Weasel conference

Welcome to Jeff Fisher and all that, but what was that yesterday? Described to the world as a press conference, yesterday's event that introduced Fisher as head coach of the Rams stood out to me as an event with as much weaseling as your typical political debate.

Fisher, for instance, weaseled on what his own job is. When asked about personnel decisions, his response was, "I'm not going to go into who's got final say," and then made intentionally vague statements about making decisions together.

The ingenue will say he logically can't answer the question well because the team doesn't have a general manager. The realist will say he's refraining from saying he's staking his territory because the team doesn't have a general manager, a guy he gets to pick anyway. RamView would like to remind everyone that head coaches who are also their team's head personnel man are almost always failures.

Folks looking for reassurances the team has a long-term future in St. Louis, such as the thousands of season ticket holders unrepresented at yesterday's press conference, can't exactly have come away from it with a great feeling.

Fisher: "[He and Stan Kroenke] talked about a lot of different things beginning with our visit up and until just recently, so I have a great understanding of the future, and the future of this franchise, right now at this moment, is here in St. Louis."

Wow, my lawyer couldn't have said that any better. The italics above are obviously mine, but they make it patently obvious that at a minimum Kroenke has told Fisher the team could move. So much for Fisher's supposed concern about possibly having to work on a moving team again. $35 million has a way of changing people's minds. And cleaning Fisher's hands. I'm just the coach, no idea if the team's moving, la-di-da, move along folks, nothing to see here.

Finally in front of a microphone to make some kind of commitment, or at least concrete statement on his team's future in St. Louis, here's what we got from Stan Kroenke, who, while seated next to Fisher, had the expression of a man who had just committed the latest of a string of serial murders:

"I don't think that for me to comment on that process is particularly timely."
"We'll see how that process sorts itself out."
Then he whined about "putting jack" into this market for 20 years. Maybe Kroenke has a point there, but that fact doesn't really engender trust in St. Louis. Bidwill was here 28 years. (Though you could argue he didn't exactly put out a whole lot of jack.)

But then he was asked if he planned to be in St. Louis another 20 years.
"We'll see how that process works out."

GOD, would it have not physically hurt Kroenke to give us a little "We hope to" or a little "we'll do everything we can"? Criminy, say something like that so at least we know you're trying.

The fans have put a lot of jack into this team, too, you know, Stan. We bleed for this team more than you do. You're the one who's buddies with the guys putting together the stadium deal in SoCal. You're the one who's been on the NFL's Los Angeles re-location committee.

How about throwing us a damn bone with some truth instead of weaselly legalese?

Then chuckleheads like me might focus more on moments when Fisher says things like
"This is a great opportunity to get a team in a short period of time back on the winning track."

-$-