Well, Eric Dickerson apparently won’t be attending Rams games in 2017, either.
Steve Wyche of NFL Media explains that Rams COO Kevin Demoff “seemed to hint” that coach Jeff Fisher will be back after 2016, the final season of his current five-year deal.
“Everybody will want to judge Jeff through the prism of just the record, but that’s totally unfair when you look at the set of circumstances he was handed this year,” Demoff told Wyche. “It was different than any team in the NFL.
“We moved halfway across the country, then had OTAs in Oxnard. Training camp was in Irvine, now we’re in Thousand Oaks. We moved coaches and players and families. To provide leadership and consistency, he’s done a model job.”
Demoff’s remarks echo words recently shared by Fisher, a day after a 49-21 loss to the Saints.
“We’ve been through a lot,” Fisher told reporters on Monday. “It’s not an excuse, but we’ve been through more than any other team in the National Football League this offseason and the moves and the travel and all those things. We’re dealing with those as best we can.”
The Rams (or at least Demoff) apparently are willing to look past the 4-7 record, given the circumstances.
“He’s a terrific leader of men,” Demoff said. “Players, coaches and staff -- he has their complete respect in the way he runs the franchise. It’s easy to talk about the record, but you have to take a snapshot of everything this year and give him the credit that he’s due.
“The past two years, he’s had to deal with the specter of relocation. This year, the actual relocation. A couple of coaches have had to deal with the specter of relocation. No coach has had to deal with an actual relocation. You have try to understand what this team has been through and the success he has had.”
Even more telling than Demoff’s words were this explanation from Wyche regarding the effort to learn more about the status of a coach whose contract expires after the current season ends.
“I pressed Demoff to nail down whether Fisher has signed an extension or if he would definitely be back,” Wyche writes. “He would not say. He would not budge.”
Indeed, Demoff consistently has told PFT in recent weeks that there is “no update” on Fisher’s contract -- a contract that ESPN made a cottage industry of reporting would be extended before the 2016 regular season began. Some league insiders continue to believe that an extension already has been finalized, and that the Rams (through Demoff) and Fisher (though his agent, Marvin Demoff, as in “the father of Kevin Demoff”) have agreed to keep it quiet until the right moment.
Based on the team’s performance, the best moment probably would have been at the tail end of a three-game winning streak that came after a 28-0 Week One trouncing at San Francisco. With the season slipping away, it may be that there’s no good moment to unveil a new contract for Fisher, and that the Rams will have to find another way to define success.
Or, perhaps more accurately, another way to characterize failure.