Rams Fans United - Los Angeles Rams Fan Discussion Forum

reading through some of the post-game threads i can't help but wonder if some of us, myself included, are being a little too hard on goff and the offense, and instead should be focusing the blame squarely on the defense.

sure, those last two offensive drives with the game on the line sucked, and could easily be looked at as a defining moment test which both goff and the rams offense failed miserably, but is that being a little short-sighted?

goff and the rams offense put up 28 points, against the league's #2 ranked defense in offensive points allowed headed into today's game, no other team has put up that many offensive points on eagles this season.

goff posted a 110.9 qb rating, that included a whopping 7.1% td to pass attempt rate, a solid 7.7 yards per attempt rate, 2 tds and 0 picks, against a pass defense that ranked 2nd best in yards per pass attempt allowed and 4th best in qb rating allowed.

the rams offense also averaged a whopping 6.8 yards per play, against a defense that entered the game ranked 2nd best in yards per play allowed, only 1 team has booked a better average against the eagles defense this year than the rams.

the rams reached the eagles redzone on a whopping 40% of their drives, the eagles ranked 5th best in keeping the bad guys out of their redzone headed into today's game with a stingy 20% rate.... not only did the rams reach the eagles redzone 40% of the time, but they also scored a td every time they got there for a perfect 100% rate. btw kneels are excluded when looking at drives, and i'm also excluding the 1-second shat show end-of-game possession.



so what's my point? the rams defense lost this game, not goff and/or the rams offense.

when faced with a solid test in wentz and the league's 2nd highest scoring offense the rams defense simply shat the bed, completely, thoroughly... they gave up a whopping 37 offensive points, only the lowly broncos have given up more to the eagles this season - hell the giants held the eagles to 27, the niners held them to 25, the friggin' bears held them to 24... heck, the rams defense coughed up 24 offensive points in the first half alone.

and what did the defense do when the rams took a 35-31 4th quarter lead? promptly let foles, foles, move the eagles from their own 25 into field goal range to make it a 35-34 game.

anyway, kudos to the offense even tho they didn't have a drive or two left in their tank at the end of the game, they played a very tough defense tough, and put up enough offensive points to win the thing had the defense bothered to show up, at all.

THIS! Thank you. I was watching that entire game thinking to myself, did everything on the Rams improve except the defense?

Don't get me wrong Goff, much like Kupp, and Watkins, and McVay still kind of need to prove to the league that they can rally and come up with a win in the clutch. But the D is killing me. How many double digit runs up the gut are we going to allow this year before it's addressed as an issue?!?! An our pass coverage today was abysmal. The only thing that I can really praise our defense on is they seem to be incredible on 3rd downs, are becoming elite in picks, and our special teams defensive plays (kick and punt blocking) are beyond impressive.

Of course it doesn't help to watch AD get double teamed and held on EVERY DAMN PLAY and only get one pity call per game from it.

Definitely don't think we'll be seeing a lot of articles about what a great job Wade is doing with the defense this week...

Yes, I completely agree. Play differential of 85 to 45. TOP differential of 39:12 to 20:48. So we put up 300+ yards of O and scored 28 pts with one quarter and 5 minutes of possesion. Six fucking 1st downs from penalty. The D created the huge hole to crawl out of, the O responded, and the D still couldn't get stops.

My son was texting me that we don't run Gurley enough. I told him we are scoring anyway, who cares (he uses Gurley in those daily fantasy leagues, hence his gripe. We also like throwing inside the 5 costing Gurley TDs, furthering his gripe). But once we got the lead, McVay needs to understand game situation. I love aggressiveness, but another way to show superiority is to run it down someone's throat when they know it's coming. How they closed the Jags game. And we could try to do so out of different sets. If we come out in a 2 or 3 TE jumbo set which we've never shown, that would be interesting. And certainly our genius (and he is) could create some easy play action throws out of those sets, too, just as he does with the 3 WR formations.

