RamView, December 27, 2009
From The Couch
(Report and opinions on the game.)
Game #15: Arizona 31, Rams 10
2009 can't end soon enough for the Rams, and without Steven Jackson today, they were playing their first preseason game of 2010 anyway, absorbing yet another blowout loss to Arizona. Ndamukong Suh's starting next week, right?
* QB: Both in “rookie moments” and incomplete skills, Keith Null (20-31-171, 3 INT, 50.0 rating) showed significant holes in his game today. He started the game with a poor screen pass and a near-pick forced into double coverage. The pass-rush clock in Null's head needs some tuning; he might have been able to avoid a couple of the sacks he took. Other times, he avoided sacks, but with really dumb plays, putting some balls just up for grabs. Null gave Greg Toler a gift INT in the 1st, simply chucking a ball into double-coverage under heavy pressure, not even looking where he was throwing. Null had some recognition issues. Adrian Wilson came in totally unblocked to sack him in the last 2:00 of the game; Null didn't seem to know it was coming. 3rd-and-1 at the Ram 35 in the 3rd, with defenders creeping up to put nine in the box, maybe a good time to check off or call a time out instead of handing off to Chris Ogbonnaya. No gain, Rams punt. Null's long accuracy still needs much improvement. He missed Brandon Gibson by a couple of yards late in the 1st and overthrew the TD pass to him in the 3rd, necessitating a circus catch. A deep ball for Donnie Avery in the 4th – a TD if thrown well – was instead well-underthrown and picked off by Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. Null was picked off one more time, the veteran Wilson toying with him, reading his eyes and baiting him into a dumpoff to Randy McMichael in the 4th. I don't think the ball was even out of Null's hand before Wilson stepped in front of McMichael for Arizona's third INT. Null's not bad at stepping up in the pocket and he's not bad throwing on the move. He had to do both quite a bit today under pressure from Arizona's pass rush. His best pass of the day was a bootleg pass up the sideline to Billy Bajema for 12 to start the 4th quarter. He hit Donnie Avery for 13 on 3rd-and-8 the next drive to set up a FG. Sweet throws. The mistakes are starting to mount, though, and Keith Null's going to have to show he can function better under the type of pressure a team like Arizona, or San Francisco next week, can create if he's going to progress to the next level as an NFL QB.
* RB: One of today's big shockers: Ram RBs gained 85 yards on 20 carries even with Steven Jackson in street clothes, with back and assorted injuries finally leaving him unable to answer the bell. Jackson's had no reliable change-of-pace back behind him all season; suddenly this week, Kenneth Darby (11-40) and Chris Ogbonnaya (9-45) were back there showing the speedy, shifty style of RB play the Rams have been looking for from their backups since September. Darby cut back up the middle for 10 on the game's opening play and followed up the next play with another nine. He'd hurt the Rams, though, by dropping a perfectly-thrown swing pass late in the 2nd. Ogbonnaya popped a 3rd-and-1 run for 8 into the teeth of an Arizona blitz late in the 1st but would hurt the Rams by getting beat by Karlos Dansby on a later blitz that got to Null. He tacked on a couple of big gains late in the game, weaving through the Arizona D with a quick pass for 19, and later taking off on a draw play that broke the field wide open for 18. The two RBs didn't commit a turnover and looked good enough in blitz protection. Their biggest weakness, naturally, was that neither one was Jackson. There were a couple of key run breakdowns. The Rams 3-and-outed in the 3rd after Michael Adams blitzed and tripped Ogbonnaya up on 3rd-and-1. Darby got shut down a couple of times for losses after a long punt return by Danny Amendola and they settled for a FG. Without Jackson's power to fall back on, and Arizona taking a big lead, the Rams didn't rely on the run, throwing about 60% of the time. Darby and Ogbonnaya (notably, Samkon Gado didn't have a carry) are who they are. At their best, they're complements to Jackson, and with respectable outings today, it looks like after 15 weeks, some backup for the Rams workhorse has finally arrived. Of course, in classic Rams 2009 timing, it came the week he couldn't play.
* Receivers: Brandon Gibson (5-51) made the catch of the day, breaking open in the end zone behind two Cardinals and making a diving catch while landing his hip inside the end line for the Rams' only TD today and their first 3rd quarter TD of the season. He and Donnie Avery (2-24) showed some field-stretching ability. Gibson was open by a step on a 1st-quarter bomb that just missed and Avery appeared to have Rodgers-Cromartie burned in the 4th until Null's throw came up short. That's way too little production from Avery, though, a microcosm of a bitterly disappointing season. Danny Amendola (6-38) made a bunch of little catches but didn't seem much of a threat to break anything for a big gain. Randy McMichael (2-12) had his usual momentum-killing drop late in the 1st. He got behind the Arizona secondary, and Null put the ball right on his hands, but he didn't appear to look it in and left what should have been a huge gain on the ground. Billy Bajema (2-19) has been the Rams' best tight end this season. Yeah, who saw that coming? McMichael's play has been another of this season's massive disappointments.
* Offensive line: One game left in the Alex Barron Era, and it can't end soon enough. Second play of the game, FALSE START. Bertran Berry simply ducked under him and smoked him for one of Arizona's four sacks, a killer coming on 3rd-and-3 just before halftime. Barron and Roger Allen were both beaten badly on the 3rd-and-1 stop of Ogbonnaya in the 3rd. I'm not sure Barron has done anything in five years here besides commit penalties. Any tribute to him for lasting this long has to be tempered by the Rams' 2,000 line injuries since he's been here, giving them little choice but to keep him in the lineup. Alex Barron's Reign of Error must end after next week. Wasn't a good day for Mark Setterstrom, either, as he's surely done for the season with a torn tricep, suffered in the 2nd quarter. Setterstrom run-blocked well before his injury. He and John Greco opened the hole for Darby's game-opening 10-yard run. Ogbonnaya later followed him and Mike Karney for an 8-yard gain. But then you have the injury, another on a long list for Mark, part of the risk the Rams took in dumping Incognito. Allen showed he could throw a strong run block or two in his pro debut, including a big one on Ogbonnaya's late 18-yard draw. Jason Brown, though, got tangoed into the hole by Gabe Watson to blow up a Darby run in the 4th and fed Null a bunch of low shotgun snaps. I like Brown as a “four pillars” player but would like to see him be more of a pillar in the middle of the line. The Rams were plagued by spin moves in pass protection. Calais Campbell hit one on Setterstrom for Arizona's first sack. Their third sack was a combo of Karlos Dansby beating Ogbonnaya's blitz pickup and Chike Okeafor, who got the sack, beating Greco with a spin-a-roonie. In their defense, the line probably gave Null enough time to throw on both of those spin move sacks, and the final sack was Adrian Wilson blitzing the formation. On the other hand, there was plenty of pressure on Null on his bad plays, and he bailed them out of sacks other times with proper plays. The line was neither great nor awful today, which should probably be a tribute to their ability to cope with injury and to having to play with the incompetent Barron anchoring one end.
* Defensive line / LB: With Leonard Little (knee infection) and James Hall (birth of first child) BOTH out, the Ram defense appeared to be in for a grim day. Chris Long gave them some early hope by grabbing Kurt Warner as he threw, causing a pass to sail incomplete and forcing a 3-and-out. Fine run defense by Justin King, Victor Adeyanju and James Laurinaitis, along with a pretty lucky zone blitz, got the Cardinals off the field a second time before old patterns took shape in the second quarter. Almost no pressure on Warner whatsoever as he drove Arizona 80 yards to their first TD. Next drive, rinse, wash, repeat, with Warner driving 83 yards for another TD, hitting Anquan Boldin at will, or Tim Hightower (10-32) running through LaJuan (WHO?) Ramsey for 16. Same thing again the last 2:00 of the half. Though Long stuffed Chris Wells (17-68) and pressured Warner once, Arizona still drove 82 yards before King's clutch tackle of Boldin at the one held them to a late FG and a 17-0 halftime lead. Long and Adeyanju got nearly all the defensive snaps at RDE and LDE respectively. Long had an enjoyable second half. Good edge rush by Long on the first possession after halftime forced Warner to step up, but into Ramsey, who was bouncing back up after running over the center. Whack, sack, fumble, recovered by Adeyanju and setting up a TD. Adeyanju then got a 3rd-down hit on Warner with the Rams just rushing 3 to force another 3-and-out, and the Rams were battling their way back into the game. Until Amendola fumbled away a punt return. They outsmarted themselves with a fake blitz and gave up a 25-yard 3rd-down completion to Early Doucet, then Darell Scott roughed Warner. Arizona got down to the 2, spread the field with 4 wideouts and drew Hightower through Doozer Douzable for a pivotal TD. The Rams had the dime package in to answer Arizona's formation and Doozer had no LB help behind him. Though down 24-7, the line kept up its effort. Adeyanju got another 3rd-down hit on Warner to end a drive. Long smoked the RT for the Rams' 2nd sack the next possession, which Laurinaitis and Doozer followed up by blowing up a screen pass. Long split two blockers to stuff a Wells run in the 4th, but Wells delivered the coups de grace after Wilson's long INT return in the final 3:00. He went up the middle for 9, with Ramsey and Scott getting shoved around, then outran King around the left corner for a final TD. Long owned Jeremy Bridges, a guard pressed into playing LT, in the 2nd half, and likely had his best half of the season. And with Arizona rarely attacking him with a TE, he was strong against the run as well. The Rams got to Warner probably as well as any time since he left the Rams. The second quarter was killer, though, and with Long and Adeyanju pressed into service at the DE positions all game, that was probably when the absences of Long and Hall were felt the most. But with a good chance the youngsters are the starting DEs on opening day 2010, it was very good to see them both making plays against a team the Rams defense hasn't made many plays against lately.
* Secondary: The Rams had little answer for the Arizona passing game. It was either soft zone that left Anquan Boldin (8-116) wide open for one huge gain after another, or let Warner (24-38-313) throw at Danny Gorrer like he was the last kid left on the other dodgeball team. Steve Breaston burned Gorrer for 45 to set up the first Arizona TD, a crossing route to Larry Fitzgerald (5-48) where Craig Dahl got caught in traffic and couldn't pursue. Boldin slashed the Ram zone for 23 and 22 the next possession before Early Freaking Doucet beat Gorrer for an 18-yard TD on a skinny post. Gorrer never had him covered for a second. Justin King's goal line tackle of Boldin right before halftime saved the Rams from going down 21-0 and was briefly a turning point for the Rams. They forced a Warner fumble and scored to cut the lead to 17-7. Then Gorrer read Warner's attempt to hit Breaston in the right flat, jumped the route, had nothing but 40 yards of space between him and a huge defensive play, a TD, a new ball game... and he dropped the ball. KHAAAAAAN! Freaking Doucet burned them for 25 on a smoke route to set up another TD, and it was pretty academic from there. The secondary looked good in run support. King still looks good covering the underneath stuff. Ron Bartell quietly had a very effective game covering Fitzgerald. But that only illustrates how poorly the rest of the Ram secondary matches up with a Cardinal passing game they're going to have to figure out how to cover one of these days.
