Every NFL Team's Biggest Mistake of the Past Decade

[Prime Time]

I don't agree with this. While I'm glad to see "Fisher-Ball" gone for obvious reasons, he did inherit a terrible team and moved it up at least to a level of mediocrity. The surprising rise of the Rams once McVay took over makes Jeff Fisher's tenure as head coach look even worse but he did help set the table for this regime. He even claims he did.

To read about every other team's biggest mistake click the link below.
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http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2780953-every-nfl-teams-biggest-mistake-of-the-past-decade#slide0

Los Angeles Rams

Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

Hiring Jeff Fisher in 2012

I get it. Jeff Fisher was the hottest name on the coaching carousel in 2012, and it's not as though any of the other coaches hired that year—Mike Mularkey, Joe Philbin, Chuck Pagano, Dennis Allen, Greg Schiano—had a lot of success.

But the Rams might have been better off promoting 2011 offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels rather than allowing him to jump back to New England. Or maybe they wish they had given Mike Zimmer an interview two years before the Vikings hired him. They also interviewed Ray Horton. He might have been good?

What I'm getting at is: ABJF. Anyone But Jeff Fisher.

The Rams posted a losing record in each of Fisher's four full seasons as well as the partial year that led to his firing in 2016, and no team in football scored fewer points or gained fewer yards during Fisher's tenure in St. Louis/Los Angeles.

But what really cost the Rams is the fact that they held on for so long. The damage Fisher caused might have been limited had they recognized their mistake when everybody else did and fired him in 2014 or 2015. Instead, they let him bring his stale brand of football to a new market and allowed him to get within 100 yards of top 2016 pick Jared Goff.

A coach who got the absolute least out of Nick Foles and Case Keenum didn't fare much better with Goff, who bombed as a rookie after spending months under Fisher's tutelage. Thankfully, the Rams cut bait on Fisher late that season.

Just over a year later, Goff was a Pro Bowler, the Rams had the highest-scoring offense in the league, Keenum was the league's seventh-highest-rated passer in Minnesota and Foles won Super Bowl MVP with the Eagles.

Had the Rams not hired Fisher and held on too long, they probably wouldn't have ended up with 2017 Coach of the Year Sean McVay. But hiring Fisher was still a tremendous error.

 

[tempests]

I don't really know what the Rams' biggest mistake would be. They made a lot of small and medium sized ones and then compounded them.

If I had to pick something, it would probably not holding players and coaches to account during the Fisher regime. When Fisher was hired he vowed to put together a "rock star" coaching staff, a promise he never delivered on.

Rather than establishing a commitment to excellence on offense, Rams were far too comfortable grinding out 17-14 wins and holding onto chronic underachievers like Brian Quick or Lance Kendricks, when they should've been acting aggressively to replace them. We saw what happened when they overhauled their WR corps and turned their weakest links on the OL into their greatest strengths in 2017. That should've been done years ago.

Fish was always quick with some excuse why his team couldn't perform better in his postgame conferences and I have to believe the players adopted that mentality as well. They could blame their issues on relocation or "we're young and competitive", a line parroted far too often for my liking, even from owner Kroenke.

I always said the Rams wouldn't turn it around until losing was "off the table", and for too many years, it was still acceptable to go 7-9. By the end of 2016 the players themselves were calling for a culture change, and aside from "we not me", I believe McVay instilled the accountability that Fisher did not.

 

[RamFanWA]

I don't agree with this. While I'm glad to see "Fisher-Ball" gone for obvious reasons, he did inherit a terrible team and moved it up at least to a level of mediocrity. The surprising rise of the Rams once McVay took over makes Jeff Fisher's tenure as head coach look even worse but he did help set the table for this regime. He even claims he did.

I agree with Prime on this - McVay made Fisher look worse than we was... but in his own right, Fisher was a breath of fresh air, until he somehow, ran out of gas in the later years..

 

[OC--LeftCoast]

I could not disagree more with that choice,

Ill just leave it at that

 

[Angry Ram]

"I used to be the biggest mistake..."

 

[…..]

I would say some of our drafting mistakes were worse than Fisher was.

Teams alot more fun at the moment. McVay is the shiny new thing and all that....but the Stache brought us some much needed respect.... until the team lost confidence in our offenseive philosophies.

 

[George Remus]

I could not disagree more with that choice,

I agree with your premise. ...... and ....

I normally like to pick apart an ignorant writer's logic ... but please help me take this another direction.

