Week 9 Game Thread
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All of a sudden the dolphins got the Oakland you are bad so we we’ll penalize you a lot treatment.
No, I’m saying the Pats aren’t anything close to a great team either. There isn’t one this year, anywhere in the league.
So after MM mocked my rankings of least-unwatchable games yesterday, I'm going to assume that he preferred to "take" watching the Denver "D" in the same way that a 6-year-old enjoys stepping on ants and messing up an anthill - the joyful glee of watching something once-beautiful get ruined and humiliated, by a power they can barely comprehend, let alone stop. 51 points, good lord what a curbstomping.
HOU-IND wasn't exactly the peak of football watchability, but at least they were two teams of roughly (and predictably) equal caliber, at this point in the National Injury League's season.
Also:
Sometimes positive factors build on each other. Fisher was regarded as a good coach in the aughts not only because McNair was covering up some flaws but also because Fisher oversaw a good defense, had creative plays (remember that fake punt return for a TD vs Seattle, which Belichick himself tried to copy in the Super Bowl?), didn't obviously fuck things up like clock management or challenges, got all 46 players playing hard and focused, etc. His run of giving-sufficient-fucks about his job may have ended sometime during his Rams tenure, and he might be a loathsome individual (as if we're rooting for choir boys elsewhere), but you can't exactly make some cherry-picked divide and say "look, if you take away all the success he's had, he's never had much success!" and act like it's some brilliant insight.
What's Belichick's record when Brady isn't the starter? Dungy's record when Manning isn't the starter? Jimmy Johnson's record when Aikman isn't the starter? Caroll's record when Wilson isn't the starter? You can play this game all day and conclude that there has never been a good coach in NFL history, except maybe Don Shula.
Sometimes positive factors build on each other. Fisher was regarded as a good coach in the aughts not only because McNair was covering up some flaws but also because Fisher oversaw a good defense, had creative plays (remember that fake punt return for a TD vs Seattle, which Belichick himself tried to copy in the Super Bowl?), didn't obviously fuck things up like clock management or challenges, got all 46 players playing hard and focused, etc. His run of giving-sufficient-fucks about his job may have ended sometime during his Rams tenure, and he might be a loathsome individual (as if we're rooting for choir boys elsewhere), but you can't exactly make some cherry-picked divide and say "look, if you take away all the success he's had, he's never had much success!" and act like it's some brilliant insight.
Andy Reid is lifetime 11-12 in the playoffs, across 19 years as a head coach. That's a sad story only if you believe that "everyone sucks but Belichick", which to be fair is a reasonable position to take, particularly if you remember the Cleveland Browns' last playoff win.
Pete Carroll is 10-7. Bill Cowher was 12-9. Jeff Fisher was 5-6. Marty Schottenheimer (1984-2006) was 5-13. The playoffs are really fucking hard.
Look, I get it. I hate Jeff Fisher too. He sucks as a person, and I am eternally grateful that Belichick owned him in 2003. I also liked Steve McNair, on and off the field. But that sort of arbitrary split ignores that a lot more went right for Jeff Fisher-coached teams than merely having McNair on the field.
They were the definition of average from 1995-1998 for McNair's first 4 years in the league. They caught fire and went to the playoffs 4 of the next 5 years, winning 13 games twice and the AFC once (and of course came a yard from sending the SB to overtime). Then they were poor-to-average the next 3 years, then he and Vince Young took them back to the playoffs for 2 years running, then he had 6 average seasons. In his 20-year run of full seasons coached, the dude had exactly 2 seasons where he had fewer than 6 wins (5-11 in '04, 4-12 in '05), which is a near-Belichickian ability to avoid a bad season and players giving up.
I'm saying he deserves more credit than we really want to give him. He's not a HOFer, but he's probably in the hall of the Good-to-Very-Good.
They were the definition of average from 1995-1998 for McNair's first 4 years in the league. They caught fire and went to the playoffs 4 of the next 5 years, winning 13 games twice and the AFC once (and of course came a yard from sending the SB to overtime). Then they were poor-to-average the next 3 years, then he and Vince Young took them back to the playoffs for 2 years running, then he had 6 average seasons. In his 20-year run of full seasons coached, the dude had exactly 2 seasons where he had fewer than 6 wins (5-11 in '04, 4-12 in '05), which is a near-Belichickian ability to avoid a bad season and players giving up.