* Special teams: It's hard not to like Danny Amendola; he's a real gamer. But several times this year he's committed one of the premier sins for a kick returner: getting caught by the kicker. On an otherwise terrific 34-yard punt return in the 3rd, he not only got tackled by the punter, he got stripped of the ball. Arizona recovered, drove on for a TD, and Amendola's fumble was as big a turning point of this game as any. Amendola set up a 4th-quarter score with a 24-yard return around blocks by Samkon Gado and Chris Chamberlain. Arizona kicked off away from him, respecting his breakaway threat. (Note to Mike Karney: you may want to let your returner field short, high kicks instead of running him over to do it yourself.) If Amendola hadn't fumbled, that return was getting called back for a Cord Parks penalty anyway, but special teams coach Tom McMahon still needs to get on him for letting himself get tackled by the kicker. Missing the TD was bad enough there, let alone the turnover. Though he'll probably get screwed over for the Pro Bowl again this week, Donnie Jones had his usual day at the office, 49.2 a punt. Yawn.
* Coaching: The Rams got fooled quite a bit defensively today, which was discouraging, though sometimes they got away with it. They zone-blitzed in the 1st and got Clinton Hart a free run at Warner, just enough to upset the lob pass to Hightower, who had Long beaten but good. With no one getting to Warner most of the first half, 3rd-and-8 just before halftime seemed an awful time to dial up a THREE-man rush, and Kurt beat it for a first down. In the 3rd, though, Adeyanju nailed Warner at the end of a 3-man rush. Blitzing had another subtle success right before halftime when Warner and Fitzgerald crossed wires on a 3rd-and-goal pass from the 1. Arizona had the answer for that kind of thing later, spreading the field with 4 wideouts at the goal line in the 3rd and running a draw to Hightower for their 3rd TD. That was set up by the worst play-calling gaffe of the day. The Rams faked a blitz on 3rd-and-3, and about the only better time to run a smoke route than against a blitz is to run it when the defense is running backwards at the snap. A lot of Doucet's 25 yards on that play was gobbling up ground the Rams were giving up, brutally outsmarting themselves on the play. Arizona had the Ram defense off-balance a lot of the game.
Ironically, after running almost no play-action with Jackson the first time the Rams played Arizona, today, Pat Shurmur called a ton of play-action without #39 in the lineup. He opened up the field with some rollouts for Null and a couple of deep routes, and even had Darby in wildcat formation for a carry. The Rams never really got Arizona's D off-balance, but that was a case of (depleted) personnel today a lot more than play-calling. Arizona DC Bill Davis didn't impress me much, blitzing both safeties with 2:00 left and a 3-TD lead on a 1-13 team. I'm sure that'll look great on your resume if you ever interview with Jeff Fisher. Ass.
* Upon further review: If Alberto Riveron's refereeing an Arizona game in the playoffs, put all your money on them. Throughout the game Arizona got balls spotted at a yard line never reached the previous play. For Hightower to have converted the 3rd-and-1 in the 1st, the yellow line on TV would have to have been off a yard. They gave him the 46 when the ball never got there. As far as individual calls, though they got the Gibson TD catch right on replay, that's a fairly easy call to get right the first time by NFL standards. I don't understand what the official saw on the play to make him think it wasn't a catch. C-minus till I understand what was going on with the spots.
* Cheers: Fox announcers Sam Rosen and Tim Ryan are good, but today wasn't their finest work. Rosen botched a lot of names, including “Donnie” Amendola and calling Null Craig Nall, a backup QB for the Packers and Texans. Ryan must really want to get invited to Howie Long's New Year's Eve party, because he did his damnedest to make Chris Long sound like a Pro Bowler. Ryan had to have not watched the 2nd quarter to suggest that Long had “good pressure on all day”. He came out against the idea of trading Jackson at the end of the game; is that really a burning issue for the Rams' future? The chance of that seems about as good as that of a home sellout next week...
* Who’s next?: ...which will be the finale against the 49ers. The finale of a long, painful season, possibly the worst season in Rams' history. If the Rams lose, they'd fall to 1-15. They'd lose their 4th straight to San Francisco. They'd go 0-6 in the lousy NFC West for the second straight year, part of a 14-game division losing streak. They'd go winless at home for the season, lengthening their Dome misery streak to 13. The only thing worse than losing and sinking to all these depths, ironically, would probably be winning and losing the first overall pick to freaking Detroit. As Rams fans, we hate to lose this next game, but we can't afford to win it. Welcome to football purgatory.
Fortunately, though Mike Singletary's charges aren't playoff-bound, they still have something to play for: an 8-8 record. Coupled with a sweep of the division-champion Cardinals for the season, Niner Nation could be a swingin' joint heading into 2010. And this is a very different 49ers offense than the one the Rams saw in October. Frank Gore missed that first meeting, though he's the rare NFL RB the Rams actually have some recent success defending. Alex Smith is QB now instead of Shaun Hill and is a much better threat to get the ball downfield, though an INT risk for San Francisco, with 12 in 10 games. The Rams will see Michael Crabtree for the first time. He hasn't had a monster game yet but is good for at least 60 yards and is the best receiver the 49ers offer other than Vernon Davis. Davis has slowed down lately but has still been the NFC's best TE this year and will be a handful for the Rams, as most TEs are. The Rams can't give him clean runs off the line and better not be stupid enough to forget him with the 49ers near the goal line. However, the Rams sacked Hill four times in San Francisco. If Long can duplicate this week's 2nd-half effort against real NFL tackles, against a team that takes running the ball seriously, and the Rams get Hall or Little back on the line, hey, the 49ers are 1-6 on the road this year, anything can happen.
Then again, though they lost 35-0, the Rams didn't lose that first game on defense. The 49ers had Kyle Boller under constant pressure, sacked him five times and forced him into a killer pick-six. Jackson had one of his most difficult rushing games of the season. Special teams gave away a TD. The Rams couldn't get a receiver open beyond 10 yards downfield. Patrick Willis was his usual dominating self. Good luck to the Rams holding their own on the line of scrimmage Sunday, with Roger Allen making his first career start and John Greco making his 4th. Good luck slowing down the 49er blitz, which the Rams usually don't. Good luck to Adam Goldberg trying to gut it out against the much-faster 49er edge rushers. Ahmad Brooks has come out of nowhere down the stretch to become the 49ers' sack leader, with 6. Good luck to Alex Barron not to screw up an assignment, which he will, or stay onside for an appreciable length of time, which he won't. The Ram offensive line has to be able to win this game in the trenches for the Rams to come out on top to end the season, but I just can't see how they're equipped for it.
Herman Edwards famously said, “You play to win the game,” and I'm sure Steve Spagnuolo believes that whole-heartedly. And I'm not going to fault him for it, even next week with the first overall draft pick on the line. That's the attitude you want leading your team. It's the kind of character you eventually win with, no matter where you draft. It makes the players you have, and the players you draft, better. Though I think it would be irresponsible to play Jackson, the Rams will play hard next week, and try to win, and we should be proud of them for it. We should be proud, albeit chagrined, if they do win. Hey, Detroit could beat Chicago, and it won't matter what the Rams do. The 49ers will play hard, too, though, which should be good news enough for the Draft Suh movement.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
Monday, December 28, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
RamView, December 20, 2009
From Row HH
(Report and opinions on and from the game.)
Game #14: Texans 16, Rams 13
There once was a team from St. Lou / That was hit with a case of swine flu / After a week's worth of vexin' / They got beat by the Texans / But they'll get to draft Ndamukong Suh.
* QB: If you were to argue that Keith Null (18-27-173, 81.2 rating) lost the game today, I'd have a hard time refuting it, due to two costly turnovers. After the defense turned Houston over in the 1st, Null led the offense's opening possession across midfield before dropping a snap from center, which blew the timing of a scheduled handoff to Steven Jackson. Null still tried the handoff, but Jackson didn't look ready for it anymore, and Mario Williams recovered the gaffe to set up a Houston FG. Many areas of Null's game are developing, but one that regressed was the simple exchange from center, as he put two or three snaps on the ground today. That's an issue Null had better get a grip on quickly. Null's other huge error was an interception early in the 3rd. Coming as it did from the Houston 25, it cost the Rams at least 3 points, and the Texans would score 7 for themselves off the turnover. Trying to avoid a sack from Antonio Smith, Null fired while going down and was picked off by Dominique Barber. With experience, Null will learn that eating that ball would have been better there. I won't rip Null for those plays like I would if Marc Bulger or Kyle Boller committed them, because those two veterans should know better and execute better. And Null's just trying to make a play both times. He's trying to get the ball in Jackson's hands on the fumble, certainly a good thought. He appeared to have Ruvell Martin open on the INT; he just needed to remember at that moment that he isn't Brett Favre. Null continues to hang tough in the pocket. He'll stand back and make throws at times where you'd see Bulger cringing for impact, or Boller scrambling off with unpredictable, mostly not good, results. Null's got the team behind him. You can see he cares out there. The defense sees it, too. They were all tapping Null on the helmet, promising to pick him up after the INT. (They didn't.) The coaches' confidence in Null has already increased. He got to try a couple of long balls; one barely too long, one pretty underthrown. They had him throwing on 4th-and-1 in Ram territory right before the INT. Null hasn't developed killer rapport with one receiver yet, but he's hit nine different guys in both of his starts so far. One INT today is certainly an improvement over last week's five. I didn't see all the double-clutching he did last week, either. A lot of what's good about Null's game comes because he gets the ball out quickly. He's accurate on the short stuff. He can get throws off with a man in his face. The offense had good rhythm a lot of the day. There was just one 3-and-out, the inevitable Ram post-halftime fizzle. Null's head is always in the game. He set up the 3rd-quarter tying FG with an 18-yard completion to Brandon Gibson and a 20-yarder to Randy McMichael, a play he audibled to. Keith Null may not be NFL starter-quality yet, but he's progressing. He's passed Boller on the depth chart, mine anyway, and ought to get the Rams' last two starts. He's done enough right in two starts to transform whatever the Rams have been planning at QB next year, because that plan certainly ought to include him by now.
