Some interesting reads about runs of ineptitude teams made. Frankly, given the Rams 2007-2011 stretch I expected them to make the top 10 easily. But anyway....an interesting trip down memory lane....
Football Outsiders: Anti-Dynasty Rankings #s 11-20No. 11: 2005-2016 St. Louis/Los Angeles RamsPeak Anti-Dynasty Points: 71
Record: 60-131-1 (.315)
Average DVOA: -18.8%
Bottom-Five DVOA: -36.8%
Two last-place finishes in the NFL, Six last-place finishes in the NFC West
Head Coaches: Mike Martz, Joe Vitt, Scott Linehan, Jim Haslett, Steve Spagnuolo, Jeff Fisher, John Fassel
Key Players: QB Marc Bulger, RB Steven Jackson, WR Torry Holt, T Rodger Saffold, T Alex Barron, DE Robert Quinn, DE Chris Long, DT Aaron Donald, LB James Laurinaitis, CB Trumaine Johnson, CB Janoris Jenkins, S O.J. Atogwe
Z-Score: 5.33
We already covered the Los Angeles Rams moving to St. Louis; it's only fair we cover them going back in the other direction, as the Greatest Show on Turf went insolvent.
What we really have here is two eras. From 2005 to 2011, the Rams averaged four wins a season and a -29.1% DVOA as the talent drain and front office squabblings made the Rams arguably the worst team in the league. And then you have the 2012-2016 Jeff Fisher Rams and his 7-9 @#$%&—a substantial improvement that had to feel good for a while, until Rams fans realized there was no next step after reaching mediocrity. Rams fans are our best modern test case for whether it's worse to be hopeless or to be bland—is it worse to know your season is over by Week 4, or to be just close enough to .500 that you get strung out until December, only for the season to end the same way?
You could make a strong argument that the late-2000s Rams deserve to be a little bit higher on the list. Mike Martz, who had taken over the team when Dick Vermeil retired, had seen some of the luster come off of his offense once he no longer had Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk in prime form running it. He also feuded with Jay Zygmunt, the director of football operations, to the point where the team wouldn't let him return for the final game in 2005 after he had to sit out most of the season due to a heart defect; a rather classless move. Martz had made the playoffs the year before (albeit at 8-8; the 2000s NFC West was not good), and the team had collapsed more because of injuries to Marc Bulger and all their cornerbacks than anything Martz had specifically done, but he was fired after the season anyway.
Wanting to replace Martz is entirely justifiable, front office feud or no front office feud. But replacing him with Scott Linehan and Steve Spagnuolo, it turns out, was not the answer. Linehan feuded with Bulger, Steven Jackson, and Torry Holt, including open shouting matches on the sideline. And when he didn't discipline any of those players, he got accused of being soft, and basically lost the locker room. The offensive line was destroyed by injuries, the defense crumbled thanks in large part to years of poor drafting (Tye Hill, anyone?), and Linehan was fired at 11-25. His 2008 Rams ended up with a -44.7% DVOA, the sixth-worst total since 1983.
That led to Spagnuolo, whose 2009 Rams would have a DVOA of -43.6%, the seventh-worst total since 1983—an improvement! All in all, between 2007 and 2009, the Rams would win just six games, which was at the time a post-World War II record for futility, and one that we thought would never be matched (pipe down, Cleveland; you get to be in the next article). With an average DVOA of -40.5%, the 2007-2009 Rams have the worst three-year run in DVOA history, just beating out the 2004-2006 49ers (whom we have already met) and the 2007-2009 Lions (who we'll meet next time). Pure, concentrated terribleness. And then, after a minor (and lucky) bounceback year in 2010, Spagunolo went 2-14 in 2011 and the Rams were the worst team in football again. What's a team gotta do to go 7-9 around here?
Jeff Fisher could make a bad team mediocre. He could also make a good team mediocre, but that wasn't exactly an issue for the Rams at the time. Even with Sam Bradford repeatedly getting injured, Fisher's Rams went 7-8-1, 7-9, 7-9, 6-10, and 7-9, all with DVOAs between -0.9% and 5.4%. It's a thundering run of basic competence and not much else; never slipping back to be bad enough to require a rebuild, never building enough to be in contention. If you define a run of consecutive single-digit DVOA seasons as NFL purgatory, then the Jeff Fisher Rams are one of only three teams to live there for four straight years (along with the 2009-2012 Bengals and the 2017-2020 Falcons).
The Rams as a franchise was also experiencing regret from having left Los Angeles. The TransWorld/Edward Jones Dome had been exciting, shiny, and new when the Rams had moved there in 1995, but the luster had quickly worn off—it was regularly voted the worst stadium in the league, and this is a league which still had Candlestick Park and the Oakland Coliseum, so yikes. The place was called an "urban eyesore from the get-go, an ugly multi-purpose dome that's one defining feature was its inability to fit into any conceivable cityscape"; overly expensive and with no atmosphere to speak of. When Stan Kroenke took full control of the team in 2010, he said that he would "attempt to do everything that I can to keep the Rams in St. Louis." Apparently, that included buying a bunch of land in Inglewood, California, and planning a new stadium there. Plans to build a new open-air stadium in St. Louis were dismissed by Kroenke, who said that St. Louis wasn't a viable market for the NFL in the 21st century. Considering Kroenke bought 30% of the Rams to move them to St. Louis in the first place, and tried to buy the Patriots in the 1990s and move them to St. Louis, and was part of the team trying to get one of the 1995 expansion teams to go to St. Louis, this was a massive crock of something-or-other. It's entirely possible Kroenke isn't particularly good at his job.
Fisher lasted part of one season in Los Angeles, with the bottom finally falling out in 2016. We may never see a coach that committed to being just OK ever again.