And for people saying Foles was clutch, I call BS...review the play-by-play. 6 of 10 for 42 yards. He completed one 2nd down pass for 16 yards on the first FG drive that was big and then the last 3rd down to Agholor. Other 10 dropbacks, he fumbled a snap, got sacked, and was basically Mr. 2-Yard Checkdown. And yet Phillips is still sending extra pass rushers, when he's not anywhere close to the running threat or complete the ball down-the-field threat as Wentz.

D played like shit in the first half; got out coached in the 4th quarter. With an assist from a phantom leverage call. Other interesting thing to me was that if the refs call intentionally grounding on the sack before the FG (instead of in the grasp or illegal touching), it's still 4th down and that FG with the leverage call goes back 3-4 more yards. Don't know if can call that when a OL catches it, but clearly there's no receiver within 10 yards of that throw.

Zen_Ronin wrote:Of course it doesn't help to watch AD get double teamed and held on EVERY DAMN PLAY and only get one pity call per game from it.

2 or 3 holding calls finally game late in the game. Donald does get held virtually every play. Some other blatant holds on Wentz scramble and throw plays in the 1st half on other Rams. I get they don't want to call every one, but yet to they call taunting and leverage? WTF.

calling more runs to ice the game seems like a no-brainer, but it's not like the rams didn't try at all... on their second to last drive, with 10 minutes remaining, the rams gave it to gurley to start things off, dropped for a 1-yard loss, now it's 2nd 11, run it again and hope you don't get in a 3rd and long hole? on their next drive, their final drive, with 4 minutes left, they started things off by giving it to gurley, 3 yard loss, now it's 2nd and 13, run it again? the only bad call on the final 2 drives imo was the fumble play, the rams had 1st and 10 after a penalty on 3rd down gave them a first, why not run it there, but goff had two guys open, and with a half sec more time to throw the rams are in big business, at mid field or better. alas.

and of course i'm guessing it didn't help that mcvay was probably thinking ican't give the ball back to wade's fuckin' defense.

aeneas1 wrote:calling more runs to ice the game seems like a no-brainer, but it's not like the rams didn't try at all... on their second to last drive, with 10 minutes remaining, the rams gave it to gurley to start things off, dropped for a 1-yard loss, now it's 2nd 11, run it again and hope you don't get in a 3rd and long hole? on their next drive, their final drive, with 4 minutes left, they started things off by giving it to gurley, 3 yard loss, now it's 2nd and 13, run it again? the only bad call on the final 2 drives imo was the fumble play, the rams had 1st and 10 after a penalty on 3rd down gave them a first, why not run it there, but goff had two guys open, and with a half sec more time to throw the rams are in big business, at mid field or better. alas.

and of course i'm guessing it didn't help that mcvay was probably thinking ican't give the ball back to wade's fuckin' defense.

Of course, you are right as always. But they didn't try it out of a "here fuck you stop this" set. 3-4 WRs in play. Why not go big and brass, realizing we have the lead and the league MVP (if we ran the ball more in the red zone). Go jumbo and give our MVP the ball out of that. And try it multiple times, run clock, and kick it away if we fail. Yes, the deep shot was going to wide open. But given game situation and fact we just put in our (shitty) backup T, I'm liking Gurley for a 2-yard loss and Hecker punt a little better.

Dick84 wrote:That's my main takeaway.

Rams O had a much better performance today. Scored about their average.

The D? Ouch.

Quick response is I felt like I was screaming at the D all game.

Like, Wade - c'mon! Yelling.

We are not going to continue on without a strong Defense. Next week especially

Bottom line for me is that the Rams were up by 4 late in the game and all they gotta do is not lose to Nick Foles.

Both sides of the ball contributed to blowing that game.

The D was the main culprit. Their complete inability to get off the field meant limited opportunities for the O. Yes, I would have liked a better showing from the I the last 2 drives. But the D and Tru’s assenine penalty (tamest taunting I have ever seen, btw and should not have drawn a flag) cost us that game