Jeff Fisher's Job Shouldn't Be Safe in St. Louis

There’s a strange phenomenon in the NFL, and it can only be explained by counting dollars. The many dollars that belong to St. Louis Rams head coach Jeff Fisher.

Every year, Black Monday—the day when the coaching carousel starts its annual warp-speed spin—comes and brings the violent fall of axes around the league. Inevitable firings are made official, and franchises are realigned as the offseason begins.

Yet since 1994, Fisher has been without a head coaching gig for only one season. Explaining that should be about as difficult as dissecting the ending of Lost or making someone understand a black hole.

No, not the crazed Oakland Raiders version of a black hole. I’m talking about the space-time vacuum version.

But the explanation is simple, though no less depressing. Fisher is still owed $14 million over the next two seasons, according to ESPN.com’s Nick Wagoner, and with an average annual salary of $7 million, he’s among the top five highest-paid NFL head coaches.

That’s all you really need for an explanation. Or if you’re someone who enjoys efficiency, one word would suffice: money.

"

In four years as 49ers head coach, Jim Harbaugh (5-3) has as many playoff wins as 20-year veteran Jeff Fisher (5-6)

— ryan van bibber (@justRVB) December 28, 2014"

The salaries of NFL head coaches are notoriously kept in the dark. But if Wagoner and others—including a Forbes list in 2013—are even somewhat close and Fisher is making only slightly less than defending champion Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, then it becomes pretty tough to swallow that cash.

Which is a damn shame, because accepting mediocrity usually leads to more mediocrity.

Year	Wins	Losses	Ties
2014	6	10	0
2013	7	9	0
2012	7	8	1
2010	6	10	0
2009	8	8	0
2008	13	3	0
2007	10	6	0
2006	8	8	0
2005	4	12	0
2004	5	11	0

The Rams signed Fisher to that ballooned contract in 2012. They did that even after Fisher spent 17 years with the Tennessee Titans/Houston Oilers, and only six of those seasons ended with a winning record.

Now with the Rams, he’s added three more years of losing. He’s occupied a top coaching spot somewhere in the NFL for two decades and has only those six seasons with a record over .500 on his resume.

His last winning season? That came in 2008. His last playoff win? You’ll have to go back to a time when texting a word with the letter “L” in it meant hitting the "5" key on your phone three times.

Fisher hasn’t won a playoff game since 2003. During his tenure, the Rams have been exactly how Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians described them: average defined.

Team	Rank	Wins	Losses	Ties
Broncos	1	38	10	0
Patriots	2	36	12	0
Seahawks	3	36	12	0
Colts	4	33	15	0
Packers	5	31	16	1
Rams	25	20	27	1

There’s an impulse to look back on Fisher’s most recent failure in 2014 and blame injuries, the football equivalent of a “meh.”

Yes, it’s true that the Rams lost quarterback Sam Bradford long before this season even started. Losing any starting quarterback during the preseason isn’t a pleasant experience.

But are we really convinced there’s a chasm between Bradford and Shaun Hill, or even what Austin Davis provided briefly?

Player	Games	Comp %	Yards	Yds/attempt	TDs	INTs	QB rating
Hill	9	63.3	1,657	7.2	8	7	83.9
Bradford	7	60.7	1,687	6.4	14	4	90.9

The only gap of any significance in favor of Bradford is the touchdown-to-interception ratio. Overall, Bradford has been inaccurate throughout his career with a completion percentage of 58.6. He’s also shown an inability to push the ball deep, which is reflected in his career yards per attempt of 6.3.

The state of Bradford’s career and the dire need for quarterback competence in St. Louis are subjects for another deep-thinking offseason day. The shallow dive here shows that pointing to Bradford alone is convenient and short-sighted.

In fact, we can say that about any injury and its impact on Fisher’s results.

The Rams also lost promising young wide receiver Brian Quick early in the season, and defensive end Chris Long for 10 games.

But the validity of citing injury woes wears pretty thin when the Rams are in the same division as a team likely about to use Ryan Lindley as its starting quarterback for a playoff game. It gets even less tolerable when another team in the NFC West finished with the league’s fifth-best defense even after playing without linebackers NaVorro Bowman and Patrick Willis for all or most of the season.

Finally, any injury groaning in St. Louis takes its last breath of air when the haul for Robert Griffin III is tallied. Rams general manager Les Snead dealt the second overall pick in 2012 to the Washington Redskins. In return, he received four picks: three first-round picks and a second-rounder.

After further dealing, the talent and depth given to Fisher as a result of that trade was gargantuan:

Yet still another offseason is beginning in St. Louis before anything descends on New Year’s Eve from atop a strangely vacant building.

So how do we really explain the great riddle of Jeff Fisher and his most recent season that ended with a 6-10 record? A crushing lack of in-game adjusting, mostly.

Of the Rams’ 10 losses, they trailed by less than a touchdown in four of them. The most glaring failures came early in the season, when they repeatedly blew comfortable leads.

Week	Largest lead	Result
Week 3 (vs. Cowboys)	21-0	lost 34-31
Week 6 (vs. 49ers)	14-0	lost 31-17
Week 7 (vs. Seahawks)	21-7	won 28-26

Any shred of defense quickly vanished in two of those games and knuckles unnecessarily turned several shades of white in a third.

That’s not a good look for any team and any coach. But it really isn’t a fashionable look for a defense-oriented head coach like Fisher, who spent many years on that side of the ball as a coordinator.

Throughout Fisher’s reign of averageness, Pro-Footbal-Reference.com indicates the Rams have allowed 5.4 yards per play. That ranks them 17th over the three-year span and is once again aligned with what I presume is Fisher’s mission statement: Give me the middle, nothing more.

When the total points allowed by all defenses since 2012 are added up, the NFC West flexes its muscle, with three teams in the top five. The Rams? 14th.

Even with those blown leads and disappointments, there were still plenty of reasons to have rosy Rams thoughts this season. They beat the Seahawks, San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos, and went through a three-game stretch during which they outscored opponents 82-12 (including two straight shutouts).

There are enough sources of bubbly optimism to believe that if Snead can find even passable quarterback play, the Rams should be a playoff team in 2015.

They have rising young players at core offensive positions like Quick, fellow wide receiver Stedman Bailey and running back Tre Mason, and a defensive line that turns quarterbacks into dust.

Fisher has been gifted one more chance with this group during an era when few coaches remain employed after three straight sub-.500 seasons. A year from now, the money left on his contract will be much easier to swallow, and without strides forward, a mysteriously revered coach should finally be cast off.

Eventually, potential has to turn into production. When it doesn’t, failure turns into accountability, and then a job search begins.

Fisher avoids that cycle far too often.