Name two or three big mistakes that the Rams made.

Also, name two or three big mistakes that the Rams avoided by making good decisions.

anyone can jump in with their two cents....

 

[Rainram]

All teams have hits and misses on drafting...and they’ve had some good drafts. I won’t ding them there.

We’ve been through worse than Fisher... *cough*Spags and Linehan*cough*.

But...under Fisher...the inability to build a 21st century Offense was a terrible move. The offensive philosophy, and offensive coaching hires were awful. Sure Fisher is responsible for that, I guess. But those offenses were so painful to watch.

 

[Zodi]

Fisher gave us a lot of talent. Just couldn't effectively use it.

Biggest mistake in the past decade? Toss up between Jason Smith and Greg Robinson.

 

[1maGoh]

I'd probably say that Cignetti and Boras as OCs were worse decisions than Fisher. But they were Fisher's decisions, so in the root cause analysis Fisher is the ultimate bad decision there.

 

[Ram65]

I'd probably say that Cignetti and Boras as OCs were worse decisions than Fisher. But they were Fisher's decisions, so in the root cause analysis Fisher is the ultimate bad decision there.

Good answer.

 

[Karate61]

I'm going to throw in taking Bradford over Suh. Set Rams back for years!

 

[Rabid Ram]

Call it what you will without Jeff Fisher there is no Mcvay coaching the Rams

 

[Rams43]

Biggest Ram mistake in the last 10 years?

Ummmmm...

I’m hard pressed to think of a bigger one than Fisher.

The GRob pick pales by comparison, IMO.

 

[Mackeyser]

I would say some of our drafting mistakes were worse than Fisher was.

Teams alot more fun at the moment. McVay is the shiny new thing and all that....but the Stache brought us some much needed respect.... until the team lost confidence in our offenseive philosophies.

Well, I won't rehash the argument beyond to say that it wasn't a question of losing confidence in the offensive philosophies.

Rather, it was that the Rams were running a structurally, fundamentally broken offense that in many cases failed even when the D wasn't in position.

The result was historically bad results from players who we KNEW weren't historically bad. Keenum and Foles continue to prove that they weren't anything like their time with the Rams and I'm shocked people forget that Austin Davis threw for 300yd games in basically the same offense in which Foles and Keenum could barely average 200 if that.

I would agree that the players lost confidence, infamously with Gurley calling the Rams offense a "middle school offense" but the issue wasn't a matter of confidence. It was a matter of professional players realizing that the structure of their offense wasn't nearly adequate to defeat professional NFL defenses. Even perfectly executed, their ceiling was modest failure. The floor was spectacular failure and we saw some of both.

I dunno that I like the point of the article at the center of these questions.

Every situation is dynamic and I think that Fisher gets both too much and too little credit for both the Rams failures and success.

The net result was that he failed and he failed in large part because of his own decisions and philosophies.

Honestly, I dunno how one quantifies the "biggest" mistake. I suppose some are so egregious that one doesn't really have to quantify explicitly to know "yep, that was by far the biggest mistake".

I think the Rams have had a LOT of mistakes and who knows? If the Rams had elevated Josh McDaniels would we be better or worse?

All I know is that I'm tickled pink that we have McVay as our HC and unless he's found with a basement full of dead hookers, I think he can be our very successful HC for as long as he wants to be.

And that is super exciting.

Lastly, all our mistakes lead us to the now and I couldn't be more excited about our now. If that meant going through the DARK tunnel that was the coaching carousel since Vermeil... then so be it.

 

[jjab360]

I'm gonna go a bit off the beaten path here and say not hiring Fisher, not even hiring Spags, but Spags hiring Josh McDaniels.

Bradford was coming off a relatively succesful rookie season in which the apparently criminally underrated Pat Shurmur recognized the black hole that we had at the OL position and put him in the best position to succeed with a boring, predictable, yet completely necessary short passing WCO.

It didn't put a ton of points on the board but it was probably for the best for Bradford's development and most importantly health until we could fix the OL.

When McDunce got here he pretty much said to heck with the OL, we're going deep every play no matter what and Bradford got hammered because of it. Not to mention I remember articles saying he had a huge hand in the receiver heavy 2011 draft class, none of which ever actually contributed as receivers. Bradford's health and psyche never fully recovered and the rest is history.

A decade down the tubes but it is what it is and I couldn't possibly be happier with the future outlook right now.

