“I don’t make excuses, but there’s a lot of dysfunction in the organization right now.”
That’s probably not an excuse that we’ll be hearing from Rams coach Jeff Fisher after his team’s next loss, in large part because one of his recent non-excuse excuses took the dysfunction to a new level.
Albert Breer of TheMMQB.com has harvested quotes from unnamed Rams sources that underscore the problems flowing from Fisher’s recent effort to attribute the franchise’s struggles to shortcomings in personnel.
“It pissed me off because I knew it was meant as a shot,” one unnamed Rams source told Breer. “You see it under that umbrella -- ‘We need to do a better job in personnel.’ OK, but you want everyone to think that you have full control. You can’t have it both ways, and it can’t always be the talent. Look at the roster, 2012 to now. In ’12, Jeff did a masterful job with what he was given. But we’ve gotten more talent, and we’ve gotten worse.”
Said Fisher on Tuesday: “I look at this as being my responsibility, the win-loss record. We need to do a better job from a personnel standpoint. We’ve had some unfortunate things take place with some high picks in Stedman Bailey and Tre Mason and those kinds of things you don’t anticipate.”
Coupled with Fisher, who has a two-year contract extension, claiming he didn’t know that G.M. Les Snead also had received a contract extension, Fisher’s comments create the impression that Fisher isn’t really running the show, and that he’s at the mercy of those who actually have the power that Fisher doesn’t.
Said another Rams source to Breer: “It’s always good to have healthy tension between the coach and GM, but that shouldn’t hurt the team or cause finger-pointing. Over five years, [Tuesday] was the first time you saw public comments. That should never happen. . . . The organization has given them a long leash. And given that they’ve had time, they have to win, and they have to be able to work together.”
Many will think they have no choice but to work together because they each have two-year contracts beyond 2016. But given that the extensions were in place well before the season began (and in light of the belief that they cover only one year), the changed circumstances arising from a bad season and a worse situation within the organization could still prompt owner Stan Kroenke to press the reset button -- especially if Kroenke is worried that he’ll be unable to sell an ideal amount of premium products for the new stadium in Inglewood if the team persists with a power structure that: (1) isn’t getting along; and (2) isn’t having nearly enough success.
The next question becomes whether and to what extent the anonymous quotes given to Breer will cause even more problems in the building, especially once Fisher begins connecting the dots in an effort to figure out who’s been blabbing. Chances are that the comments weren’t recklessly given to Breer after a couple of beers but that the leak was engineered to provoke a reaction from a guy who is absent-mindedly meandering toward a cliff.