If there’s one thing that Jeff Fisher did right during his disastrous five-seasons with the Rams, it was build an elite special teams unit. Obviously that only goes so far when the defense is depleted, the offense is historically unproductive, the salary cap is mismanaged and drafting is poor – but it’s a start.

If the Sean McVay era is going to be a successful one, his offensive and defensive units will need to improve. However his special teams crew can just keep doing what they’re doing.

According to the experts at Pro Football Focus, the Rams finished the 2016 season with the third best special teams unit in the NFL, behind the Baltimore Ravens and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Via ProFootballFocus.com:

“Former head coach Jeff Fisher certainly valued special teams during his tenure, cultivating units that finished third, second, eighth and third in PFF’s rankings over the last four years. A lot of the team’s success can be mapped to that of Johnny Hekker, the league’s second-highest graded punter in 2016. He led his position in net yards per punt by almost two yards, and his 40 fair catches forced were the league’s second-most (while he only committed one touchback). Cody Davis, Marqui Christian, Cory Littleton, and Bryce Hager all graded impressively on both punt and punt-return units, while the team’s one-year gamble on kicker Greg Zuerlein seems to have paid off, as he enjoyed the second-highest field-goal percentage of his career (86.4) in 2016, and earned a three-year contract extension this offseason.”

While Johnny Hekker gets a lot of love for his consistently impressive punting, PFF’s assessment is a good reminder that the return units are actually doing their part as well.

Overall, special teams is an area that many franchises struggle with, and since it can be incredibly hard to overcome constantly bad field position, it’s a huge advantage for the Rams in terms of turning things around this season.

Rounding out PFF’s list of the six best units last season – after the Ravens, Chiefs and Rams – were the Oakland Raiders, the Indianapolis Colts and the Detroit Lions.