I'm saying he deserves more credit than we really want to give him. He's not a HOFer, but he's probably in the hall of the Good-to-Very-Good.
Hey, Belichick took the Cleveland Browns (The Cleveland Browns) to the playoffs and actually WON a playoff game and also went 11-5 with Matt Cassell in 2008. I'm not sure you can use his track record as a reason why coaches only do well with great QB's.
Fisher didn't suck in the 90s because he worked hard AND had an amazing QB. With the Rams, he sucked. That is nearly impossible to argue. The team was a doormat last year. This year, they are one of the front runners in the NFC.
In his 4 full seasons with the Rams, he won 7, 7, 6, and 7 games. Slightly less than half the teams in the league would have preferred such a result each year. I'd call that the very definition of mediocre. One of his hallmarks, frankly, appears to have been the ability to avoid total suckage, year in and year out. There were a number of years where he had a terrible roster and squeezed 6 or 7 wins out of them, never bottoming out. He always put a decent product on the field and got them playing hard for him. Sustainable mediocrity is, frankly, performing pretty well in a league where the actually-great coaches like Belichick, Reid and Carroll are consistently taking double-digit wins from the rest of the league.
As SFIC stated, Rams fans initially appreciated the rise to mediocrity, but then came to realize that having reached that, they should aspire to more. It was time for him to go. But ask them whether they preferred the 2007-2011 No-Hoper Era to the 2012-15 Fisher Mediocrity era - I doubt you'd find many takers.
(I'll end my side of the dialogue here, and go take a shower after standing up for Jeff fucking Fisher...)
As SFIC stated, Rams fans initially appreciated the rise to mediocrity, but then came to realize that having reached that, they should aspire to more. It was time for him to go. But ask them whether they preferred the 2007-2011 No-Hoper Era to the 2012-15 Fisher Mediocrity era - I doubt you'd find many takers.
(I'll end my side of the dialogue here, and go take a shower after standing up for Jeff fucking Fisher...)
I did enjoy Wentz dismantle the Denver D, yes, which is a top 2-3 unit. If you compare their performance to date to the historic run they went on in 2015, then you're bound to be unimpressed. I enjoy watching Wentz and hate Denver, so I loved it.
Other than the final play CBS switched to, glad I missed two mediocrities in Indy and Hou battle away. There are countless competitive games between mediocre to bad teams every year that I'm just fine missing.
You’re a good advocate. Good to very good is fair. I’d put it a bit differently — good for a long time. Which certainly is better than average, especially the long time part and especially considering Fisher is the spiritual child of Buddy Ryan.
As for games yesterday — KC at Dallas was terrific and I felt fortunate that they aired it in DC.
7, 7, 6, and 7 wins isn't good to very good. It's below average and sustained mediocrity.
While at least a half dozen teams each individual year would be happy with 7 wins, over the course of 4 years that is horrible. I am trying to find composite standings from 2012-2015, but I am guessing that the Rams 27-37 record over those 4 years is bottom 5 in the NFL.
Also, I think the biggest mark against Fisher is that while he had that great 5 year run, the reality is that he coached 20 full seasons, plus parts of two other seasons. In that 5 season stretch, he went 56-24. In the other 15 + 2 partial seasons, he went 117-141.
Now I realize that you will say I am cherry picking. That if I take the best 5 year run away from any coach, he will look worse. Of course that is true. But if you take away the best stretches from other good coaches, their records will still be good. Fisher's is not. He had one good, fairly short, run, and the rest of his career was mostly a combination of mediocrity, some awfulness, and a lot of longevity.
Basically, he is the Eli of coaches.
Close; it's seventh-worst.
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/tgl_finder.cgi?request=1&match=combined&year_min=2012&year_max=2015&game_type=R&game_num_min=0&game_num_max=99&week_num_min=0&week_num_max=99&temperature_gtlt=lt&c1stat=points&c1comp=gte&c1val=0&c5val=1.0&order_by=points_diff
Rams 27-36-1; Washington 26-38, Tampa and Cleveland 19-45 (yuck), Tennessee and Oakland 18-46 (gross) and Jacksonville 14-50 which is mind-blowing.