* RB: We've known Steven Jackson (20-82, 4-41 receiving) to be a fighter all season long, but he took it literally today, duking it out with safety Bernard Pollard in the 4th after one cheap shot too many. Jackson scored the takedown, too, so under hockey fighting rules, Steven won the fight. Trying to run up the middle was a losing fight for Jackson, though, so his success today came from bouncing the run outside or getting the ball in space. The Rams surprised everybody on 4th-and-1 in the 1st with a swing pass to Jackson, which he took up the sideline for 16. He bounced a run outside right for 35 in the 2nd, largely because Pollard committed too far inside. That run set up a FG, and a couple of runs late in the half got the Rams inside the 10 for Danny Amendola's TD. With Jackson sidelined after the fight to have a cut lip tended to, Kenneth Darby (3-5) converted a couple of third-and-shorts. Jackson sparked the Rams' last drive by weaving with a screen pass for 25 out to midfield. Another well-drawn-up, well-executed play, coming off a fake end-around and with key downfield blocks by Jason Brown and John Greco. Houston's one of the league's best run defenses, and they keyed on Jackson all day like everybody else in the league, but despite that, despite getting his helmet ripped off a bunch of times, despite Pollard's cheap shots, despite a bad back, despite either the swine or kosher variety of the flu, he rolled up 120 yards of offense and had his team in the game the whole way. Send that man to the Pro Bowl.
* Receivers: Ram receivers continue to have minimal impact. Danny Amendola (2-7) did have a TD. From trips right formation at the Houston 2 in the 2nd, he slanted right, then spun on a dime and slanted left into the end zone, leaving Dunta Robinson far behind for Null's TD pass. Nice play and play-call. Donnie Avery (4-32) led the WRs in receptions but had a drop and is really fighting the ball right now. Failure to catch a ball cleanly at the 4 late in the 1st half likely cost him a TD, but Avery did keep the drive alive for Amendola's TD. Brandon Gibson's (2-26) 18-yard play converted a 3rd down in the 3rd, followed immediately by Randy McMichael's only catch, a 20-yarder with a dangerous, hurdling finish that set up a long, game-tying FG. Ruvell Martin (1-23) turned a short pass into a big gainer to give the Rams some early momentum and threw a nice block on a smoke pass to Amendola. Martin appears to have some game but also appears still to be the 4th WR in an offense that doesn't go 4-wide very often. Null tried to go deep to Avery and Gibson. A bomb to Avery up the far sideline was close but long by a step or two. Avery came close to making a diving end zone catch in the 2nd but Null's throw was too far out of bounds and the Rams settled for a FG. A lot of coming close, not enough plays being made.
* Offensive line: Decent effort for an offensive line playing with two new starting guards, a tackle playing out of position and a center coming off a case of swine flu. Null was sacked three times, but none by Mario Williams, against whom Adam Goldberg had a respectable day. Houston did shuffle their line a lot, so it was Antonio Smith who beat Goldberg and pressured Null into the critical INT in the 3rd. Houston killed two Ram 4th-quarter drives with big sacks. Connor Barwin stormed up the middle unblocked on a stunt to drill Null with about 9:00 left. That was a slow-developing rush and all the Rams' middle blockers were tied up; I think the sack's on Null for not getting rid of the ball or fleeing the pocket sooner. Null had no chance to elude Smith on the sack that ended the Rams' final possession, though. Smith split Jason Brown and Mark Setterstrom with a bull-rush and about broke Null in half. The other sack was a big blitz in the first where both blitzers came at Jackson and he couldn't possibly block both. Williams was a factor, recovering the blown handoff in the first, largely as a result of Alex Barron failing to block him AT ALL. Just because the play's going to the right doesn't mean you don't block, Barron. Hopefully we're only going to have to put up with another two weeks of Barron pulling this crap in a Rams uniform. Goldberg seemed the best blocker today. Besides keeping Williams fairly quiet, his pull block helped Jackson get a nice gain early in the 3rd. All of Jackson's big gains rushing and receiving came to Goldberg's side, though a good share of that was Jackson bouncing stuffed middle runs outside and doing all the work himself. The Rams couldn't do much up the middle today. Greco at RG impresses me as the hardest of the interior linemen to budge, and there's plenty of value just in that. Did the Rams miss Richie Incognito today? Let's see. The Ram offensive line committed no penalties, while up in Buffalo, Incognito committed 3 for 30 yards. Even if they took a small step backward today, and pass pro was good enough to suggest they really didn't, this line's going to come together more quickly than it has with the big knucklehead as a constant distraction anyway. Richie: good luck, but good riddance.
* Defensive line / LB: The Rams were impressive against the run (55 yards by Houston RBs) but once again didn't leave much of an impression in pass rush, with a bunch of close-but-no-cigar efforts. After Houston converted an early 4th-and-1 in Rams territory, Paris Lenon knocked the ball away from Arian Foster to force a turnover. Darell Scott FLEW in from a good 20 yards away to claim the loose ball for St. Louis. That pair weighed in again after Andre Johnson's 49-yard catch, one of several big plays made possible today by the entire Ram defense getting completely fooled by play-action. Scott stuffed a run, though, and Lenon broke up a pass, to limit Houston's damage to a 2nd FG. The Rams shut Houston down the drive before thanks to a run stuff by James Butler and a couple by Leger (DOOZER) Douzable. Craig Dahl stopped a pass short of the marker late in the first half to force a Kris Brown 52-yard FG attempt that DOINKed off the upright. Dahl started the 3rd quarter by recovering a Matt Schaub fumble on a failed QB sneak. Run defense was solid. Scott, DOOZER and Cliff Ryan were terrific up the middle with a bunch of stuffs. Chris Long even held the edge well this week. The worst of it came when they couldn't stop Ryan Moats from getting a first down on three carries and sealing the game right before the 2:00 warning. He broke the Rams' backs with a tackle-breaking 7-yard run on first down. But maybe it doesn't get that far, if the Rams had sacked Matt Schaub at all. A big problem is the whole defense's rookie-like tendency to bite on play-action. The two longest plays to Johnson and Schaub's TD pass were all bootlegs right off play-fakes left, and Schaub had all day to throw all three of them because the Rams were so faked out. Another big problem was Leonard Little's absence. Long played mostly LDE in his place, and at least three times was a step from taking Schaub out for a huge loss. Instead, each time, Schaub hit a receiver for a first down. James Hall had an awesome sequence in the first half. He defended a deep pass over the middle, was in on a run stuff on 2nd down and drew a holding penalty on 3rd down. Unfortunately, all his plays for the day seemed to be confined to that sequence. The Rams pressured Schaub pretty well but are killing themselves by rarely finishing a good rush off with a sack. They've had none the last two weeks, and just 20 this season, good for a woeful 30th in the NFL. Sometime during a game you have to put the opponent in a long-yardage situation. The best way is to sack the QB. The Rams have to do better than this. There are new coaches and highly-drafted players here meant to address this problem. Yet it's a worse problem now than ever.
* Secondary: Any team that faces Andre Johnson knows he's going to make some plays. The idea is to limit the damage he does. But the Ram secondary failed at that decisively, yielding 9 catches and 196 yards to the league's best wideout. Johnson burned Ron Bartell one-on-one deep for 38 in the 1st to set up Houston's 1st FG. With the whole Ram defense biting HARD on play-action, he got behind James Butler and Craig Dahl AND Justin King for 49 to set up Houston's 2nd FG in the 2nd. The Rams kept Johnson modesty quiet enough to tie the game at 13 before he went beserk on them in the 4th. From the Houston 14, he ran what appeared to be the deepest comeback route in NFL history for a 30-yard gain. King laid ten yards off him in the slot off the snap and back-pedaled the whole time. Dahl got caught inside in deep zone coverage the next play, and Johnson slashed the Rams with a cross-field run, and catch, and run, that netted 44. Houston's most lethal weapon put them in range for the game-winning FG nearly single-handedly. Kevin Walter turned Bartell inside-out with a route very similar to the one Amendola scored on to score Houston's only TD. That pass was set up by TE Joel Dreessen's 22-yard catch-and-run that would have been a 4-yard catch had Danny Gorrer, in his first, and likely last, action in the Ram secondary, not failed completely on his tackle by failing to wrap up the receiver in any way whatsoever. A most idiotic-looking effort. Dahl had a nice play in the end zone, rocking Johnson to break up a TD pass that Bartell admittedly had covered well (he even TURNED FOR THE BALL!). King looked very good covering short routes, even stopping Johnson short to force that first FG. But Matt Schaub still threw for 367 yards, with Andre Johnson single-handedly outclassing the Ram secondary.
* Special teams: How weird is it to have good special teams week in and week out? The Rams? Amendola averaged 31 yards on kick returns, highlighted by a 55-yard explosion in the 2nd, that along with a facemask on the return, set up his TD catch a little later. Amendola returns kicks with decisiveness and determination we haven't seen here in a while. Billy Bajema's block sprung him for the big gain. Josh (Showtime) Brown was nails, hitting a 33-yarder to tie the game at 3 and a 52-yard bomb to tie it again at 13, game situations where he'd been missing kicks before and deflating the team. He followed the 2nd FG with a 75-yard kickoff to force a touchback. Donnie Jones (43.5 avg) was off a little but still pinned Houston inside the 10 once and inside the 20 three times. None of his punts were returned, and Brown's strong kickoffs, paired with good coverage, kept Houston's dangerous special teams from being a factor. For all that's gone wrong this year, the Rams have gotten special teams mostly right.
* Coaching: The defense held Houston to 16 points but still lost the battle today in that they couldn't come close to containing Johnson and couldn't sack Schaub and may never sack another NFL QB ever AGAIN. They had the most, and a lot, of success against Johnson with a safety rolled over to his side, but Houston won out with the number of times they were able to get Johnson matched up one-on-one. They forced some of that by using him out of the slot, but got plenty of one-on-one opportunities split wide, too, something I'm not sure why or how the Rams could let happen often. Steve Spagnuolo and Ken Flajole and company had better take big steps this offseason towards fielding a defense that can sack the QB next year. Blitzes were ineffective, and the only trick up their sleeves these days seems to be the 4-DE pass rush, which wasn't even that today with Little out. The failure of the Ram pass rush is one of this season's biggest disappointments.
