Rams want to extend Jeff Fisher and GM Les Snead's deals now

Rams want to extend Jeff Fisher and GM Les Snead's deals now


Frank Schwab

[sports.yahoo.com]

You can see why the Los Angeles Rams are feeling some urgency to extend the contracts of head coach Jeff Fisher and general manager Les Snead before the season.

Wait, wait. No, there’s absolutely no reason at all for that. The Rams have been one of the most underachieving teams in the NFL under Fisher. But apparently the Rams want even more years of disappointing losses and squandered talent.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported Saturday that the Rams are trying to get those extensions done before the season. This isn’t the first time possible Fisher and Snead extensions have been reported this offseason, but it seemed so strange that it was easy to forget. Schefter said the deals are likely to happen. Of course they’re likely to happen — one has to imagine Fisher and Snead are even a little curious why, after four losing seasons in four tries, the organization is excited to give them new deals before seeing any results from the 2016 Rams. And you also have to imagine Fisher and Snead want to make those deals official ASAP, before the Rams take the field and disappoint again.

Fisher’s hypnosis over Rams ownership is particularly curious. He hasn’t had a winning season since 2008. He has been a head coach 20 full seasons and finished .500 or worse 15 times. He hasn’t won a playoff game since the end of the 2003 season. And in four seasons with the Rams he has won seven, seven, six and seven games despite a lot of talent, especially on defense.


I won’t say Fisher wouldn’t be hired by any other NFL team, because the league is incredibly conservative and there’s always a team that will favor a coach with experience, no matter how lukewarm that experience has been. Fisher is in the final season of a staggering deal that pays him $7 million per season (again, last playoff win: 2003), but there just doesn’t seem to be any reason to add onto that deal now.

The Rams are betting that the Fisher-Snead combination — with a rookie quarterback in Jared Goff, in a tough division, with no track record of winning success — will break through in 2016. Good luck.