive D that is scorched when there is no front 4 pressure. They don't seem effective when they blitz. They are weak vs the run. The developmental players (Jenkins) hasn't moved forward and the vet you counted on (Finnegan) is a bust. They are a poor tackling team and their once promising secondary looks horrible and in need of probably 2-3 players in 2014. Finally, is Walton running Fisher's D? If not then he has to evaluate Walton obviously but what if Walton is just carrying out the game plan? Then isn't that on Fisher. And btw, don't Walton and BS work FOR Fisher? Because at some point Fisher needs to alter or correct things that aren't working like I believe he did when they switched to power running with Stacy.
Agreed again. I dont think the players are the problem. They got guys that are athletic ect. they just dont have good technique. I think the "easy" answer is to trade out all the CBs for new ones. I want to see more depth, but, if the coaching and approach (accountability being part of that) dont change we will just have different names not covering and not tackling.
Fisher needs to harshly evaluate himself and his staff and figure out who the Rams want to be in 2014. Frankly all I've seen is a mismash of offensive and defensive philosophies that generally have failed. Once he does that he needs to evaluate his staff from the obvious DC and OC all the way down to position coaches. He then needs to harshly evaluate his players and how they fit into the scheme he wants to run. If the player is not a fit or does not appear to be developing as they wanted they need to cut the strings. Fisher also has to determine why his teams continue to lack playing discipline in things like gap containment, backside support etc as well as penalty discipline whether it be from selfish cheap fouls to the inability to line up right.
All true. I dont think I have ever seen an NFL team flagged more for illegal alignments on O. Number 1 in the league in penalties, there is no excuse for this.