I like a lot of what Pat Shurmur called on the offensive side today, though. The 4th-and-1 swing pass to Jackson was the gutsiest call of the season. Jackson's big screen pass late in the game was a well-designed play. So was Amendola's TD. The Rams originally tried to hurry the play, only to have Ed Hochuli hold up the game for Houston, “to match up”. Shurmur used a tricky pattern to get Amendola lost in trips formation and free for the TD. He took some shots downfield and called a game that showed some trust in his receivers instead of confining them to a 10-yard box. So now I'm going to be a hypocrite and ask if the end zone pass on 3rd-and-4 from the Houston 14 in the 2nd was really the right call. My initial reaction was to like the killer instinct the call showed. Now I wonder if it cost them 4 points not to just go for the first down there. Last, why does this offense do nothing but implode right after every halftime? The Rams have not scored a third-quarter TD all season (even against Detroit). Who's advising this staff on adjusting quickly and effectively to changing conditions, General Motors?
The main game management question today's going to be whether the Rams should have punted on 4th-and-10 at their 48 with 2:39 left. Back in week 2 of 2007, Scott Linehan went for it in very similar conditions against the 49ers and failed. Punting didn't work out for Spagnuolo here, but I'm still fine with the decision. The Rams had been stopping Houston on the ground; had they done it one more time, they were looking at getting the ball back around their 35 with 2:00 left. Ryan Moats' first carry after the punt killed that hope, though. I apologize to Coach Spagnuolo for lumping him in with Linehan there. The Rams may come out worse in record this year than any of Linehan's seasons, but they're light-years ahead in team character and attitude. The rookie head coach has excelled at getting all his guys rowing in the same direction. Next year, set that boat on a course for a bunch of wins.
* Upon further review: Ed Hochuli's crew allowed too much chippy play. Jackson's helmet came off at least 4 times today; how does that happen without a penalty? Jacques Reeves' facemask on Amendola's long return seemed pretty cut-and-dried but the officials had to hold a conclave before confirming the flag. Pollard threw the first punch of the fight with Jackson and knocked his helmet off. Not only should he have gotten the only flag on the play, he should have been ejected. I was afraid Jackson could also get ejected; at least Hochuli didn't do that, making the useless offsetting personal foul call instead. After the fight, the ball was spotted a yard short, two yards from the marker, though Hochuli announced it was 3rd-and-1. The radio crew pointed out several more missed spots by the crew today as well. They didn't appear to affect the game, but it wasn't a stellar outing for the zebras, either. C-minus.
* Cheers: Just over 46,000 tickets were sold for today's game. I'll assume half the people who bought tickets actually attended. The crowd was small and not very noisy, though I'd like to think crowd reaction to the replay on the big screen helped convince Hochuli on the face mask penalty during Amendola's long kick return. Part of the halftime show was a video tribute to Merlin Olsen, in an especially nice touch, narrated by Dick Enberg. I thought the ceremony meant Olsen would get a banner in the rafters like Deacon and Marshall, but I guess he has to settle for his retired number and the Ring of Honor for now. Which he already had. Speaking of numbers, the new QB Reilly is wearing #13. Why haven't the Rams put that number on hold? Lastly, Tampa Bay 24, Seattle 7, huh? Half of me is mad Seattle lays an egg to the Bucs but can still beat the Rams for the ninth and tenth straight times this year. The other half would like to extend a friendly St. Louis welcome to Ndamukong Suh. The Rams are on the clock!
* Who’s next?: Unless they get lucky and knock Kurt Warner out of the game again, the Rams are probably looking at a holiday whuppin' in the Pink Taco Dome to loathsome Bill Bidwill's Cardinals again, with the division champion Big Dead looking for their SEVENTH straight win in the series. Reasons for hope might be that the middle of the Ram defensive line is playing a lot better than they were the first time the teams met, giving them a chance to make Arizona's 27th-rated running game look as bad as it really is, instead of giving up 183 freaking yards. Another reason is that Arizona's been a sloppy mess lately, getting embarrassed last Monday by San Francisco and barely slipping by Detroit today, combining for ten turnovers in the two games. But with the pass rush, or lack thereof, we've seen the last few weeks, Warner's likely to get the eons of time he usually gets in the pocket against the Rams, more time than he'll ever need to slice and dice a secondary well-overmatched not by just one, but two, world-class wide receivers. Without finding a path to Warner, the Rams will be hard-pressed to find a path to a win in the desert. Look for Warner to become the second QB in NFL history to throw 100 TDs for two different teams and for the Cardinals to achieve their first ten-win season since 1976.
Keith Null's welcome to draw inspiration from Warner's rise-from-obscurity story but will certainly have his work cut out. Arizona's blitzing will look a lot more like Tennessee to him than Houston. The Rams have had trouble establishing the middle run lately and did the first time against Arizona. They'd be well-advised to get Steven Jackson open in space outside, though it'll also help this time that he'll have healthy fullbacks in front of him. Maybe Pat Shurmur could dust off some of the play-action he NEVER used against the Cardinals last month?
With the Rams in secure possession of the first overall draft pick, a lot of Rams Nation probably doesn't want them to win next week. But like Houston today, Arizona's a very beatable team. They're hot and cold, they play sloppy, they don't run the ball well. The Rams have spent a lot of this season one step away from a big play. If they cover that receiver a second longer, they get the big sack. If the rush would force a throw a second early every now and then, the secondary could make a play. The offense comes a step away from hitting a long pass, a block away from breaking off a big run. It's been a lot of close-but-no-cigar for the Rams this season. You keep wondering if this will finally be the week they effort their way to a win over a team with a better record. They're sure due.
Eh, cigars are bad Christmas gifts anyway.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
From Row HH
(Report and opinions on and from the game.)
Game #14: Texans 16, Rams 13
There once was a team from St. Lou / That was hit with a case of swine flu / After a week's worth of vexin' / They got beat by the Texans / But they'll get to draft Ndamukong Suh.
* QB: If you were to argue that Keith Null (18-27-173, 81.2 rating) lost the game today, I'd have a hard time refuting it, due to two costly turnovers. After the defense turned Houston over in the 1st, Null led the offense's opening possession across midfield before dropping a snap from center, which blew the timing of a scheduled handoff to Steven Jackson. Null still tried the handoff, but Jackson didn't look ready for it anymore, and Mario Williams recovered the gaffe to set up a Houston FG. Many areas of Null's game are developing, but one that regressed was the simple exchange from center, as he put two or three snaps on the ground today. That's an issue Null had better get a grip on quickly. Null's other huge error was an interception early in the 3rd. Coming as it did from the Houston 25, it cost the Rams at least 3 points, and the Texans would score 7 for themselves off the turnover. Trying to avoid a sack from Antonio Smith, Null fired while going down and was picked off by Dominique Barber. With experience, Null will learn that eating that ball would have been better there. I won't rip Null for those plays like I would if Marc Bulger or Kyle Boller committed them, because those two veterans should know better and execute better. And Null's just trying to make a play both times. He's trying to get the ball in Jackson's hands on the fumble, certainly a good thought. He appeared to have Ruvell Martin open on the INT; he just needed to remember at that moment that he isn't Brett Favre. Null continues to hang tough in the pocket. He'll stand back and make throws at times where you'd see Bulger cringing for impact, or Boller scrambling off with unpredictable, mostly not good, results. Null's got the team behind him. You can see he cares out there. The defense sees it, too. They were all tapping Null on the helmet, promising to pick him up after the INT. (They didn't.) The coaches' confidence in Null has already increased. He got to try a couple of long balls; one barely too long, one pretty underthrown. They had him throwing on 4th-and-1 in Ram territory right before the INT. Null hasn't developed killer rapport with one receiver yet, but he's hit nine different guys in both of his starts so far. One INT today is certainly an improvement over last week's five. I didn't see all the double-clutching he did last week, either. A lot of what's good about Null's game comes because he gets the ball out quickly. He's accurate on the short stuff. He can get throws off with a man in his face. The offense had good rhythm a lot of the day. There was just one 3-and-out, the inevitable Ram post-halftime fizzle. Null's head is always in the game. He set up the 3rd-quarter tying FG with an 18-yard completion to Brandon Gibson and a 20-yarder to Randy McMichael, a play he audibled to. Keith Null may not be NFL starter-quality yet, but he's progressing. He's passed Boller on the depth chart, mine anyway, and ought to get the Rams' last two starts. He's done enough right in two starts to transform whatever the Rams have been planning at QB next year, because that plan certainly ought to include him by now.
* RB: We've known Steven Jackson (20-82, 4-41 receiving) to be a fighter all season long, but he took it literally today, duking it out with safety Bernard Pollard in the 4th after one cheap shot too many. Jackson scored the takedown, too, so under hockey fighting rules, Steven won the fight. Trying to run up the middle was a losing fight for Jackson, though, so his success today came from bouncing the run outside or getting the ball in space. The Rams surprised everybody on 4th-and-1 in the 1st with a swing pass to Jackson, which he took up the sideline for 16. He bounced a run outside right for 35 in the 2nd, largely because Pollard committed too far inside. That run set up a FG, and a couple of runs late in the half got the Rams inside the 10 for Danny Amendola's TD. With Jackson sidelined after the fight to have a cut lip tended to, Kenneth Darby (3-5) converted a couple of third-and-shorts. Jackson sparked the Rams' last drive by weaving with a screen pass for 25 out to midfield. Another well-drawn-up, well-executed play, coming off a fake end-around and with key downfield blocks by Jason Brown and John Greco. Houston's one of the league's best run defenses, and they keyed on Jackson all day like everybody else in the league, but despite that, despite getting his helmet ripped off a bunch of times, despite Pollard's cheap shots, despite a bad back, despite either the swine or kosher variety of the flu, he rolled up 120 yards of offense and had his team in the game the whole way. Send that man to the Pro Bowl.
