Ok, you tell me how you would have retained Tru, JJ, and McLeod without blowing up the cap and putting us in eventual cap hell. And don't forget that many fans around here were more than ready to let JJ take a walk. Fact is, he offered JJ a contract commensurate with his worth, New York outbid us. But we still had TruJo and EJ coming back. Had EJ not taken as long to recover from injury, you probably wouldn't even mention this. And as far as who got the franchise tag between TruJo and JJ, make no mistake that Fisher had input, if not the final call.
With respect to McLeod, while he was a good safety, we had Alexander waiting in the wings, and Mo hasn't disappointed. He was a younger, cheaper alternative who grew into the role quite nicely. While I appreciate McLeod's contributions while he was a Ram, thanks to the play of Alexander, Rodney hasn't been missed that much.
As far as giving Fisher the green light, that buck stops with Stan, not with Demoff. Demoff isn't going to hire or fire any HC without Stan giving the thumbs up or thumbs down.
It's not a case of blaming one guy for all the good and blaming the other for all the bad. Our scouting department was an absolute mess before Snead got here, and it's much, much better now. Snead found plenty of good raw material for Fisher to work with, but Fisher had the final say as to who got picked and who coached those players. Snead had absolutely nothing to do with the hiring of three progressively worse OCs, where the first one was already mediocre. The calls on the coordinators and the position coaches (responsible for coaching up the players picked) was all on Fisher, and while Fisher did a fine job with that on the defensive side of the ball, he did abysmally bad on the offensive side of the ball - i.e. the part of the team where players have not been developed or have regressed.
Fisher bears the brunt of the responsibility, because he had final say in who was drafted, who coached the players who were drafted, who stayed on the final roster and who was cut, who dressed on game days, when the challenge flag was pulled, when it wasn't, when to go for it on 4th down and when not to, when to try a fake punt, in how practices and training camps were run, and so on. He wanted final say and full roster control and he got it. Snead's job was to find the kind of players Fisher wanted, Fisher's job was to make sure they were coached up.
Snead will be a good GM in this league. It's just a matter of who he will be good for at this point. I'm ok with him not being retained if its necessary to get the coach that the Rams need (e.g., if Harbaugh were available and Snead had to go as a condition of his hiring, I would understand). But if that condition is not present, I think he should be kept around. Scouting and finding players that the coach wanted hasn't been the big problem around here. Coaching those players once inside the building most definitely has (on offense, particularly).
