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<a class="postlink" href="http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/bryan-burwell/burwell-fisher-gets-his-players-to-respond/article_95468f66-9f1c-5c4d-b636-15735d0c5327.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/ ... c5327.html</a>
HOUSTON • As he strutted into the cramped, bunker-like interview room in the lower reaches of Reliant Stadium on Sunday afternoon fresh off a 38-13 rout of the Houston Texans, Rams coach Jeff Fisher showed us that among his many talents as an NFL head coach is his delicious sense of perfect comedic timing.
“So, how is everybody?” Fisher said with a devilish smirk flashing across his face. “Anybody have any questions regarding what just happened?”
Uhhhhh, yeah, Fish, we have plenty of questions, beginning with ... well, I dunno ... how about ... WHAT THE HECK JUST HAPPENED?
Isn’t that what we’re all sitting here asking ourselves as we scratch our heads, check our glasses, then whirl back the DVR controls to slowly review and maybe even savor the sights and sounds of this unlikely, crazy rebirth of a football team that less than two weeks ago was left for dead as NFL roadkill?
But now these surprising 3-3 Rams are clearly on a remarkable rebound. They may not necessarily be fully recovered from the horrors that led to late-September massacres at the hands of Dallas and San Francisco. But there’s no doubt they have sucked down some sort of magic elixir, because the team we saw romping past the emotionally wounded Texans looks very much like it actually knows what it’s doing again.
Yes, they can run the football (hello, Zac Stacy, this is officially your job to have and hold). They can assault the opposing quarterback with a vengeance. They can create turnovers, play efficiently on offense, be timely on defense and not make bone-headed plays on special teams.
“We are playing back up to the level of where we should be,” said defensive end Robert Quinn. “We’re starting to look like I always thought we should look. It took a little time, but we’re back and now we have to stay here.”
This was one of those classic Jeff Fisher-like gems where stats often lie, but the scoreboard never does. The Texans outgained the Rams 420-216 on offense. Sam Bradford only threw 16 passes and finished with 117 yards in the air, but three of his 12 completions went for touchdowns. Houston running back Arian Foster looked like Superman all day, rushing for 141 yards and a whopping 7.1-yard average per carry, and accounted for nearly 200 yards of total offense.
But Superman never got into the end zone, and neither did any of his teammates until it barely mattered.
And inside the visitors’ locker room, the players talked about the idea of how this team healed itself. Well, let’s be a bit more accurate. No one said all the wounds were completely healed. But this rapid two-week transformation from dead-team-walking to a .500 team very much breathing with 2½ months of meaningful football in front of them speaks to the value of the faith these players have in their head coach.
Over these past two weeks, I have to admit that I was having a few moments of doubt about Fisher. I know he’s done it before. I knew history suggested that he knew how to do it again. But after that rocky horror show against the Cowboys and Niners, my faith was severely tested.
But oddly enough, inside Rams Park, that’s precisely when faith in Fisher rose to even higher levels of certainty.
“The guys in this locker room weren’t happy with the way we played those first four weeks,” said Quinn. “And (Fisher) knew he had to do something to get us back up again. Coach Fisher’s been doing this a long time and he knows how to jump-start a team.”
Last week, we heard snippets of how Fisher told his players to basically wipe out the first four weeks of their 1-3 regular season as an extension of the preseason. But on Sunday after the game, we learned more details of how Fisher executed this little psychological ploy. At the team’s Friday morning meeting in the Rams Park main auditorium after the Niners debacle, according to several witnesses, Fisher walked into the room in street clothes as is his normal habit on the day after games. But soon after stepping to the podium on the small stage at the front of the room, the coach surprised the players and coaches by abruptly walking out of the room.
“I’ll be right back,” he told them, as the room was filled with a puzzled buzz.
A few moments later, Fisher came through the same door, and he was dressed in his training camp garb, with a collarless T-shirt, shorts and a whistle dangling from a lanyard.
That’s how he set the emotional stage for them to pretend that training camp had just ended. But then he went a step further to lift the mood of the room. After the speech, he rolled a large cooler of beer into the room and told everyone to grab a bottle.
And right then and there, they buried their eight-game preseason and with cold brews in their hands and bottles raised to the sky, the players and coaches toasted the start of the new season.
That entire meeting was supposed to be a little team secret, but word of such stuff has a funny way of filtering out to inquisitive minds. As one player told me, he’s never been around a coach whose instincts are so well in tuned to the heartbeat of his team.