EDIT: to Insta's point, it's a bad record but not an embarrassing one. He's basically as close to #10 SF (.570 WP) as #28 CLE / TB (0.297)
Thanks. Seems disingenuous to not include 2016 though. They sucked last year and he was a huge part of that. Not too many teams would want to trade place with the Rams over the last five years.
And the point is, Fisher was spoken of as an elite coach for an extremely long time. And he was mediocre, at best. That disconnect is what makes me hate him.
As the board's resident Rams fan, it goes way beyond 5 years. Since making (and getting blown out by SF in) the NFC Championship game following the 1989 season, four years during the Greatest Show on Turf era are the only ones that ended with a winning record. There were two 8-8 records in there (including the last time making the playoffs in 2004). Every other seasons was a losing one. This period included the team moving twice (only Georgia would move a team from Los Angeles to St. Louis), and me having the joyful experience of losing Super Bowl XXXVI to all of my Boston friends on the last play of the game, over 2 years before we got the chance to celebrate the Red Sox title together.
I think this moment crystallizes the experience of being a Rams fan:
Basically, Super Bowl XXXIV is the only reason I haven't completely lost my mind over this team, and even in that game they managed to win by one freaking yard. I was in the opposite end zone for The Tackle, and the 5 seconds it took for me to realize that he hadn't gotten in took about 15 years off my life.
Guy gets unnecessary roughness call. Replay shows him pushing at guys throat and then jamming face mask/head butting guy.
Gruden: I don't see it. I hope there is something more.
Then later on: we don't need to see anymore fighting after this weekend. Hope they keep that under control.
Ummm that is what they were doing by calling the play before.
Gruden: I don't see it. I hope there is something more.
Then later on: we don't need to see anymore fighting after this weekend. Hope they keep that under control.
Ummm that is what they were doing by calling the play before.
In New England? It's 19-19
He took over the Browns in 1991, after they went 3-13 in 1990, and went 6-10, 7-9, 7-9, 11-5 (playoff appearance) and then 5-11.
He controversially cut Bernie Kosar after the 1993 season (Bill's been doing that for a long, long time) and led them to the playoffs, and a win over the Pats in 1994. In 1995, they started the season 3-1, and then the rumors and official announcement that the team was going to Baltimore came out, and everything went to shit. If any coach deserves a pass for a season that fell apart due to forces outside their control, it's BB and that 95 Browns season.
Since he came to New England, they went 5-11 in that first season with Bledsoe, and then 11-5 (0-2 with Bledsoe as starter) in 2001, but if you think Brady is the main reason that team won the SB in 2001, your memory is either not that good, or you weren't old enough. Brady certainly helped, but he wasn't the Tom Brady we have now. Almost every week, they were beating better teams on the strength of BB and his insane game plans, right up until the greatest upset in SB history at the time.
They then went 11-5 with Cassel, and then 3-1 with Jimmy G. and Brissett.
Oh, your question was rhetorical. LOL. Anyway, I'm one of those people that believe you can't separate BB's success from Brady's or Brady's success from BB's, but I firmly hold the opinion that had it not been Brady, BB would have still had an amazing coaching career, and wouldn't be anywhere near the conversation of guys like Jeff Fisher. He wouldn't have five rings, 7 conference championships, etc., but I think he's still probably a HOF coach. We may never know, or we may very well find out after TB12 is done. I'm hoping it waits for a long, long time either way.
I think that's pretty close to accurate. For me, the true Eli of head coaches is Sean Payton down in New Orleans. That's a guy who has had one of the greatest QB's in NFL history for his entire 11 year career, and outside of the Super Bowl year, he has exactly 3 playoff wins, and a total of 5 playoff appearances (including the SB year). In the last 3 years, they've gone 7-9 in all three.
He has a 100-68 regular season record, which sounds great until you realize they won 48 of those games during a 4 year stretch, a stretch in which he missed an entire season due to a suspension for Bountygate.
If any coach in Football needed a hot start more than Payton did this year, I don't know who it is, although I'm pretty sure New Orleans would never fire the guy because of the one super bowl victory he did give them.
Detroit on the goal line. Like watching someone smash their head into a wall over and over again.
This is what NFL parity looks like: teams who can't find anyone to reliably hold on to the ball while gaining one yard.