An already full plate for recently hired Rams coach Jeff Fisher got a bit fuller on Tuesday when the NFL announced that Fisher has been brought back to the league’s competition committee.
Not that Fisher minds a bit, as his spot on the competition committee is something he has long valued and something he looks forward to taking on once again after a short one-year hiatus as a non-voting member.
“I’m honored,” Fisher said. “I was asked to continue to participate with it as a non voting member last year so I participated in all but one meeting so then of course; I did things at the league office in New York on a periodic basis. It was a great experience for me so I am just honored to be able to jump right back in there and pick up where we left off.”
For almost as long as Fisher’s been a head coach in the league, he’s been a staple of the competition committee.
Fisher first started on the panel as head coach in Tennessee back in 2000. He was moved up to co-chair of the committee the following year and remained in that role through 2010.
As part of the competition committee, Fisher is joined by eight other prominent members of the game, including fellow head coaches and team executives. The league added Fisher, Arizona coach Ken Whisenhunt and Green Bay President Mark Murphy to the panel on Tuesday.
That trio joins a group that includes chairman Rich McKay of Atlanta, Dallas’ Stephen Jones, Cincinnati coach Marvin Lewis, the Giants’ John Mara, Baltimore general manager Ozzie Newsome and Houston general manager Rick Smith.
According to the league’s official release, the competition committee “studies all aspects of the game and recommends rules and policy changes to NFL clubs.” The majority of that work is focused on player safety issues and potential rule changes.
Annually, the competition committee meets in Indianapolis at the NFL Scouting Combine and discusses a variety of issues.
“We’ll start next week and we’ll work three or four days next week and that’s where this year’s process starts,” Fisher said. “So we’ll go four days, we’ll obtain all the information, we’ll look at the surveys from all the clubs, talk about a lot of different things and we’ll go mid-March probably (right before) the annual owners meetings we’ll meet for another week and generate whatever proposals that spin out of the combine meetings.”
Those proposals will then be voted on at the annual owners meetings. Fisher said it all starts with a questionnaire that is distributed following the discussions in Indianapolis.
“Everything evolves from a survey that is sent to the clubs, Fisher said. “It’s probably a 60, 70 question survey so we’ll look at the survey and just go from there. Anything else comes up, there’s typically a meeting that comes up with the players association where we visit with the players, studying the trends, studying the statistics and begin to evaluate the injuries that took place last year.”
