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Fisher wants Rams to keep grinding
• By Jim Thomas
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/foot...cle_7292ecd9-1d3f-53f4-b075-54cc53d5ad55.html
The Rams’ 27-6 victory against San Francisco had been over for maybe 15 minutes, and already coach Jeff Fisher was looking ahead.
“Yeah, I can’t wait to get back to work in the morning,” Fisher said Sunday. “As a matter of fact, we’re gonna give some players a little bit of extra time off tomorrow so we can dig deep into it as a staff, just to try to make more plays.”
So the players came in Monday and watched the San Francisco tape on their own, which allowed the coaching staff to get an earlier start than usual on this week’s opponent — Minnesota.
Fisher has been around long enough to realize this Rams team has an opportunity to put something together this season. The last thing he wants is for the team to feel self-satisfied after back-to-back wins over Cleveland and San Francisco by a combined score of 51-12.
So the emphasis these days at Rams Park is more constructive criticism than patting each other on the back.
“We want to get better,” Fisher said. “That’s what this is about.”
He doesn’t want a repeat of last season, when the Rams posted back-to-back shutouts of Oakland and Washington, only to lose their final three games of 2014 to finish 6-10.
Three times in 2013, the team won back-to-back games only to stumble the following week. In fact, in Fisher’s three-plus seasons in St. Louis, the team has won as many as three games only once, winning at Arizona, at home against San Francisco, and at Buffalo in Games 11-13 of the 2012 campaign.
As the players say, the idea is to stack wins together. As many as possible.
“The thing for us is we can’t be content,” tight end and fullback Cory Harkey said. “Obviously, we know we can get better. So we’ve just got to come back to work, and we’ve gotta get the next one. We’ve gotta get three in a row. That’s all we can worry about right now.”
The players barely paused to reflect on the fact that at 4-3, they were above .500 in November for the first time since 2006. The mood was more
”we’ve got a lot to work on”
rather than
”we’ve come a long way.”
“And I appreciate that, because it just shows this team is growing,” defensive tackle Michael Brockers said. “So many times in the past years, we’d look at a win — we’d be so high on that win, we’d end up not focusing on the game ahead.”
But the past two Sundays, the postgame vibe in the locker room has been telling, and Fisher has taken notice.
“This was not an overtime victory against Seattle in the opener type of feeling in the locker room,” Fisher said Sunday. “This was, ‘OK, we got through it. We won it. But we gotta play much better.’ I think that’s the sign of a team that’s moving forward and understands that it has potential, it has opportunities, but you can’t be satisfied.”
In this week-to-week league, there’s always another Sunday to prove yourselves. The test next Sunday in TCF Bank Stadium is daunting against a 5-2 Minnesota team that embarrassed the Rams 34-6 at the Edward Jones Dome in the 2014 season opener.
The two areas of greatest concern for Fisher coming out of the San Francisco game were third-down conversions on offense — or lack thereof — and penalties.
The Rams went one for 12 on third downs against the 49ers, are two for 21 over their past two games, and now rank dead last in the NFL in third-down conversion rate at 25.9 percent.
“Realistically speaking, I would subtract four of those, because we had one where we ran it with the intention of kicking the field goal,” Fisher said. “And then we had three where the offense was instructed to run it in the 4-minute (drain-the-clock) situation. Still, two for 17’s not good.
“We can’t win games, especially at this time of year, when we’re not completing third downs on offense.”
As for penalties, they’ve historically been a bugaboo for Fisher-coached teams. Penalties are up throughout the league this season, so the Rams’ numbers aren’t as bad as one might think. They’re tied for 13th in penalties assessed (56), and 21st in penalty yardage assessed (431).
Keep in mind, however, several teams with more penalties and more penalty yards have yet to have their bye week.
Nonetheless, 12 penalties for 93 yards against San Francisco is too much. So was nine penalties for 75 yards against Cleveland.
“We’ve got seven defensive offsides in the last two weeks, and that’s at home,” Fisher said. “So as we start playing good teams on the road here, we’re gonna have to learn from that, and play with more discipline up front on the defensive line.”
While third-down efficiency and penalties are the top agenda items, Fisher also would like to run the ball better early with Todd Gurley.
“We’ve gotta block better for him earlier in the game,” Fisher said. “You saw it, it was two yards or three yards, or one yard, or a tackle for a loss. And then all of a sudden, we hit a crease and things start to open up for us, and then (Gurley) gets the game-breaker.”
A more productive running game in the first quarter should lead to faster starts on the scoreboard as well. The Rams have scored only 19 points in the first quarter this season; only Philadelphia (10), San Francisco (12), and Jacksonville (16) have scored fewer.
And nine of those 19 Rams points have come directly from the St. Louis defense: Sunday’s safety against San Francisco and Rodney McLeod’s scoop-and-score on a Cleveland fumble a week earlier.
