Max made this observation a couple days ago: [
ramsrule.com]
"McVay inherited great STs from Fisher, much like Martz inherited from Vermeil.
They both screwed up the STs. Not their bag."
... and that lined up with my recollection as well. That prompted me to do a little research to see if that held water. Here's what I found:
From 2013 thru 2016, with Fisher as HC and Fassel as ST coach the Rams' special teams were ranked 4th, 7th, 7th, and 3rd. [
www.footballoutsiders.com]
Then, in 2017, with McVay as HC and Fassel as ST coach the Rams' special teams were ranked 2nd.
But then, in 2018 & 2019, still with McVay as HC and Fassel as ST coach, the Rams' special teams were ranked 17th and 23rd.
What the heck happened between 2017 and 2018? Did Fassel simply lose his touch? I doubt it ...
My impression of Fisher was he considered STs to be a 3rd unit on the team practically on par with the offense and defense, to the extent that during his tenure the Rams would draft guys & sign UDFAs specifically for STs, keep guys on the final 53 who just played STs, and devote significant practice time to STs.
Does anyone else remember that? And does McVay
not do those things?
Maybe STs were still good in 2017 because so many of Fisher's ST guys were still with the team, but the Rams just haven't restocked STs under McVay like they did when Fisher was HC...
These guys were on both the 2016 & 2017 rosters and played STs in 2017 ... meaning they were 'Fisher guys' who played STs under McVay: (Snap counts on STs in parenthesis from [
www.pro-football-reference.com] ) Littleton (364), Countess (325), Hagar (310), Christian (256), Cooper (240), Hill (154), Thomas (144), Brown (138), Higbee (131), Davis (118), and another 9 with between 40 and 100 ST plays.
AlbaNY_Ram
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2020 04:13PM by AlbaNY_Ram.
