With the NFL planning to ask the Competition Committee to revisit the question of whether teams that have nailed down playoff berths should be forced to use starters in games that are meaningless to them yet very meaningful to their opponents and to other teams jockeying for any remaining playoff berths, one of the co-chairs of the league’s rule-recommending body has made his position known.
Titans coach Jeff Fisher, who benefited from a decision by Colts coach Tony Dungy to call off the canines in Week 17 of the 2007 season, says that teams that have played their way into meaningless late-season games shouldn’t be required to keep pushing for more wins with their best players.
“Clubs have a right to do what they choose or see fit from the standpoint of what’s best for the club, you know, with the goal of reaching the Super Bowl. And I think that’s always gonna be the case. You can’t take that away from the club,” Fisher told Alex Marvez and Howard Balzer of Sirius NFL Radio on Friday. “And I’ll just say this: I mean, the teams that are upset and complaining and this and that, they should have won a couple more games earlier in the year.”
Fine, Coach. But would you feel that way if your team had “won a couple more games earlier in the year” and now needed the Jets, the Texans, and/or anyone else to lose to a team that is in a position to lay down?
Here’s one thing we know for sure. If/when Fisher is ever in that position in the future and if he says anything other than what he told Marvez and Balzer, we’ll be ready to remind Fisher of what he said on the first day of 2010.