 

[kurtfaulk]

I'm gonna go a bit off the beaten path here and say not hiring Fisher, not even hiring Spags, but Spags hiring Josh McDaniels.

Bradford was coming off a relatively succesful rookie season in which the apparently criminally underrated Pat Shurmur recognized the black hole that we had at the OL position and put him in the best position to succeed with a boring, predictable, yet completely necessary short passing WCO.

It didn't put a ton of points on the board but it was probably for the best for Bradford's development and most importantly health until we could fix the OL.

When McDunce got here he pretty much said to heck with the OL, we're going deep every play no matter what and Bradford got hammered because of it. Not to mention I remember articles saying he had a huge hand in the receiver heavy 2011 draft class, none of which ever actually contributed as receivers. Bradford's health and psyche never fully recovered and the rest is history.

A decade down the tubes but it is what it is and I couldn't possibly be happier with the future outlook right now.

They looked pretty good for the first couple of games but then spags punted the ball away against the giants with a couple of minutes left 2 scores down and the players followed suit the rest of the season.

It was a chore to make a completion. There wasn't an easy completion for the rest of the year. Unbelievable. What kind of oc does that to a team and young qb?

Fisher had to spend 2012 getting Bradford back to serviceable such was the damage mcdouche afflicted on him. Just as Sammy was about to shine in 2013 the injury fubared him.

.

 

[Mojo Ram]

Hiring Jeff Fisher in 2012

Yeah no. Wrong answer.

 

[DR RAM]

I don't agree with this. While I'm glad to see "Fisher-Ball" gone for obvious reasons, he did inherit a terrible team and moved it up at least to a level of mediocrity. The surprising rise of the Rams once McVay took over makes Jeff Fisher's tenure as head coach look even worse but he did help set the table for this regime. He even claims he did.

To read about every other team's biggest mistake click the link below.
********************************************************************
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2780953-every-nfl-teams-biggest-mistake-of-the-past-decade#slide0

Los Angeles Rams

Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

Hiring Jeff Fisher in 2012

I get it. Jeff Fisher was the hottest name on the coaching carousel in 2012, and it's not as though any of the other coaches hired that year—Mike Mularkey, Joe Philbin, Chuck Pagano, Dennis Allen, Greg Schiano—had a lot of success.

But the Rams might have been better off promoting 2011 offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels rather than allowing him to jump back to New England. Or maybe they wish they had given Mike Zimmer an interview two years before the Vikings hired him. They also interviewed Ray Horton. He might have been good?

What I'm getting at is: ABJF. Anyone But Jeff Fisher.

The Rams posted a losing record in each of Fisher's four full seasons as well as the partial year that led to his firing in 2016, and no team in football scored fewer points or gained fewer yards during Fisher's tenure in St. Louis/Los Angeles.

But what really cost the Rams is the fact that they held on for so long. The damage Fisher caused might have been limited had they recognized their mistake when everybody else did and fired him in 2014 or 2015. Instead, they let him bring his stale brand of football to a new market and allowed him to get within 100 yards of top 2016 pick Jared Goff.

A coach who got the absolute least out of Nick Foles and Case Keenum didn't fare much better with Goff, who bombed as a rookie after spending months under Fisher's tutelage. Thankfully, the Rams cut bait on Fisher late that season.

Just over a year later, Goff was a Pro Bowler, the Rams had the highest-scoring offense in the league, Keenum was the league's seventh-highest-rated passer in Minnesota and Foles won Super Bowl MVP with the Eagles.

Had the Rams not hired Fisher and held on too long, they probably wouldn't have ended up with 2017 Coach of the Year Sean McVay. But hiring Fisher was still a tremendous error.

Nope. I will always give Fish credit, as in, we basically had no NFL players on the roster before him. Fish'es problem, he didn't, wouldn't, or couldn't hire offensive coaches to cultivate the talent he acquired. I still appreciate what he did for the dumpster fire of the team he took over.

He changed the culture in a good way, IMO, but he didn't do enough, and also fell into some bad, or easy habits.

 

[UKram]

I'd probably say that Cignetti and Boras as OCs were worse decisions than Fisher. But they were Fisher's decisions, so in the root cause analysis Fisher is the ultimate bad decision there.

i was about to say the same thing fishers biggest balls up was his inability to hire a a decent OC ... we had a talented D they won us a few games in the past anything form 20-15 range for an offense would have seen a few more wins ....Jeff dug his own grave