Groundhog Day under Fisher...(Bonsignore article)...

At the risk of piling on (but hey - I was against the Fisher hire from the beginning, so...ya know - indulge me)...

This is a very perceptive article - and 100% true, IMO. All of the excuses in the world have been trotted out for Fisher as anything better than a "simply competent" head coach - and are now rendered absurd, as they should be.

Fisher is the definition of mediocrity and false hope as a head coach.

Bonsignore:

Rams' latest change again does nothing to fix their problems under Jeff Fisher
Nov. 20, 2016 Updated 8:42 p.m.

LOS ANGELES – Leave it to the kid with all of one NFL game under his belt to provide the spot-on analysis of the sorry state of the Rams affairs.

And in an unintentional, roundabout way put the onus right on Rams coach Jeff Fisher, who has overseen this nonsense for five years running and no longer deserves a sixth year to finally get it right.

Enough is enough.

It's not working.

Never has, likely never will.

No matter how many promises Fisher makes to get things fixed week after week after week, come Sunday afternoon it's Groundhog Day, Rams style.

And Jared Goff is on to it.

“Seems like it’s been a story for a while now.” Goff said after another week of self-inflicted Rams wounds.

Nailed it.

But then, the rookie quarterback from Cal had a front-row seat to the madness and frustration over the first nine games of the season. Which, when you think about it, makes him an expert on these sorts of things by now.

Of the same old tired mistakes and penalties and excuses and putrid offense and blown games. All of which reared their ugly heads – again – in the Rams’ spirit-numbing 14-10 loss Sunday to the Miami Dolphins in which the they essentially gift-wrapped the Dolphins’ two touchdowns over the final five minutes to ruin all the good vibes of Goff's first career start.

As first turns go, Goff played OK while completing 17 of 31 passes for 134 yards. Operating in the Rams’ deliberate, careful, safe offense – OK, OK, overly cautious, boring, and playing-not-to-lose offense – Goff avoided any critical mistakes and helped build the 10-0 lead they carried into the final five minutes.

But it all came crumbling down from that point on.

By ways and means it always seems to fall apart for the Rams.

That Goff was an active participant Sunday rather than the sideline observer he'd been the first nine games only changed his vantage point.

Otherwise, it was the same nonsense it's always been.

This year and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that.

And certainly on Sunday, when the Rams sprung out of the starter's blocks like Usain Bolt and led from beginning to near end. Then, just as they reached for the finish line, their feet got tangled, their bodies began to wobble and thud, they crumbled to the ground in a heap as the Dolphins sprinted right past them for the win.

“We just need to stay out of our own way,” Goff said, trying to make sense of it all.

And doing a pretty darn good job of it, actually.

Get out of their own way indeed.

Might as well get used to it, kid.

As long Fisher is your boss anyway.

That same old story you referenced is sadly and poignantly accurate.

Want your mind blown? The Rams fell to 4-6 for the fourth straight year under Fisher. And the season before that they were 3-6-1 at the 10-game point with him as the coach.

You have to try really, really hard to pull off that kind of dubious feat.

Or be really, really bad.

What's so frustrating is the Rams really aren't that bad, though. They play playoff-caliber defense and their special teams are aces and they are competitive every time they take the field.

Yet somehow, some way, they always wind up 4-6 or worse 10 games into a season under Fisher before ending up 7-9 or worse.

They've changed quarterbacks and offensive coordinators. They've invested high picks in the offensive line. They've rebuilt the defense. They drafted offensive weapons such as Todd Gurley Tavon Austin with top 10 picks

They've changed and altered and tinkered and talked over and over about fixing things and addressing issues and getting problems solved.

But nothing ever gets fixed.

It's just lather, rinse and repeat.

The offense remains in a standstill, partly out of talent but also handcuffed by philosophy.

Fisher is married to a punishing run game and a deliberate approach to the pass game in which short, careful passes are preferred over big shots down field.

It's an understandable approach, especially with a defense as good as the Rams'.

But there is a major flaw, and it goes right to the heart of Fisher's biggest problem.

His teams aren't disciplined enough to carry the plan out from beginning to end.

Fisher's offense is so deliberate, and the defense so good, games are inherently close. So close that there's literally no margin for error.

And the Rams are anything but perfect, as their eight penalties proved again on Sunday.

Almost all the penalties severely wounded the Rams, be it Greg Robinson's block in the back to nullify a Goff first-down scramble, or Alec Ogletree's unnecessary roughness penalty to aid the Dolphins’ first touchdown drive, or Aaron Donald's roughing-the-passer infraction to assist their winning touchdown march.

You can't say it's a one-game deal, either.

Because it happens week after week after week. The Rams came into Sunday committing the fourth most penalties in the league. It's been an issue for years.

The one constant is Fisher. It's his team and his vision.

And really, his failure.

“We've got a lot of things to improve on,” he said.

It sounded remarkably like what he said after the five previous losses.

The last five years, for that matter.

Enough is enough already.

It's not working.