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Burwell: Penalties are killing the Rams
• By BRYAN BURWELL
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/colu...cle_ab26e5cf-1507-5206-a93b-bfc65678aada.html
At the absolute height of their down-and-dirty championship existence, Detroit Pistons players and coaches understood a thing or two about the high cost of doing business when you strut around the basketball globe with “Bad Boys” as your calling card and mayhem as your perceived mode of operation.
Chuck Daly, the ultra-cool Svengali of the Bad Boys, used to constantly harp about “land mines being everywhere.”
It was the veteran coach’s public concession to the real or imagined handicaps that came with trying to corral his eccentric menagerie as they pillaged the NBA countryside.
Strange things would happen during the course of Pistons games. Whistles would tweet, phantom fouls would be called and referees would unapologetically sneer at the Detroit players when they stomped, cussed and complained that they hadn’t laid a glove on the opposing player.
“Yeah, this time,” refs repeatedly barked at them. “Well then that’s for the 100 other calls you know you SOBs got away with.”
As it turns out, there’s a cult among these St. Louis Rams that has embraced the Bad Boy Pistons as kindred competitive spirits.
Mostly it’s the special-teams guys, who have even watched the ESPN documentary on the Detroit hoops dynasty in team meetings and want to play with that same bold, intimidating swagger. But Jeff Fisher-coached teams have long harbored a reputation as edgy, intimidating bad boys, and now it sure does seem as though that rep is beginning to haunt them.
After three games, they are tied for sixth in the NFL in penalties (26) and second in penalty yards (305). Put that together with the first two years under Fisher and the Rams clearly are one of the most penalized teams in the NFL over the past three seasons.
Last year, they ranked third in penalties (123) and fourth in penalty yardage (1,009). In 2012, they were called for a league-high 130 penalties and ranked third in penalty yardage (978).
To put this season’s numbers into perspective, the Rams are on pace for a staggering 138 penalties and 1,627 penalty yards.
Every week, they keep getting called for penalties. Some of them clearly are of their own doing. But some of them are products of some strange hocus pocus.
To put it into Bad Boy vernacular, these are the “land mines” that the Rams keep stepping on. These are the unfortunate residue of three consecutive years of being considered one of the most penalized teams in pro football. These are the very real handicaps that the Rams are coping with, and not so well, I might add.
If they want to be like the Bad Boy Pistons, they better dig deeper into the legend. Detroit loved a good conspiracy, and truly believed the refs were out to get them. Heck, they believed the whole world was out to get them. But as paranoid as they might have been, part of their championship mystique was they knew every night they walked onto the floor they had to overcome their own dark reputations.
And how did they do that?
By being so darned good that it didn’t matter if the world was out to get them.
The Bad Boy Pistons rarely beat themselves.
The Bad Boy Rams do with a disturbing frequency.
On Monday afternoon at Rams Park, Fisher flexed his muscles as one of the league’s most influential coaches by skillfully criticizing the way officials are calling penalties on his team.
In truth, he had several legitimate beefs after reviewing game footage of his team’s 34-31 loss Sunday to the Dallas Cowboys.
“Believe me, I looked at them,” said Fisher. “I’m disappointed. We had several of them that are not fouls, probably four in particular.”
By now, we can all recite the blown calls by the officials without a script. The two most obvious ones involved defensive end Eugene Sims, who was called for roughing the passer (supposedly on an imaginary blow to Tony Romo’s helmet) and a defensive hold on a fourth-quarter sack that didn’t happen, either.
When asked if he could explain the disparity in the calls on Sunday (the Rams were whistled for a staggering 104 more penalty yards than Dallas), Fisher figuratively threw up his hands.
“I don’t know,” he said. “(But) in my opinion, there were a dozen or so, maybe more, offensive holds that weren’t called by the Cowboys. The penalties didn’t create our turnovers. The penalties didn’t cause the interception return for a touchdown. We weren’t penalized when we fumbled the snap at midfield. We can control the things that we can control and we didn’t do it well enough to win this game.”
The Bad Boy Pistons were so darned good at the mischief and mayhem they created, they rarely were caught at the scene of the crime holding the smoking gun. Mostly, when they did get busted by the refs it was for the equivalent of tax evasion.
But there was so much substance that went along with that intimidating Bad Boy style. They were the smartest team in the room. They were gifted and disciplined and full of future Hall of Fame talent and they out-executed everyone they faced, including Michael Jordan’s Bulls, Larry Bird’s Celtics and Magic Johnson’s Lakers.
And when they did lose, they didn’t beat themselves.
The Rams seem to always find ways to beat themselves.
So while it’s perfectly justified for these young Rams to harbor a little healthy dose of referee paranoia, they’d be far better served to eliminate the maddening self-destructive miscues that seem to haunt them on every given Sunday.