• By Jim Thomas
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/foot...cle_7292ecd9-1d3f-53f4-b075-54cc53d5ad55.html
The Rams’ 27-6 victory against San Francisco had been over for maybe 15 minutes, and already coach Jeff Fisher was looking ahead.
“Yeah, I can’t wait to get back to work in the morning,” Fisher said Sunday. “As a matter of fact, we’re gonna give some players a little bit of extra time off tomorrow so we can dig deep into it as a staff, just to try to make more plays.”
So the players came in Monday and watched the San Francisco tape on their own, which allowed the coaching staff to get an earlier start than usual on this week’s opponent — Minnesota.
Fisher has been around long enough to realize this Rams team has an opportunity to put something together this season. The last thing he wants is for the team to feel self-satisfied after back-to-back wins over Cleveland and San Francisco by a combined score of 51-12.
So the emphasis these days at Rams Park is more constructive criticism than patting each other on the back.
“We want to get better,” Fisher said. “That’s what this is about.”
He doesn’t want a repeat of last season, when the Rams posted back-to-back shutouts of Oakland and Washington, only to lose their final three games of 2014 to finish 6-10.
Three times in 2013, the team won back-to-back games only to stumble the following week. In fact, in Fisher’s three-plus seasons in St. Louis, the team has won as many as three games only once, winning at Arizona, at home against San Francisco, and at Buffalo in Games 11-13 of the 2012 campaign.
As the players say, the idea is to stack wins together. As many as possible.
“The thing for us is we can’t be content,” tight end and fullback Cory Harkey said. “Obviously, we know we can get better. So we’ve just got to come back to work, and we’ve gotta get the next one. We’ve gotta get three in a row. That’s all we can worry about right now.”
The players barely paused to reflect on the fact that at 4-3, they were above .500 in November for the first time since 2006. The mood was more
”we’ve got a lot to work on”
rather than
”we’ve come a long way.”
“And I appreciate that, because it just shows this team is growing,” defensive tackle Michael Brockers said. “So many times in the past years, we’d look at a win — we’d be so high on that win, we’d end up not focusing on the game ahead.”
But the past two Sundays, the postgame vibe in the locker room has been telling, and Fisher has taken notice.
“This was not an overtime victory against Seattle in the opener type of feeling in the locker room,” Fisher said Sunday. “This was, ‘OK, we got through it. We won it. But we gotta play much better.’ I think that’s the sign of a team that’s moving forward and understands that it has potential, it has opportunities, but you can’t be satisfied.”
In this week-to-week league, there’s always another Sunday to prove yourselves. The test next Sunday in TCF Bank Stadium is daunting against a 5-2 Minnesota team that embarrassed the Rams 34-6 at the Edward Jones Dome in the 2014 season opener.
The two areas of greatest concern for Fisher coming out of the San Francisco game were third-down conversions on offense — or lack thereof — and penalties.
The Rams went one for 12 on third downs against the 49ers, are two for 21 over their past two games, and now rank dead last in the NFL in third-down conversion rate at 25.9 percent.
“Realistically speaking, I would subtract four of those, because we had one where we ran it with the intention of kicking the field goal,” Fisher said. “And then we had three where the offense was instructed to run it in the 4-minute (drain-the-clock) situation. Still, two for 17’s not good.
“We can’t win games, especially at this time of year, when we’re not completing third downs on offense.”
As for penalties, they’ve historically been a bugaboo for Fisher-coached teams. Penalties are up throughout the league this season, so the Rams’ numbers aren’t as bad as one might think. They’re tied for 13th in penalties assessed (56), and 21st in penalty yardage assessed (431).
Keep in mind, however, several teams with more penalties and more penalty yards have yet to have their bye week.
Nonetheless, 12 penalties for 93 yards against San Francisco is too much. So was nine penalties for 75 yards against Cleveland.
“We’ve got seven defensive offsides in the last two weeks, and that’s at home,” Fisher said. “So as we start playing good teams on the road here, we’re gonna have to learn from that, and play with more discipline up front on the defensive line.”
While third-down efficiency and penalties are the top agenda items, Fisher also would like to run the ball better early with Todd Gurley.
“We’ve gotta block better for him earlier in the game,” Fisher said. “You saw it, it was two yards or three yards, or one yard, or a tackle for a loss. And then all of a sudden, we hit a crease and things start to open up for us, and then (Gurley) gets the game-breaker.”
A more productive running game in the first quarter should lead to faster starts on the scoreboard as well. The Rams have scored only 19 points in the first quarter this season; only Philadelphia (10), San Francisco (12), and Jacksonville (16) have scored fewer.
And nine of those 19 Rams points have come directly from the St. Louis defense: Sunday’s safety against San Francisco and Rodney McLeod’s scoop-and-score on a Cleveland fumble a week earlier.
