Jeff Fisher to Coach St. Louis Rams

The Jeff Fisher sweepstakes is finally over. He’ll be coaching our NFC West rival St. Louis Rams and not the Miami Dolphins. This should surprise no one outside of Miami. I said a couple weeks ago that it already seemed like a done deal.

This entire thing always seemed like Fisher was just using Miami to leverage St. Louis into offering more money and power. Guess what? it worked. Fisher will have a say in who in the new Rams GM. The Rams also increased their offer to over $7 mil/year. Credit Fisher’s team to getting what they could in the negotiations, and blame the Dolphins for not realizing that they were just leverage.

Fisher to the Rams makes sense for both parties. The Rams have more talent than they have wins. The Rams have a QB they believe in, which is the toughest position to fill in the NFL. The Rams also have the #2 overall pick and the ability to trade down for an absolute ton of picks to speed up the rebuild.

Fisher has about the same level of power in St. Louis as Pete Carroll has in Seattle. Fisher will get to pick his own GM and then have tremendous say in the players that are brought in. This was the level of control that Fisher wanted, and no other team was willing to give him that degree of power.

Fisher is a tough coach to evaluate. In his 16 seasons in Tennessee, he finished with a winning record just 6 times, and he also had an 8-8 record 5 times. While that doesn’t sound like a great record, managed that with the likes of Vince Young, Kerry Collins, Steve McNair and Billy Volek at QB. Fisher never had even an average QB. While the wins aren’t there, he is still one of the most well respected coaches in all of the NFL.

The Seahawks can expect the Ram’s identity to change now that Fisher is in charge. Looks for the Rams to transition to being a run-first, power team on offense, and a speed based defense that really gets after the passer.