• By BRYAN BURWELL
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/colu...cle_ab26e5cf-1507-5206-a93b-bfc65678aada.html
At the absolute height of their down-and-dirty championship existence, Detroit Pistons players and coaches understood a thing or two about the high cost of doing business when you strut around the basketball globe with “Bad Boys” as your calling card and mayhem as your perceived mode of operation.
Chuck Daly, the ultra-cool Svengali of the Bad Boys, used to constantly harp about “land mines being everywhere.”
It was the veteran coach’s public concession to the real or imagined handicaps that came with trying to corral his eccentric menagerie as they pillaged the NBA countryside.
Strange things would happen during the course of Pistons games. Whistles would tweet, phantom fouls would be called and referees would unapologetically sneer at the Detroit players when they stomped, cussed and complained that they hadn’t laid a glove on the opposing player.
“Yeah, this time,” refs repeatedly barked at them. “Well then that’s for the 100 other calls you know you SOBs got away with.”
As it turns out, there’s a cult among these St. Louis Rams that has embraced the Bad Boy Pistons as kindred competitive spirits.
Mostly it’s the special-teams guys, who have even watched the ESPN documentary on the Detroit hoops dynasty in team meetings and want to play with that same bold, intimidating swagger. But Jeff Fisher-coached teams have long harbored a reputation as edgy, intimidating bad boys, and now it sure does seem as though that rep is beginning to haunt them.
After three games, they are tied for sixth in the NFL in penalties (26) and second in penalty yards (305). Put that together with the first two years under Fisher and the Rams clearly are one of the most penalized teams in the NFL over the past three seasons.
Last year, they ranked third in penalties (123) and fourth in penalty yardage (1,009). In 2012, they were called for a league-high 130 penalties and ranked third in penalty yardage (978).
To put this season’s numbers into perspective, the Rams are on pace for a staggering 138 penalties and 1,627 penalty yards.
Every week, they keep getting called for penalties. Some of them clearly are of their own doing. But some of them are products of some strange hocus pocus.
To put it into Bad Boy vernacular, these are the “land mines” that the Rams keep stepping on. These are the unfortunate residue of three consecutive years of being considered one of the most penalized teams in pro football. These are the very real handicaps that the Rams are coping with, and not so well, I might add.
If they want to be like the Bad Boy Pistons, they better dig deeper into the legend. Detroit loved a good conspiracy, and truly believed the refs were out to get them. Heck, they believed the whole world was out to get them. But as paranoid as they might have been, part of their championship mystique was they knew every night they walked onto the floor they had to overcome their own dark reputations.
And how did they do that?
By being so darned good that it didn’t matter if the world was out to get them.
The Bad Boy Pistons rarely beat themselves.
The Bad Boy Rams do with a disturbing frequency.
On Monday afternoon at Rams Park, Fisher flexed his muscles as one of the league’s most influential coaches by skillfully criticizing the way officials are calling penalties on his team.
In truth, he had several legitimate beefs after reviewing game footage of his team’s 34-31 loss Sunday to the Dallas Cowboys.
“Believe me, I looked at them,” said Fisher. “I’m disappointed. We had several of them that are not fouls, probably four in particular.”
By now, we can all recite the blown calls by the officials without a script. The two most obvious ones involved defensive end Eugene Sims, who was called for roughing the passer (supposedly on an imaginary blow to Tony Romo’s helmet) and a defensive hold on a fourth-quarter sack that didn’t happen, either.
When asked if he could explain the disparity in the calls on Sunday (the Rams were whistled for a staggering 104 more penalty yards than Dallas), Fisher figuratively threw up his hands.
“I don’t know,” he said. “(But) in my opinion, there were a dozen or so, maybe more, offensive holds that weren’t called by the Cowboys. The penalties didn’t create our turnovers. The penalties didn’t cause the interception return for a touchdown. We weren’t penalized when we fumbled the snap at midfield. We can control the things that we can control and we didn’t do it well enough to win this game.”
The Bad Boy Pistons were so darned good at the mischief and mayhem they created, they rarely were caught at the scene of the crime holding the smoking gun. Mostly, when they did get busted by the refs it was for the equivalent of tax evasion.
But there was so much substance that went along with that intimidating Bad Boy style. They were the smartest team in the room. They were gifted and disciplined and full of future Hall of Fame talent and they out-executed everyone they faced, including Michael Jordan’s Bulls, Larry Bird’s Celtics and Magic Johnson’s Lakers.
And when they did lose, they didn’t beat themselves.
The Rams seem to always find ways to beat themselves.
So while it’s perfectly justified for these young Rams to harbor a little healthy dose of referee paranoia, they’d be far better served to eliminate the maddening self-destructive miscues that seem to haunt them on every given Sunday.
