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One of a Wunderkind : Jeff Fisher, 33, Brings a Blend of Intensity and Diplomacy as Coach of Rams’ Defense

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

He is leaning forward now at Fritz Shurmur’s old desk, in Fritz Shurmur’s old office, his right hand curled around a cup of coffee from the same brown coffee pot Shurmur used so often not so long ago.

So what has changed here? Except for the man at the desk, nothing, apparently.

But somehow, as Jeff Fisher talks, everything is different.

He is talking in the quick, quiet voice he has been using for the last 45 minutes, but now the words have heat to them.

Jeff Fisher, the Rams’ new defensive coordinator, is talking of what he believes football is and always will be--and perhaps unintentionally, clearly departing from the style of Shurmur, his predecessor.

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Jeff Fisher, 33, and by all accounts accelerating down the fast track to a head coaching job, is discussing the hard truths of football, as he sees them. “Yes, I do sit at night, late, trying to figure out ways of bringing somebody clean on the quarterback,” Fisher says softly. “And it’s time well spent.

“We’re competing in every shape, way and form to get after the quarterback. And they’re trying to protect him so they can move the ball down the field.

“I’ve never told a player to try to maim or hurt somebody. But it is a reality. If you can hit a quarterback, which is the object of the game, if you can hit him enough times, his productivity is going to decrease. If you hit him enough times to where they bring the second one in, then we’ve got a pretty good chance to win. That’s the idea.

“It’s a physical game. It’s the offense’s responsibility to protect the quarterback.”

Then, after a moment, he says: “It’s a different philosophy than it’s been here in the past.”

Different philosophy? Compared to Shurmur’s passive approach, Fisher’s attitude is lightning from the sky.

Fisher has listened intently to the two men under whom his football career has flourished.

When you run former Philadelphia Eagle Coach Buddy Ryan’s defense for three years, when you coach under him for five, when you play for him, when your ties to Ryan go back a decade, you cannot help but adapt some of his snarl.

And when you play for John Robinson, then are brought back in to rebuild a defense for him, it’s easy to absorb some of his perspective.

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“Jeff is in the unusual position of having played for Coach Robinson, knowing him very well, and having played for Buddy,” says Ronnie Jones, who was fired along with Ryan in Philadelphia and ended up joining Fisher’s staff as linebacker coach.

“Jeff is just intelligent enough and diplomatic enough to be able to handle both situations. I don’t know many who could.”

Fisher, who was most recently Ryan’s defensive coordinator with the Eagles, has studied under both these men, who dislike almost everything about one another.

Fisher says: “If there’s two extreme approaches to doing something and you join one or the other, you’re not paying attention to the whole thing, the whole picture.

“If you can somehow take something from one and take something from the other and blend it, I think you’re better off. And that’s the thing. They both have different approaches, and they have both been successful.

“You’d like to maybe take the calloused approach, the hard-headed approach from one end, and then take the objective approach from the other, and blend them.”

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In Philadelphia, Fisher established himself as a newsmaker with vivid, frank statements that somehow never touched raw nerves, as Ryan’s so often did. Right before his and Ryan’s last game with the Eagles last season, Fisher sought to inspire his players by starkly announcing that once the Eagles got past the Redskins in the wild-card game of the playoffs, everything else, including possible games against either the 49ers or the Giants, was “downhill from there.” Philadelphia then lost.

Fisher simply laughs now about the stir he caused.

Says Robinson: “The thing that impresses me is that he communicates, he motivates, he has an affinity for players. He can be a real technician of the game and yet I think has a real awareness of people.

“He’s not the kind of person who just would rather not bother with it. Ernie (Zampese, the Rams’ offensive coordinator) would rather not bother with it. Jeff is going to dress up, get in a suit and socialize. Ernie’s going to duck it if he can.”

Fisher, the No. 1 disciple of Ryan’s swaggering, intimidating defensive style, wants to infuse it with Robinson’s sense of propriety and balance. He admires Robinson’s crisp efficiency and evenness with players, but tries to mix in Ryan’s gut instinct for the player’s emotions.

“Certain people get along with certain types of people, and others don’t,” is Fisher’s best explanation. “I feel I have an ability to get along with most people.”

Says Robinson: “Absolutely . . . There’s a kind of dignity or self-assurance about him.”

Fisher’s race began when he was a prep All-American at Taft High in Woodland Hills, then moved on to USC, where, in his senior season, 1980, he was part of one of the most talented secondaries ever assembled. College or pro.

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A short, not-quite-blisteringly-fast safety alongside future NFL Pro Bowl players Ronnie Lott, Dennis Smith and Joey Browner, Fisher held his own, his college coach remembers.

“He was as competitive as any of them,” Robinson says. “And he was bright. Those things stick out.”

Those things continued to stick out after Fisher was drafted by the Chicago Bears and turned over to defensive coordinator Ryan in one of the most dominating defensive squads the NFL has ever seen.

Fisher played in pass situations and returned kicks for the Bears for four years, then began his real education during the Bears’ 1985 Super Bowl run, when he spent the whole season on the injured-reserve list. Ryan enlisted him to help keep track of opponents’ personnel changes, and soon enough, Fisher was one of his most trusted lieutenants.

