New Rams coach Jeff Fisher is inheriting a very bad football team, and he has the stats to prove it.
Fisher pointed out to John Glennon of the Tennessean that the Rams’ records in the last five seasons (2-14, 7-9, 1-15, 2-14, 3-13) give them a cumulative won-loss record of 15-65 -- and that makes them as bad a team over a five-year period as the NFL has ever seen.
“No team in NFL history has lost more games in a five-year span than the Rams the last five years,” Fisher said.
In the NFL, where parity reigns and bad teams can reverse their fortunes quickly, it’s amazing to see that kind of sustained futility. The Lions of 2006-10 were a terrible team, and in the middle season of that five-year stretch they became the only 0-16 team in NFL history. But even those Lions lost just 62 games over five years. The expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers were an awful team in the 1970s and lost their first 26 games in franchise history. But even those Buccaneers turned things around quickly enough that they only lost 53 games in their first five years in existence. Losing 65 games in five seasons is really, really hard to do.
Fisher knows that it’s even harder for fans to stomach, and that means they’re not going to be patient in St. Louis.
“So the people are anxious,” Fisher said. “They have high expectations. They want a winner, so we’re going to go up there to get it turned around.”
The good news for Fisher is that the Rams can’t get much worse.