* Receivers: Ram receivers continue to have minimal impact. Danny Amendola (2-7) did have a TD. From trips right formation at the Houston 2 in the 2nd, he slanted right, then spun on a dime and slanted left into the end zone, leaving Dunta Robinson far behind for Null's TD pass. Nice play and play-call. Donnie Avery (4-32) led the WRs in receptions but had a drop and is really fighting the ball right now. Failure to catch a ball cleanly at the 4 late in the 1st half likely cost him a TD, but Avery did keep the drive alive for Amendola's TD. Brandon Gibson's (2-26) 18-yard play converted a 3rd down in the 3rd, followed immediately by Randy McMichael's only catch, a 20-yarder with a dangerous, hurdling finish that set up a long, game-tying FG. Ruvell Martin (1-23) turned a short pass into a big gainer to give the Rams some early momentum and threw a nice block on a smoke pass to Amendola. Martin appears to have some game but also appears still to be the 4th WR in an offense that doesn't go 4-wide very often. Null tried to go deep to Avery and Gibson. A bomb to Avery up the far sideline was close but long by a step or two. Avery came close to making a diving end zone catch in the 2nd but Null's throw was too far out of bounds and the Rams settled for a FG. A lot of coming close, not enough plays being made.
* Offensive line: Decent effort for an offensive line playing with two new starting guards, a tackle playing out of position and a center coming off a case of swine flu. Null was sacked three times, but none by Mario Williams, against whom Adam Goldberg had a respectable day. Houston did shuffle their line a lot, so it was Antonio Smith who beat Goldberg and pressured Null into the critical INT in the 3rd. Houston killed two Ram 4th-quarter drives with big sacks. Connor Barwin stormed up the middle unblocked on a stunt to drill Null with about 9:00 left. That was a slow-developing rush and all the Rams' middle blockers were tied up; I think the sack's on Null for not getting rid of the ball or fleeing the pocket sooner. Null had no chance to elude Smith on the sack that ended the Rams' final possession, though. Smith split Jason Brown and Mark Setterstrom with a bull-rush and about broke Null in half. The other sack was a big blitz in the first where both blitzers came at Jackson and he couldn't possibly block both. Williams was a factor, recovering the blown handoff in the first, largely as a result of Alex Barron failing to block him AT ALL. Just because the play's going to the right doesn't mean you don't block, Barron. Hopefully we're only going to have to put up with another two weeks of Barron pulling this crap in a Rams uniform. Goldberg seemed the best blocker today. Besides keeping Williams fairly quiet, his pull block helped Jackson get a nice gain early in the 3rd. All of Jackson's big gains rushing and receiving came to Goldberg's side, though a good share of that was Jackson bouncing stuffed middle runs outside and doing all the work himself. The Rams couldn't do much up the middle today. Greco at RG impresses me as the hardest of the interior linemen to budge, and there's plenty of value just in that. Did the Rams miss Richie Incognito today? Let's see. The Ram offensive line committed no penalties, while up in Buffalo, Incognito committed 3 for 30 yards. Even if they took a small step backward today, and pass pro was good enough to suggest they really didn't, this line's going to come together more quickly than it has with the big knucklehead as a constant distraction anyway. Richie: good luck, but good riddance.
* Defensive line / LB: The Rams were impressive against the run (55 yards by Houston RBs) but once again didn't leave much of an impression in pass rush, with a bunch of close-but-no-cigar efforts. After Houston converted an early 4th-and-1 in Rams territory, Paris Lenon knocked the ball away from Arian Foster to force a turnover. Darell Scott FLEW in from a good 20 yards away to claim the loose ball for St. Louis. That pair weighed in again after Andre Johnson's 49-yard catch, one of several big plays made possible today by the entire Ram defense getting completely fooled by play-action. Scott stuffed a run, though, and Lenon broke up a pass, to limit Houston's damage to a 2nd FG. The Rams shut Houston down the drive before thanks to a run stuff by James Butler and a couple by Leger (DOOZER) Douzable. Craig Dahl stopped a pass short of the marker late in the first half to force a Kris Brown 52-yard FG attempt that DOINKed off the upright. Dahl started the 3rd quarter by recovering a Matt Schaub fumble on a failed QB sneak. Run defense was solid. Scott, DOOZER and Cliff Ryan were terrific up the middle with a bunch of stuffs. Chris Long even held the edge well this week. The worst of it came when they couldn't stop Ryan Moats from getting a first down on three carries and sealing the game right before the 2:00 warning. He broke the Rams' backs with a tackle-breaking 7-yard run on first down. But maybe it doesn't get that far, if the Rams had sacked Matt Schaub at all. A big problem is the whole defense's rookie-like tendency to bite on play-action. The two longest plays to Johnson and Schaub's TD pass were all bootlegs right off play-fakes left, and Schaub had all day to throw all three of them because the Rams were so faked out. Another big problem was Leonard Little's absence. Long played mostly LDE in his place, and at least three times was a step from taking Schaub out for a huge loss. Instead, each time, Schaub hit a receiver for a first down. James Hall had an awesome sequence in the first half. He defended a deep pass over the middle, was in on a run stuff on 2nd down and drew a holding penalty on 3rd down. Unfortunately, all his plays for the day seemed to be confined to that sequence. The Rams pressured Schaub pretty well but are killing themselves by rarely finishing a good rush off with a sack. They've had none the last two weeks, and just 20 this season, good for a woeful 30th in the NFL. Sometime during a game you have to put the opponent in a long-yardage situation. The best way is to sack the QB. The Rams have to do better than this. There are new coaches and highly-drafted players here meant to address this problem. Yet it's a worse problem now than ever.
* Secondary: Any team that faces Andre Johnson knows he's going to make some plays. The idea is to limit the damage he does. But the Ram secondary failed at that decisively, yielding 9 catches and 196 yards to the league's best wideout. Johnson burned Ron Bartell one-on-one deep for 38 in the 1st to set up Houston's 1st FG. With the whole Ram defense biting HARD on play-action, he got behind James Butler and Craig Dahl AND Justin King for 49 to set up Houston's 2nd FG in the 2nd. The Rams kept Johnson modesty quiet enough to tie the game at 13 before he went beserk on them in the 4th. From the Houston 14, he ran what appeared to be the deepest comeback route in NFL history for a 30-yard gain. King laid ten yards off him in the slot off the snap and back-pedaled the whole time. Dahl got caught inside in deep zone coverage the next play, and Johnson slashed the Rams with a cross-field run, and catch, and run, that netted 44. Houston's most lethal weapon put them in range for the game-winning FG nearly single-handedly. Kevin Walter turned Bartell inside-out with a route very similar to the one Amendola scored on to score Houston's only TD. That pass was set up by TE Joel Dreessen's 22-yard catch-and-run that would have been a 4-yard catch had Danny Gorrer, in his first, and likely last, action in the Ram secondary, not failed completely on his tackle by failing to wrap up the receiver in any way whatsoever. A most idiotic-looking effort. Dahl had a nice play in the end zone, rocking Johnson to break up a TD pass that Bartell admittedly had covered well (he even TURNED FOR THE BALL!). King looked very good covering short routes, even stopping Johnson short to force that first FG. But Matt Schaub still threw for 367 yards, with Andre Johnson single-handedly outclassing the Ram secondary.
* Special teams: How weird is it to have good special teams week in and week out? The Rams? Amendola averaged 31 yards on kick returns, highlighted by a 55-yard explosion in the 2nd, that along with a facemask on the return, set up his TD catch a little later. Amendola returns kicks with decisiveness and determination we haven't seen here in a while. Billy Bajema's block sprung him for the big gain. Josh (Showtime) Brown was nails, hitting a 33-yarder to tie the game at 3 and a 52-yard bomb to tie it again at 13, game situations where he'd been missing kicks before and deflating the team. He followed the 2nd FG with a 75-yard kickoff to force a touchback. Donnie Jones (43.5 avg) was off a little but still pinned Houston inside the 10 once and inside the 20 three times. None of his punts were returned, and Brown's strong kickoffs, paired with good coverage, kept Houston's dangerous special teams from being a factor. For all that's gone wrong this year, the Rams have gotten special teams mostly right.
* Coaching: The defense held Houston to 16 points but still lost the battle today in that they couldn't come close to containing Johnson and couldn't sack Schaub and may never sack another NFL QB ever AGAIN. They had the most, and a lot, of success against Johnson with a safety rolled over to his side, but Houston won out with the number of times they were able to get Johnson matched up one-on-one. They forced some of that by using him out of the slot, but got plenty of one-on-one opportunities split wide, too, something I'm not sure why or how the Rams could let happen often. Steve Spagnuolo and Ken Flajole and company had better take big steps this offseason towards fielding a defense that can sack the QB next year. Blitzes were ineffective, and the only trick up their sleeves these days seems to be the 4-DE pass rush, which wasn't even that today with Little out. The failure of the Ram pass rush is one of this season's biggest disappointments.
I like a lot of what Pat Shurmur called on the offensive side today, though. The 4th-and-1 swing pass to Jackson was the gutsiest call of the season. Jackson's big screen pass late in the game was a well-designed play. So was Amendola's TD. The Rams originally tried to hurry the play, only to have Ed Hochuli hold up the game for Houston, “to match up”. Shurmur used a tricky pattern to get Amendola lost in trips formation and free for the TD. He took some shots downfield and called a game that showed some trust in his receivers instead of confining them to a 10-yard box. So now I'm going to be a hypocrite and ask if the end zone pass on 3rd-and-4 from the Houston 14 in the 2nd was really the right call. My initial reaction was to like the killer instinct the call showed. Now I wonder if it cost them 4 points not to just go for the first down there. Last, why does this offense do nothing but implode right after every halftime? The Rams have not scored a third-quarter TD all season (even against Detroit). Who's advising this staff on adjusting quickly and effectively to changing conditions, General Motors?
The main game management question today's going to be whether the Rams should have punted on 4th-and-10 at their 48 with 2:39 left. Back in week 2 of 2007, Scott Linehan went for it in very similar conditions against the 49ers and failed. Punting didn't work out for Spagnuolo here, but I'm still fine with the decision. The Rams had been stopping Houston on the ground; had they done it one more time, they were looking at getting the ball back around their 35 with 2:00 left. Ryan Moats' first carry after the punt killed that hope, though. I apologize to Coach Spagnuolo for lumping him in with Linehan there. The Rams may come out worse in record this year than any of Linehan's seasons, but they're light-years ahead in team character and attitude. The rookie head coach has excelled at getting all his guys rowing in the same direction. Next year, set that boat on a course for a bunch of wins.
