Jeff Fisher was fired as coach of the Los Angeles Rams today, but he leaves the National Football League as No. 1 in one significant career statistic.

His teams have lost 165 games. No coach in NFL history has lost more.

Fisher shares the record for most defeats with Dan Reeves, but Reeves won 190 regular-season games, 17 more than Fisher’s total of 173.

Granted, the Rams are 4-9, and that alone is enough to get a guy fired, even one week after it was revealed Fisher had received a contract extension through the 2017 season.

But we have to wonder whether the Rams didn’t want to be Fisher’s team of record when (as opposed to if) he lost that 166th game.

The Rams have been thrashed in three consecutive defeats, and the sight of them falling behind 42-0 at home yesterday … well, that was ugly.

Have to figure that ends Fisher’s career as a coach. Who is going to hire a guy with “most defeats” on his resume? (Dan Reeves never coached again, after he broke the record for defeats.)

To be sure, a coach has to have shown stretches of competence to stick around long enough to lose a lot of games.

Reeves was a pretty good coach, and so was the man who is No. 3 on the all-time list. That would be Tom Landry, who lost 162 games (but won 250). Don Shula is No. 4 in most defeats, with 156. But Shula is the winningest coach in NFL history, with 328.

“Most coaching defeats” is one of those statistics, like “most losses by a pitcher”, that strongly suggests the record-holder is at the least competent, and probably more than that.

No one lost more games than Cy Young (for whom the award is named). The man went down to defeat 316 times. Of course, he won 511, also a record.

The top seven in pitching defeats (among them, Nolan Ryan and Walter Johnson) won even more than they lost and all are in the Hall of Fame.

Fisher’s high point came with the Tennessee Titans in 1999, when his team went 13-3 and fell a yard short on the final play in a Super Bowl loss to … the Rams.

Fisher had settled into a rut of sub-mediocrity, though, in his time leading Rams: 7-8-1 in 2012 … 7-9 … 6-10 … 7-9 … and 4-9.

Four years probably should have been enough, but Rams officials apparently wanted him to stay on for what they believed might be a difficult season, their first back in Southern California since 1994.

It certainly became that, starting with the 28-0 embarrassment on the road against the San Francisco 49ers in the first weekend’s Monday night game. (Still the only game the 49ers have won.)

The Rams have turned out to be the NFL’s lowest-scoring team, with 194 points in 13 games, a feeble 14.9 per game.

Their defense, the pride of the franchise at the moment, has shown signs of wearing down in the second half of the season. The Rams’ last three games, all defeats, ended 49-21, 26-10 and 42-14.

This is not all about Fisher, of course. He had help in this mess.

Les Snead, the general manager, has to own the trade of six high draft picks to the Titans in exchange for the top pick in the 2016 draft, which the Rams may have wasted on bust-in-progress quarterback Jared Goff.

Goff watched the season from the sidelines until Game 9, when he took over in time to preside over four defeats in which seemed unable to throw the ball down field, or to hang on to it.

So, going forward?

The Rams are not a completely unattractive project. Yes, they are hamstrung in the next draft, having traded away their first and third picks.

But the promise of the new stadium, due to open in time for the 2019 season, might attract some ambitious young coaches who could try to sell fans on the idea of a rebuilding year next season, and if the team does anything much in 2018, maybe the guy rolls right into the new-stadium season.

One would think the next coach should be a guy with a background on the attacking side of the game, because Goff needs a lot of coaching (at minimum) by experts if he is going to be anything but a sunk cost.

One thing seems clear: Fisher and his staff were not able to help Goff get better. Maybe no one can. But Fisher had his chance.

It is time to see if someone else can turn around this team. Preferably before the fans give up on it.