“When you have a mentally tough head coach,” said team captain Chris Long, “he can will your team back into it.”
HOUSTON • As he strutted into the cramped, bunker-like interview room in the lower reaches of Reliant Stadium on Sunday afternoon fresh off a 38-13 rout of the Houston Texans, Rams coach Jeff Fisher showed us that among his many talents as an NFL head coach is his delicious sense of perfect comedic timing.
“So, how is everybody?” Fisher said with a devilish smirk flashing across his face. “Anybody have any questions regarding what just happened?”
Uhhhhh, yeah, Fish, we have plenty of questions, beginning with ... well, I dunno ... how about ... WHAT THE HECK JUST HAPPENED?
Isn’t that what we’re all sitting here asking ourselves as we scratch our heads, check our glasses, then whirl back the DVR controls to slowly review and maybe even savor the sights and sounds of this unlikely, crazy rebirth of a football team that less than two weeks ago was left for dead as NFL roadkill?
But now these surprising 3-3 Rams are clearly on a remarkable rebound. They may not necessarily be fully recovered from the horrors that led to late-September massacres at the hands of Dallas and San Francisco. But there’s no doubt they have sucked down some sort of magic elixir, because the team we saw romping past the emotionally wounded Texans looks very much like it actually knows what it’s doing again.
Yes, they can run the football (hello, Zac Stacy, this is officially your job to have and hold). They can assault the opposing quarterback with a vengeance. They can create turnovers, play efficiently on offense, be timely on defense and not make bone-headed plays on special teams.
“We are playing back up to the level of where we should be,” said defensive end Robert Quinn. “We’re starting to look like I always thought we should look. It took a little time, but we’re back and now we have to stay here.”
This was one of those classic Jeff Fisher-like gems where stats often lie, but the scoreboard never does. The Texans outgained the Rams 420-216 on offense. Sam Bradford only threw 16 passes and finished with 117 yards in the air, but three of his 12 completions went for touchdowns. Houston running back Arian Foster looked like Superman all day, rushing for 141 yards and a whopping 7.1-yard average per carry, and accounted for nearly 200 yards of total offense.
But Superman never got into the end zone, and neither did any of his teammates until it barely mattered.
And inside the visitors’ locker room, the players talked about the idea of how this team healed itself. Well, let’s be a bit more accurate. No one said all the wounds were completely healed. But this rapid two-week transformation from dead-team-walking to a .500 team very much breathing with 2½ months of meaningful football in front of them speaks to the value of the faith these players have in their head coach.
Over these past two weeks, I have to admit that I was having a few moments of doubt about Fisher. I know he’s done it before. I knew history suggested that he knew how to do it again. But after that rocky horror show against the Cowboys and Niners, my faith was severely tested.
But oddly enough, inside Rams Park, that’s precisely when faith in Fisher rose to even higher levels of certainty.
“The guys in this locker room weren’t happy with the way we played those first four weeks,” said Quinn. “And (Fisher) knew he had to do something to get us back up again. Coach Fisher’s been doing this a long time and he knows how to jump-start a team.”
Last week, we heard snippets of how Fisher told his players to basically wipe out the first four weeks of their 1-3 regular season as an extension of the preseason. But on Sunday after the game, we learned more details of how Fisher executed this little psychological ploy. At the team’s Friday morning meeting in the Rams Park main auditorium after the Niners debacle, according to several witnesses, Fisher walked into the room in street clothes as is his normal habit on the day after games. But soon after stepping to the podium on the small stage at the front of the room, the coach surprised the players and coaches by abruptly walking out of the room.
“I’ll be right back,” he told them, as the room was filled with a puzzled buzz.
A few moments later, Fisher came through the same door, and he was dressed in his training camp garb, with a collarless T-shirt, shorts and a whistle dangling from a lanyard.
That’s how he set the emotional stage for them to pretend that training camp had just ended. But then he went a step further to lift the mood of the room. After the speech, he rolled a large cooler of beer into the room and told everyone to grab a bottle.
And right then and there, they buried their eight-game preseason and with cold brews in their hands and bottles raised to the sky, the players and coaches toasted the start of the new season.
That entire meeting was supposed to be a little team secret, but word of such stuff has a funny way of filtering out to inquisitive minds. As one player told me, he’s never been around a coach whose instincts are so well in tuned to the heartbeat of his team.
“When you have a mentally tough head coach,” said team captain Chris Long, “he can will your team back into it.”