* Upon further review: Ed Hochuli's crew allowed too much chippy play. Jackson's helmet came off at least 4 times today; how does that happen without a penalty? Jacques Reeves' facemask on Amendola's long return seemed pretty cut-and-dried but the officials had to hold a conclave before confirming the flag. Pollard threw the first punch of the fight with Jackson and knocked his helmet off. Not only should he have gotten the only flag on the play, he should have been ejected. I was afraid Jackson could also get ejected; at least Hochuli didn't do that, making the useless offsetting personal foul call instead. After the fight, the ball was spotted a yard short, two yards from the marker, though Hochuli announced it was 3rd-and-1. The radio crew pointed out several more missed spots by the crew today as well. They didn't appear to affect the game, but it wasn't a stellar outing for the zebras, either. C-minus.
* Cheers: Just over 46,000 tickets were sold for today's game. I'll assume half the people who bought tickets actually attended. The crowd was small and not very noisy, though I'd like to think crowd reaction to the replay on the big screen helped convince Hochuli on the face mask penalty during Amendola's long kick return. Part of the halftime show was a video tribute to Merlin Olsen, in an especially nice touch, narrated by Dick Enberg. I thought the ceremony meant Olsen would get a banner in the rafters like Deacon and Marshall, but I guess he has to settle for his retired number and the Ring of Honor for now. Which he already had. Speaking of numbers, the new QB Reilly is wearing #13. Why haven't the Rams put that number on hold? Lastly, Tampa Bay 24, Seattle 7, huh? Half of me is mad Seattle lays an egg to the Bucs but can still beat the Rams for the ninth and tenth straight times this year. The other half would like to extend a friendly St. Louis welcome to Ndamukong Suh. The Rams are on the clock!
* Who’s next?: Unless they get lucky and knock Kurt Warner out of the game again, the Rams are probably looking at a holiday whuppin' in the Pink Taco Dome to loathsome Bill Bidwill's Cardinals again, with the division champion Big Dead looking for their SEVENTH straight win in the series. Reasons for hope might be that the middle of the Ram defensive line is playing a lot better than they were the first time the teams met, giving them a chance to make Arizona's 27th-rated running game look as bad as it really is, instead of giving up 183 freaking yards. Another reason is that Arizona's been a sloppy mess lately, getting embarrassed last Monday by San Francisco and barely slipping by Detroit today, combining for ten turnovers in the two games. But with the pass rush, or lack thereof, we've seen the last few weeks, Warner's likely to get the eons of time he usually gets in the pocket against the Rams, more time than he'll ever need to slice and dice a secondary well-overmatched not by just one, but two, world-class wide receivers. Without finding a path to Warner, the Rams will be hard-pressed to find a path to a win in the desert. Look for Warner to become the second QB in NFL history to throw 100 TDs for two different teams and for the Cardinals to achieve their first ten-win season since 1976.
Keith Null's welcome to draw inspiration from Warner's rise-from-obscurity story but will certainly have his work cut out. Arizona's blitzing will look a lot more like Tennessee to him than Houston. The Rams have had trouble establishing the middle run lately and did the first time against Arizona. They'd be well-advised to get Steven Jackson open in space outside, though it'll also help this time that he'll have healthy fullbacks in front of him. Maybe Pat Shurmur could dust off some of the play-action he NEVER used against the Cardinals last month?
With the Rams in secure possession of the first overall draft pick, a lot of Rams Nation probably doesn't want them to win next week. But like Houston today, Arizona's a very beatable team. They're hot and cold, they play sloppy, they don't run the ball well. The Rams have spent a lot of this season one step away from a big play. If they cover that receiver a second longer, they get the big sack. If the rush would force a throw a second early every now and then, the secondary could make a play. The offense comes a step away from hitting a long pass, a block away from breaking off a big run. It's been a lot of close-but-no-cigar for the Rams this season. You keep wondering if this will finally be the week they effort their way to a win over a team with a better record. They're sure due.
Eh, cigars are bad Christmas gifts anyway.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
Monday, December 14, 2009
RamView, December 13, 2009
From The Couch
(Report and opinions on the game.)
Game #13: Titans 47, Rams 7
Titanic vs. iceberg, Titans vs. Rams, similar result. Keith Null threw five interceptions today and still may have been the Rams' best offensive player. Need to know more?
* QB: Surprise! Keith Null (27-43-157) got the start at QB today thanks to a deep thigh bruise sidelining Kyle Boller. And for the day, his passer rating was almost null - 37.8, thanks to a quintet of interceptions, most of the overwhelmed-rookie variety. A couple because he stared his receiver down. One because he didn't seem to have confidence in his initial read, double-clutched and threw a floater. The fourth one, returned by Vincent Fuller for a TD, looked like a stare-down and a bad read, expecting Fuller to follow Danny Amendola across the field instead of sitting down in coverage. The fifth one needed to be a rope to Brandon Gibson in the end zone – there was an opening in the zone coverage – but was a balloon attached to a rope instead, becoming one of Cortland Finnegan's two INTs. The only INT not on Null was the first one, which a competent officiating crew would have negated with a pass interference penalty. That alone wouldn't have saved Null's day. He floated too many long balls and double-clutched too many passes for that. He looks more an aimer than a thrower. He completed only short passes. He took a sack in the 3rd with Steven Jackson open in the middle of the field lonelier than Tiger will be at Christmas with Elin's family, and threw his 3rd INT with Jackson animatedly calling for the ball on a screen on the opposite side. On the other hand, would Boller have been much better today? Null's skillset isn't a null set. He hung very tough in the pocket and stepped up to avoid the sack when he had to, making his offensive line look a lot better than it was in the process. He got Tennessee to jump offside with a hard count. He threw a seeing-eye pass to Randy McMichael betwixt three Titans on 4th-and-7 for the Rams' only TD of the day. Null had a far worse game than Brock Berlin did in Cincinnati a couple of years ago; why don't I rip him more? Null showed us some ability he can build on, against a much better opponent than the '07 Bengals. Berlin didn't show that, and he was here as a pretty much finished product. Let's see what the kid's got the rest of the way.
* RB: The Ram running game today looked like the crowded cabin scene from Night at the Opera. Steven Jackson struggled through the crowd 19 times for just 47 yards, fewer than Kenneth Darby got in one run via a fake punt in the 3rd. Jackson may have run himself into trouble once, failing to follow Jacob Bell's pull block and getting stopped for no gain by Keith Bulluck in the 2nd. But too much of the day, the problem was Titans coming in unblocked, or barely so. Kyle Vanden Bosch in the 1st. Minus-2. William Hayes beating McMichael in the 2nd. Minus-3. Bulluck again in the 3rd. Minus-1. Then Nick Harper after Bell gets knocked down in front of Jackson. Minus-4. A safety blitz in the 4th that Null didn't check away from. Minus-another-4. Jackson's best sequence came after the Titans' first TD. He took off for 12 behind Bell on the pull and a big Adam Goldberg block. Two plays later Richie Incognito got him a hole for 8 more. A penalty in between stalled the drive, though, as Jackson's linemen were obstacles much more often today than not. Jackson tried to take charge and help his rookie QB. A couple of times he did everything but turn on the Bat-Signal to get Null to throw to him. He could have contributed much more than two catches for 6 yards. Not to be today, though, as the Titans kept the Rams' superman in the phone booth.
* Receivers: Rams receivers set new standards for nondescript play by the week. The longest passes today went 13 yards, a 3rd-and-a-mile dumpoff to Samkon Gado late in the 1st half and a pass over the middle to Daniel Fells (3-32) with the game about over. Brandon Gibson (6-43) was the leading receiver, converting a couple of first downs. He also had an OPI and a false start. Null tried him deep a couple of times; he got flagged for the OPI on a corner route after not making a sharp enough 2nd cut to get inside Cortland Finnegan. Null's throw was right there otherwise. McMichael (2-15) made a nice catch in traffic for the Rams' TD. Danny Amendola (5-19) netted just 9 total yards, losing 10 on an end-around in the 2nd when Fells shoved his man right into his path. Donnie Avery did even less; 1-4 until a 10-yard catch very late in the game, the fifth time this year the Rams' #1 WR hasn't exceeded either 2 catches or 20 yards. Rams WRs and TEs caught 19 balls today. Brandon Marshall caught 21 in Indianapolis by himself. There are more ways to describe Rams receiver futility than the Inuits have to describe snow.
* Offensive line: Richie Incognito continues to make headlines with his play. His idiotic play. He killed the Rams' 2nd drive by headbutting a Titan well after the play was over. That got him benched. For one whole play. He made it through two whole drives before drawing ANOTHER personal foul, the kind of late block on a vulnerable defensive player that referees have been looking out for for years now, but Incognito is too stupid and too dirty a player to resist it. That got him benched for the rest of the game, and he should stay on that bench until he gathers moss. I'd wish Incognito good luck next year at Oakland or Cincinnati or whatever franchise is stupid enough to covet his “hard-nosed” play, but I can't, because nothing about the guy is good for football. I'll only pray he doesn't injure himself, or far more likely, another player someday with his bone-headed Neanderthal play. With or without Incognito, and Mark Setterstrom was certainly acceptable in his place, run-blocking was mostly awful. First drive, 2nd-and-6, Fells and Alex Barron both run up to make 2nd-level blocks. Nobody blocks Kyle Vanden Bosch, RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. 2-yard loss. Jason Brown killed a drive with a hands-to-the-face penalty, killing a couple of good Jackson runs. One behind Adam Goldberg and a Jacob Bell pull block, and the other, admittedly, behind Incognito. Barron hurt the next drive with the billionth false start of his career, and Keith Bulluck sneaked behind Bell's pull to stop Jackson for no gain. A 2nd-quarter drive was a real o-line cluster... bomb. William Hayes beat McMichael to drop Jackson for a loss, then whipped Fells to blow up an end around for a huge loss. Null nearly got killed on 3rd down after Barron blocked the wrong guy. Incognito topped off the turd sundae with personal foul #2. Another great drive to end the 3rd. Jackson lost 4 after Bell got knocked to the ground in front of him. Next play, Setterstrom false-starts. Goldberg got beat later to cost Jackson another loss, as nobody on the line could avoid some kind of major screw-up today. Pass protection was passable, thanks to a quick-tempo passing game and Null having the presence to step up out of edge pressure a lot. The only sack was a combination of Null holding the ball too long and Bell getting bullrushed, more like bulldozed, by Tony Brown. Bell injured himself later trying to chase down an INT return and was replaced by John Greco. Injuries have unquestionably affected the offensive line this year, but there's little excuse for the number of mental and undisciplined errors they made today.
