Jeff Fisher And The Intangibles For The St. Louis Rams (Updated w/ Video))

The St. Louis Rams have lacked many things over the years, chief among them is the ability to win. All that toil has doubtlessly won on players and fans. Enter Jeff Fisher, the experienced head coach who has survived two franchise moves (from Houston to Memphis to Nashville), salary cap purges and a nutty owner whose college booster activities influenced how he ran his NFL team.

Bernie Miklasz at the Post-Dispatch has a nice column out Thursday examining exactly what kind of intangibles that Fisher brings to the Rams and why the veteran head coach has the makings to succeed where so many others have failed.

From Bernie's column:

Fisher, 54, is one of the more confident individuals you'll ever encounter, and the Rams need that. More than anything, they need better football players — and lots of them. And they need to do a more effective job of teaching and coaching players.

Linehan and Spags could never complete that difficult jump from assistant to head coach. They couldn't fill the big meeting room with their presence. That won't be a problem for Fisher.

I think fans like you and me tend to get overly focused on the Xs and Os that a coach brings. Are we throwing downfield enough? Is a curl route the right call for that receiver? Do they run enough/too much in the red zone?

That's all well and good. Those things matter, but the Rams have had so many more rivers to cross that just getting the right playbook. Instilling confidence and swagger may sound like nothing more than just simplistic talking points in an era of statistical enlightenment, but it matters. The Rams have lacked anything like that since Dick Vermeil left town. They have it in spades now with Fisher calling the shots and playing an integral role in an organization that has finally purged itself of bureaucratic tyrants.

I think this GIF sums it up nicely.

(Updated by 3k at 2:14pm ET)

I was actually writing a similar post based on the video below. I think Fisher's experience lends itself to being able to straddle the line between overconfident and overwhelmed. The coaches who make careers at the head coach level pull it off (though some certainly tend to dip into either side of that line from time to time); Fisher seems comfortable in his own skin, willing to deal with the reality of the situation he's in - good or bad.

Random non-sequitur: Writing slogans for news channels has to be the easiest job ever. "Your news leader." "Where (insert city here) gets its news." "The most powerful name in news." I want that job.