Los Angeles Rams

Ranking Jeff Fisher's five seven-win seasons as an NFL head coach

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Los Angeles Rams head coach Jeff Fisher has five seven-win seasons on his resume. Here’s a ranking of those five campaigns.

In an episode of this year’s Hard Knocks, Los Angeles Rams’ head coach Jeff Fisher notably declared that 7-9 is not good enough anymore. In his four full seasons as Rams’ head coach, the team has posted that record twice, with a 7-8-1 mark mixed in. After a 28-0 Week 1 loss to the San Francisco 49ers, seven wins looks awfully optimistic for the Rams in 2016.

Fisher has great job security though, as lingering rumors of a contract extension finally came to fruition Thursday morning. That fits a timetable for the Rams to move into a new stadium, and owner Stan Kroenke seems to want some stability on the sideline over the next couple nomadic seasons.

Into his 22nd season as an NFL head coach, Fisher has reached the playoffs six times (none in his last six seasons on the sideline). Fisher is already high on the list of career coaching losses, and with nine more defeats this season he will become the losingest coach in NFL history.

Fisher has led a team to precisely seven wins in a season five times. Here’s my ranking of those five campaigns.

5. 1995 – Houston Oilers

After taking over for Jack Pardee for the final six games of 1994, in which the Oilers went 1-5, Fisher’s first full season as an NFL head coach came in 1995.

Quarterback Steve McNair was a rookie that year, so he saw action in just four games (two starts) while Chris Chandler started 13 contests. It was a different era in the NFL, when rookie quarterbacks were more often than not on the bench, but having Chandler starting under center for most of the season brought what had to be an expected 7-9 finish.

Better things came for the Oilers/Titans four years later, with an appearance in the Super Bowl, but Fisher set the bar for mediocrity very early in his time as an NFL head coach. Over the next three seasons, which included a move to Tennessee before the 1997 season, the then-Oilers posted an 8-8 record each time.

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4. 2012 – St. Louis Rams

Fisher was out of the NFL as a head coach in 2011, after being fired by the Tennessee Titans on the heels of 6-10 season in 2010, but he made what could be regarded as a triumphant return with the St. Louis Rams in 2012. Any high expectations were quickly diminished by a 3-5 start in 2012, which, looking back, was an obvious sign of the mediocrity to come.

A win and a tie against the eventual NFC champion San Francisco 49ers were high notes in a 7-8-1 2012 campaign — a five-win improvement over the 2011 season that got Steve Spagnuolo fired after three seasons and a 10-38 record as Rams’ head coach.

The Rams decided to stick with a defensive coach by hiring Fisher, which came as a slight surprise given the Rams failures under Spagnuolo. The Rams weren’t exactly good, but they did match up well with the perennial Super Bowl-contending Seattle Seahawks, splitting that season series.

2012 is the only season on this list when Fisher lost less than nine games, which in some ways is a positive. In other ways, like the way this is a list of 7-9 seasons, it’s a negative.

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3. 2013 – St. Louis Rams

Fisher’s second season in St. Louis was much like his first, this time with the added element of quarterback Sam Bradford being sidelined by the first of two ACL tears in quick succession. With Kellen Clemens starting nine games in Bradford’s place under center, and what that clearly implies for the quality of the rest of the quarterback depth chart, seven wins can actually be considered a major accomplishment for Fisher and the Rams in 2013.

Among the seven wins St. Louis had in 2013, a 38-8 surprising blowout road win over the Indianapolis Colts in Week 10 stands out as the best. That Colts’ squad would go on to win the AFC South with an 11-5 record, and they also won a Wild Card playoff game over the Kansas City Chiefs. A season-opening win over an Arizona Cardinals team that would finish 10-6 was impressive, too. But if you’re looking for the Rams’s second-best win of 2013, a Week 15 over the eventual NFC South champion New Orleans Saints has to take the cake.

The 2013 season was also the archetypal 7-9 season — no losing streak longer than three games, no winning streak longer than two. The Rams’ bad-to-mediocre offense and solid defense combined exquisitely for a middling finish.

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2. 2015 – St. Louis Rams

With this year’s move to Los Angeles looming, and after a 6-10 mark in 2014, the Rams put up another 7-9 campaign in 2015. Running back Todd Gurley proved he can become a star on his way to winning Offensive Rookie of the Year, but a lack of firepower offensively remained a concern for the Rams.

The clear highlight of 2015 for the was a season-sweep (by a total of nine points) over the Seattle Seahawks, as they still inexplicably matched up very well with one of the best teams in the league. A Week 4 win over the 13-3 NFC West champion and conference finalist Arizona Cardinals was also noteworthy, along with a three-game winning streak in December that included the Week 16 triumph over the Seahawks on the road.

The Rams didn’t leave St. Louis with a particularly positive vibe, on or off the field. But they did win their final two home games there, 21-14 over the Detroit Lions (Week 14) and 31-23 over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Week 15). The few fans in attendance at the Edward Jones Dome, even for the Thursday night game against the Buccaneers, at least saw some winning football at the end. If that “good enough to win” vibe is not quintessentially Fisher, I don’t know what is.

Fisher’s long-running history of failing to develop offensive talent, and/or failing to have assistants in place that can do so, continued in 2015. With one game of evidence so far this year, nothing seems to have changed.

1. 2001 – Tennessee Titans

In the midst of Fisher’s most successful run as an NFL head coach — in which he finished with at least 11 regular season wins four times from 1999-2003 — we have 2001. The Titans 7-9 mark, with Steve McNair starting 15 games, is a clear outlier. That said, Eddie George averaged just 3 yards per carry and began to look like a diminished running back after leading the league with 403 carries during the 2000 season.

Fisher’s trademark tilt toward the defensive side of the ball took a hit in 2001, as the Titans allowed 24.3 points per game (25th in the league, out of 31 teams at the time).

2001 is the earliest harbinger of Fisher’s unique brand of below-averageness. The 2003 season was George’s last in a Titans’ uniform, and McNair was gone after the 2005 season. Fisher has never really had a capable quarterback since McNair, and Gurley is in line to be the best running back on one of his teams since George.

Despite lacking the recent and overall track record to back it up, Fisher has unrivaled job security that we all can envy. Another bad season in 2016 could change that though, since Los Angeles NFL fans, and presumably owner Kroenke, will have increasingly high expectations.