* Defensive line / LB: The Ram defense did some things right today. They held Tennessee to 4-of-13 on third down, 1-for-9 at one point. They didn't score a sack – no new news there – but put decent pressure on the Titan QBs for ¾ of the game. For all his league-leading ability, the Rams stuffed Chris Johnson (28-117) many times. James Butler strung him out for no gain, and David Vobora broke up a screen pass, to force a FG in the 2nd. Cliff Ryan and Leger (the DOOZER) Douzable dropped him for back-to-back losses the next possession, which ended in another FG after Chris Long's near-sack drew an intentional grounding call on Kerry Collins. The Rams trailed 23-0 at halftime but opened the 2nd half in style. Darell Scott, who had a great game, pursuing up and down the line, TFL'ed Johnson, followed by James Laurinaitis making a (unfortunately rare today) play in the hole, then James Hall TFLing Johnson again on 3rd down. They forced another FG after DOOZER drove through Kevin Mawae and dropped Johnson for -3. Good play by all the Ram DTs today. Unfortunately, early on they proved susceptible to the big play. First quarter at the Ram 39, Vince Young fakes a handoff left and both LBs (Rams were in nickel) bite. Johnson took the handoff right, went around the edge sealed by the TE dominating Long and patiently weaved through the Ram secondary for a TD. Long getting blocked repeatedly by no more than a TE is killing the defense. It's how opponents generate a lot of big plays lately, and it's entirely frustrating because there seem to be so few TEs who can block a defensive end. Yet every tight end seems to be able to block Long. The Rams paid big for a big blitz the next drive. Everybody came hard from Young's left. He dumped off to Johnson on the right. Leonard Little, in zone coverage, dived and missed at the Titan 40. Then Johnson made Craig Dahl look like a fool with a pretty simple inside cut at the Ram 40. Patiently following WR blocks the rest of the way, Johnson had a 68-yard TD and Tennessee had a snowballing 14-0 lead. Lack of pass rush or an early answer for Johnson led to a 44-yard Young scramble in the 2nd. The 4-man rush didn't come close, and with two linebackers assigned to Johnson, Young got acres of space to run. A Pyrrhic gain for the Athens of the South, though; Young appeared to tweak a hamstring on the play. Tennessee's offense wasn't quite the same the rest of the game, though more than enough for the Rams to handle. Johnson found plenty of running room going at Long, blocked only by a TE. I can't emphasize enough how bad that is. That's leaving linemen free to go cream Laurinaitis, and he had a pretty ineffective seven tackles today. He got blocked out of a lot of plays. The improved interior play was a highlight today, but the Rams are going to have to figure out how to fix the point of attack with Long if they're going to quit getting pounded out of games on the ground.
* Secondary: Another long day at the Rams' burn unit. Kenny Britt carved the Ram zone for 33 on Tennessee's opening play. Ron Bartell forced Johnson's long TD run inside but found no help there, with James Butler unable to get around the blocking wideout. Bartell couldn't get around Britt during Johnson's longest TD play, while Nate Washington DESTROYED Justin King. The Rams were awful covering Titan tight ends, who caught 10 for 84. Paris Lenon repeatedly blew coverages before getting injured in the 2nd. Good coverage forced a couple of FGs, and Bartell broke up a pass to force a punt. But on 4th-and-5 late in the half, Butler, David Roach and Victor Adeyanju all missed Johnson, letting him take a pitchback 18 yards to set up a FG at the gun. Britt burned them for 44 in the 3rd, a play that would have been just 7 yards had Bartell not badly blown the tackle. That led to another FG. Laurinaitis gave up a 4th-down completion to Bo Scaife that kept a TD drive alive. Tennessee's last offensive TD was set up by Washington's 33-yard diving catch at the 5, beating King, who, surprise, never knew the ball was coming. Butler, surprise, was way late and no help from safety. 400-pound Alge Crumpler beat Bartell and Laurinaitis in the end zone to catch a desperation 4th-down throw from Collins to put Tennessee ahead 40-7. The secondary made some nice plays against the run and King is trying to step up the physical level of his play. But despite some well-paid players, it's as big a mess as any other unit on the team.
* Special teams: Special teams were the Rams' lone bright spot again. The play of the day was Darby's 51-yard sprint out of punt formation at the end of the 3rd, between very good blocks by Larry Grant and K.C. Asiodu. Liked the extra touch Tom McMahon put on that play; as Darby ran left, it looked like Craig Dahl was faking a fake right. Grant recovered a muffed punt return at the end of the game. Jordan Kent, who the Rams should have locked up for next year already, dropped Kenny Britt inside the 10 on one kickoff return. Amendola returned a couple of kicks across the 30 but was also trapped inside the 20 three times. Donnie Jones averaged 45 a punt with 3 inside the 20, though one was a meager 28-yarder that came down at the 17. Did the Rams really have to become awful at everything else before special teams could be any good? There must be a better balance that can be struck one day.
* Coaching: Though he's long been an obnoxious prima donna in the eyes of Rams Nation, I've tried to keep my disdain for Titans head coach Jeff Fisher a respectful one because of his long and successful career. But I would ask Fisher today why anyone should respect a head coach who's throwing deep, keeping his superstar running back in the game when he's got his 100 yards rushing, and going for it on 4th-and-goal, all when he's up 33-7 in the 4th quarter against a 1-11 team. Fisher just reaffirmed our long-time gut feeling about him today, didn't he? He's a walking, talking, living, breathing anal orifice. He's a 5-foot-10, 190-pound feminine hygiene product receptacle. Steve Spagnuolo's postgame handshake with him looked brusque and brief. Spagnuolo looked pissed off. And he should have been. Fisher didn't deserve the niceties of sportsmanship after his pour-it-on performance today. May Spagnuolo and however many Rams who are still here then remember this day the next time they cross paths with Fisher.
No need to remind me; Spagnuolo brought some of the Rams' problems today on himself. The Rams were in nickel on 1st-and-10 on Johnson's first TD run. I don't know why you'd do that much against Tennessee's unimposing passing game. But the Rams seemed to be in a lot of nickel today. They zone-blitzed on Johnson's mile-long TD reception. Because Leonard Little is so great a defensive back, I suppose. Leonard's good at sniffing out screen plays; leave him where the good Lord meant him to play and you're NOT looking at a 68-yard TD. The Rams looked poorly prepared for a lot of passes to tight ends, when that's been Tennessee's bread and butter for 15-some-odd years. 10 penalties for 82 yards isn't a ringing endorsement of the Rams as a well-coached team, either. After Incognito's second penalty, TV called his sideline tete-a-tete with Spagnuolo a “confrontation”. I think Incognito was just mad about what I lip-read as a “(B.S.) call”. Neither he nor Spagnuolo were losing control over there. But Spagnuolo never should have let Incognito's butt off the bench the first time. Enough is enough.
At the outset of the game, I thought Pat Shurmur must have been abducted and been replaced by some kind of alien. Play-action? Downfield thows? Misdirection? Four-receiver sets? Who are you, and what have you done with our offensive coordinator? The offense stayed in the small box for the second half, though. Jackson ran out of a lot of single-back sets, which puzzled me. He really could have used a fullback in front of him more often, after the bang-up job Billy Bajema did last week and the decent job Mike Karney's done all season. Tennessee also got defenders to Jackson unblocked far too many times to think the run schemes Shurmur used were good ideas. I'm not sure Tennessee was going to worry too much about the Rams spreading the field with Null behind center. The passing game plan was an improvement over last week, but the running game plan was largely a failure, not helped by this week's litany of offensive line mistakes, youthful QB errors, defensive missteps and lapses in discipline.
* Upon further review: You were expecting a competently-officiated game from Jeff Triplette's crew? Think again! Poor refereeing was central to some of today's key plays. Null was exactly right to protest his first INT. Vanden Bosch clobbered Jackson to the ground while the ball was in the air; obvious, blatant, textbook, IGNORED, pass interference. Hey, this was a Super Bowl XXXIV rematch, not XXXVI. The Titans got away with holding in the running game all day. Scott was held at the outset of Johnson's 39-yard TD. Johnson's third TD came courtesy of his TE grabbing Dahl and slamming him to the ground. Collins eluded pressure on a later TD pass to Crumpler because Little was slightly held and Adeyanju was brutally held. The one call they got right was not to call Ryan for a late hit on Johnson on the Titan sideline in the 4th. Ryan released contact before they got out of bounds; Johnson fell because he pushed off of Ryan. Getting that call right was such a pleasant surprise I'll let Triplette skate by with a D.
* Cheers: Fox doesn't exactly give Trent Green much chance to develop chemistry with a play-by-play announcer; he worked with Chris Rose this week. Green had good observations about the patience in Johnson's running style and about Null's (many) mistakes, though calling the Spagnuolo-Incognito sideline meeting a “confrontation” made much more of it than it was. I wonder how far the Rams have to be behind before Green quits claiming “they're still in it”, though. 26-0? 33-0? 1,000,006-0? Trent showed restraint questioning officials' calls and questioning Fisher's late-game tactics. He should probably do that as a first-year commentator. If his directors let him cut loose more next year, it'll a big step for him toward becoming one of the more-highly-regarded commentators.
* Who’s next?: The Houston Texans visit St. Louis for the first time next Sunday, presenting a quite different challenge than the Titans did today, since they thrive off of their passing game. Look for the Rams to keep the safeties dropped back to try to contain the league's #4 passing game and receiving yards leader Andre Johnson. I doubt, though, that there's much reason to expect they'll fare any better against the Houston superstar than the Seahawks did today, yielding him 190+ yards and 2 TDs in basically a half. (BTW, thanks for killing my fantasy playoff, Seattle.) Only Darelle Revis and Nnamdi Asomugha have really been able to slow Johnson down so far this year. He's an impressively physical receiver, so not only won't the Rams be able to cover him, he's going to break bunches of tackles when they do track him down. With Andre the giant destroying the Ram secondary, Matt Schaub will be able to get comfortable in the pocket. Houston's line doesn't let its QBs get battered all season any more; they're 7th-best in the league for sacks allowed. They'll hit St. Louis with the #29 rushing offense and have lost Steve Slaton for the season. But Slaton's absence eliminates the Rams' best chance to create a turnover, and the Rams have gotten rolled by plenty of rushing offenses worse than Houston's this season anyway. The team from the town where NASA's headquartered could hang some astronomical numbers on the Rams next week.
