As a team with a new head coach, the Rams are allowed to begin their offseason program today. That new head coach, Jeff Fisher, says he doesn’t agree with the rules that have prevented him from getting his new players to work sooner.
Fisher said last month that he worries the rules of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement could stunt the growth of quarterback Sam Bradford. Fisher said he doesn’t see why Bradford couldn’t have been in the team’s facilities working over the last two months, if he had wanted to.
“If a quarterback wants to come in the building in February and March and sit down and look at the previous year or watch [tape] cut-ups with the coordinator or get in the [playbook], I just feel like he should be allowed to do that,” Fisher said, via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Not forced to go do that. But it doesn’t make sense to me that you can’t have your quarterback in the building and doing things until April when this is a quarterback driven league and we have difficulties as it is developing young quarterbacks. So I hope that they’d consider that.”
The issue, however, is that even if a player isn’t “forced to do that,” coaches have often used the threat of getting cut to compel players to participate in technically “voluntary” offseason activities. The union wanted to guarantee players some real time off during the offseason, and the only way to do that was to close the facilities completely. The owners agreed to do that during CBA negotiations, and now it’s the rule.
And Fisher says he’s still confident that Bradford will develop in the Rams’ offense.
“I think we have to be patient,” Fisher said. “This is going to be his offensive system hopefully for a long period of time.”