“You could tell he was smart real fast,” Ryan says.

When Ryan went from the Bears’ Super Bowl victory in January of 1986 to the Eagles’ coaching job, he asked Fisher to retire and come along, at 28, as his defensive right hand and secondary coach.

Ryan brought in Wade Phillips, an experienced coordinator, and gave him the title, but Fisher transferred Ryan’s “46” defense to Philadelphia, teaching the system to the players.

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Three years later, when Phillips left for the Denver Broncos, Fisher was given total control of the defense.

“I took (control of the defense) away from Wade, even before he left,” Ryan says. “When I gave it to Jeff, he never gave it back.

“The players respected him. He never had any problems with players--some people don’t, just like I never had any problems with players. Some people have problems with players because they never know when to back off.

“After he became the coordinator, I saw him grow in leaps and bounds.”

Says Robinson, who carefully followed his former player’s career: “The fact that he was coordinator at 18 or whatever, that was remarkable. And that defense itself is remarkable. And as you watched, people might’ve said, ‘Oh, he’s coordinator in name only,’ but you could see he was doing the things a coordinator does right away.”

Under Fisher, the Eagles relied on such dominant defensive linemen as Reggie White and Jerome Brown to put pressure on the quarterback and stop the running game. But when offenses went to three or four wide receivers, Fisher loved throwing everything at the quarterback, who knew he might complete the pass but probably would pay dearly for it.

Big rushes, big risks, big pay-offs.

Fisher gained more control of the defense than anybody else under Ryan had ever managed. Organized, intense and with hours in the film room to back up his opinions, Fisher could disagree with Ryan.

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One day, Fisher went to Ryan’s office five times to protest Ryan’s plans to waive a player. On the fifth trip, Ryan relented, and the player, William Frizzell, started the final four games of the season.

“The other coaches, they told me anyone else would’ve jeopardized their job for doing that, would’ve been on the street,” Fisher says.

“You’ve got to stand up for what you believe in. If you work all week on the game plan and he tells you something and you say, ‘No, this is not the right call. I’m going to do something I believe in . . . ‘ I think he had a respect for that.”

Under Fisher the Eagles knocked out quarterbacks at a devastating rate. Last season, the Eagles bounced out eight quarterbacks, among them three Redskins in one nationally televised display of defense.

But the Eagle defense didn’t take cheap shots, Fisher insists, it simply hit quarterbacks hard until they broke.

“It’s like the Chicago Bear defense,” Robinson says, emphasizing that his team will never be associated with dirty play. “They were never dirty. They just kicked the hell out of you. The Philadelphia defense, they were serious.

The Rams did not force a single quarterback to the bench last season with their pass rush, and Shurmur, after eight seasons, was fired at the end of the 5-11 campaign.

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The same week Robinson fired Shurmur and his staff, Ryan was fired in Philadelphia and Fisher, after a 20-minute interview, was passed over for head coach there in favor of offensive coordinator Rich Kotite.

Fisher had the opportunity to stay with the Eagles but when he got the call from his college coach, he was ready to return to his home area.

“I think it’s important Jeff go to a different team and develop a strong defense, like he did in Philadelphia,” Jones says. “Just to prove that, ‘Nah, it’s not just Buddy Ryan.’ Jeff Fisher can get it done, too.”

With the Rams, Fisher has a chance to shine with a defense that has his name on it, even if doesn’t have the required pass-rushing talent. He says the Rams will make up for that with sheer emotion.

“I don’t have any problem with coming in here and putting in the Buddy Ryan defense, if that’s how it’s perceived,” Fisher says. “Or coming in, putting in my defense. That’s up to whoever perceives it. But it’s a scheme I believe in. We’re going to implement it and live or die with it.

“I think this group understands that they can control momentum in the game and control the outcome of a game by themselves. In the past, it’s been offense.

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“Now, our attitude is, we’re going to win the game on defense. Be responsible to do it ourselves. That’s really the only change. Try to create the environment, the enthusiasm, the emotion, the attitude.”

The Rams have some talented linebackers, a strong young secondary, but not one proven 295-pound quarterback hunter. The draft netted highly regarded cornerback Todd Lyght, who is a sure starter but at the wrong position for immediate quarterback pounding.

So without the pass rush in a defense that demands a pass rush, Fisher says he is prepared for some rocky times. It is a big-play defense: turnovers when things are going well, touchdown passes when they aren’t.

“It’s a scheme that requires players,” Fisher says. “So it’s going to take a while to get to the level where we’re a dominator, people saying, ‘Wow! Look out for these guys!” But I think you can be successful in it if you’ve got smart, aggressive people, and we have that now. We’ll have a certain level of success this year with it.”

How high will Fisher go before he’s no longer the latest find? When he hired Fisher, Robinson compared Fisher to Don Shula and Chuck Noll decades earlier.

“I was honored he considered me for this job,” Fisher says. “It’s quite an effort here. I’m glad he put the weight on my shoulders. If those are the things he said, yeah, that’s certainly nice company to be kept in. . . .

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“But he didn’t hire Shula or Noll to do his defense, he hired me to do his defense.”

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