There'll be opportunities to make plays against the Houston secondary. Their safety play in particular is terrible. Even with the presence of good young linebackers Demeco Ryans and Brian Cushing, the Rams will have opportunities to break runs to the second and third levels and, if they stick with it like this week, to give Houston a problem with play-action. But they'll have to control the battle up front, which will be tough with this group. Mario Williams, you know, the guy the Texans never should have drafted first overall, leads them with 8 sacks and will be working on Alex Barron, and the Rams have never blocked Antonio Smith. If Null's the QB again, he's going to have to keep getting the ball out quick and hope for more help from his running game than he got this week. There's a chance of that; Houston's 20th in the league at run D at 114.5 yards per game.
The Texans haven't been the most-focused team in the world. They were expected to be much better than their current 6-7 record and have lost several games this year they were expected to win. They've blown big leads. Their kicker has not been clutch. If the Rams can get after Schaub, if the D is as effective as it was on 3rd down today, they could open up some cracks in the Houston facade and wait for them to crumble again. From here, though, it looks like Houston's Texas-sized passing game advantage will tilt the game too far in their favor.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
From The Couch
(Report and opinions on the game.)
Game #13: Titans 47, Rams 7
Titanic vs. iceberg, Titans vs. Rams, similar result. Keith Null threw five interceptions today and still may have been the Rams' best offensive player. Need to know more?
* QB: Surprise! Keith Null (27-43-157) got the start at QB today thanks to a deep thigh bruise sidelining Kyle Boller. And for the day, his passer rating was almost null - 37.8, thanks to a quintet of interceptions, most of the overwhelmed-rookie variety. A couple because he stared his receiver down. One because he didn't seem to have confidence in his initial read, double-clutched and threw a floater. The fourth one, returned by Vincent Fuller for a TD, looked like a stare-down and a bad read, expecting Fuller to follow Danny Amendola across the field instead of sitting down in coverage. The fifth one needed to be a rope to Brandon Gibson in the end zone – there was an opening in the zone coverage – but was a balloon attached to a rope instead, becoming one of Cortland Finnegan's two INTs. The only INT not on Null was the first one, which a competent officiating crew would have negated with a pass interference penalty. That alone wouldn't have saved Null's day. He floated too many long balls and double-clutched too many passes for that. He looks more an aimer than a thrower. He completed only short passes. He took a sack in the 3rd with Steven Jackson open in the middle of the field lonelier than Tiger will be at Christmas with Elin's family, and threw his 3rd INT with Jackson animatedly calling for the ball on a screen on the opposite side. On the other hand, would Boller have been much better today? Null's skillset isn't a null set. He hung very tough in the pocket and stepped up to avoid the sack when he had to, making his offensive line look a lot better than it was in the process. He got Tennessee to jump offside with a hard count. He threw a seeing-eye pass to Randy McMichael betwixt three Titans on 4th-and-7 for the Rams' only TD of the day. Null had a far worse game than Brock Berlin did in Cincinnati a couple of years ago; why don't I rip him more? Null showed us some ability he can build on, against a much better opponent than the '07 Bengals. Berlin didn't show that, and he was here as a pretty much finished product. Let's see what the kid's got the rest of the way.
* RB: The Ram running game today looked like the crowded cabin scene from Night at the Opera. Steven Jackson struggled through the crowd 19 times for just 47 yards, fewer than Kenneth Darby got in one run via a fake punt in the 3rd. Jackson may have run himself into trouble once, failing to follow Jacob Bell's pull block and getting stopped for no gain by Keith Bulluck in the 2nd. But too much of the day, the problem was Titans coming in unblocked, or barely so. Kyle Vanden Bosch in the 1st. Minus-2. William Hayes beating McMichael in the 2nd. Minus-3. Bulluck again in the 3rd. Minus-1. Then Nick Harper after Bell gets knocked down in front of Jackson. Minus-4. A safety blitz in the 4th that Null didn't check away from. Minus-another-4. Jackson's best sequence came after the Titans' first TD. He took off for 12 behind Bell on the pull and a big Adam Goldberg block. Two plays later Richie Incognito got him a hole for 8 more. A penalty in between stalled the drive, though, as Jackson's linemen were obstacles much more often today than not. Jackson tried to take charge and help his rookie QB. A couple of times he did everything but turn on the Bat-Signal to get Null to throw to him. He could have contributed much more than two catches for 6 yards. Not to be today, though, as the Titans kept the Rams' superman in the phone booth.
* Receivers: Rams receivers set new standards for nondescript play by the week. The longest passes today went 13 yards, a 3rd-and-a-mile dumpoff to Samkon Gado late in the 1st half and a pass over the middle to Daniel Fells (3-32) with the game about over. Brandon Gibson (6-43) was the leading receiver, converting a couple of first downs. He also had an OPI and a false start. Null tried him deep a couple of times; he got flagged for the OPI on a corner route after not making a sharp enough 2nd cut to get inside Cortland Finnegan. Null's throw was right there otherwise. McMichael (2-15) made a nice catch in traffic for the Rams' TD. Danny Amendola (5-19) netted just 9 total yards, losing 10 on an end-around in the 2nd when Fells shoved his man right into his path. Donnie Avery did even less; 1-4 until a 10-yard catch very late in the game, the fifth time this year the Rams' #1 WR hasn't exceeded either 2 catches or 20 yards. Rams WRs and TEs caught 19 balls today. Brandon Marshall caught 21 in Indianapolis by himself. There are more ways to describe Rams receiver futility than the Inuits have to describe snow.
* Offensive line: Richie Incognito continues to make headlines with his play. His idiotic play. He killed the Rams' 2nd drive by headbutting a Titan well after the play was over. That got him benched. For one whole play. He made it through two whole drives before drawing ANOTHER personal foul, the kind of late block on a vulnerable defensive player that referees have been looking out for for years now, but Incognito is too stupid and too dirty a player to resist it. That got him benched for the rest of the game, and he should stay on that bench until he gathers moss. I'd wish Incognito good luck next year at Oakland or Cincinnati or whatever franchise is stupid enough to covet his “hard-nosed” play, but I can't, because nothing about the guy is good for football. I'll only pray he doesn't injure himself, or far more likely, another player someday with his bone-headed Neanderthal play. With or without Incognito, and Mark Setterstrom was certainly acceptable in his place, run-blocking was mostly awful. First drive, 2nd-and-6, Fells and Alex Barron both run up to make 2nd-level blocks. Nobody blocks Kyle Vanden Bosch, RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. 2-yard loss. Jason Brown killed a drive with a hands-to-the-face penalty, killing a couple of good Jackson runs. One behind Adam Goldberg and a Jacob Bell pull block, and the other, admittedly, behind Incognito. Barron hurt the next drive with the billionth false start of his career, and Keith Bulluck sneaked behind Bell's pull to stop Jackson for no gain. A 2nd-quarter drive was a real o-line cluster... bomb. William Hayes beat McMichael to drop Jackson for a loss, then whipped Fells to blow up an end around for a huge loss. Null nearly got killed on 3rd down after Barron blocked the wrong guy. Incognito topped off the turd sundae with personal foul #2. Another great drive to end the 3rd. Jackson lost 4 after Bell got knocked to the ground in front of him. Next play, Setterstrom false-starts. Goldberg got beat later to cost Jackson another loss, as nobody on the line could avoid some kind of major screw-up today. Pass protection was passable, thanks to a quick-tempo passing game and Null having the presence to step up out of edge pressure a lot. The only sack was a combination of Null holding the ball too long and Bell getting bullrushed, more like bulldozed, by Tony Brown. Bell injured himself later trying to chase down an INT return and was replaced by John Greco. Injuries have unquestionably affected the offensive line this year, but there's little excuse for the number of mental and undisciplined errors they made today.
* Defensive line / LB: The Ram defense did some things right today. They held Tennessee to 4-of-13 on third down, 1-for-9 at one point. They didn't score a sack – no new news there – but put decent pressure on the Titan QBs for ¾ of the game. For all his league-leading ability, the Rams stuffed Chris Johnson (28-117) many times. James Butler strung him out for no gain, and David Vobora broke up a screen pass, to force a FG in the 2nd. Cliff Ryan and Leger (the DOOZER) Douzable dropped him for back-to-back losses the next possession, which ended in another FG after Chris Long's near-sack drew an intentional grounding call on Kerry Collins. The Rams trailed 23-0 at halftime but opened the 2nd half in style. Darell Scott, who had a great game, pursuing up and down the line, TFL'ed Johnson, followed by James Laurinaitis making a (unfortunately rare today) play in the hole, then James Hall TFLing Johnson again on 3rd down. They forced another FG after DOOZER drove through Kevin Mawae and dropped Johnson for -3. Good play by all the Ram DTs today. Unfortunately, early on they proved susceptible to the big play. First quarter at the Ram 39, Vince Young fakes a handoff left and both LBs (Rams were in nickel) bite. Johnson took the handoff right, went around the edge sealed by the TE dominating Long and patiently weaved through the Ram secondary for a TD. Long getting blocked repeatedly by no more than a TE is killing the defense. It's how opponents generate a lot of big plays lately, and it's entirely frustrating because there seem to be so few TEs who can block a defensive end. Yet every tight end seems to be able to block Long. The Rams paid big for a big blitz the next drive. Everybody came hard from Young's left. He dumped off to Johnson on the right. Leonard Little, in zone coverage, dived and missed at the Titan 40. Then Johnson made Craig Dahl look like a fool with a pretty simple inside cut at the Ram 40. Patiently following WR blocks the rest of the way, Johnson had a 68-yard TD and Tennessee had a snowballing 14-0 lead. Lack of pass rush or an early answer for Johnson led to a 44-yard Young scramble in the 2nd. The 4-man rush didn't come close, and with two linebackers assigned to Johnson, Young got acres of space to run. A Pyrrhic gain for the Athens of the South, though; Young appeared to tweak a hamstring on the play. Tennessee's offense wasn't quite the same the rest of the game, though more than enough for the Rams to handle. Johnson found plenty of running room going at Long, blocked only by a TE. I can't emphasize enough how bad that is. That's leaving linemen free to go cream Laurinaitis, and he had a pretty ineffective seven tackles today. He got blocked out of a lot of plays. The improved interior play was a highlight today, but the Rams are going to have to figure out how to fix the point of attack with Long if they're going to quit getting pounded out of games on the ground.
* Secondary: Another long day at the Rams' burn unit. Kenny Britt carved the Ram zone for 33 on Tennessee's opening play. Ron Bartell forced Johnson's long TD run inside but found no help there, with James Butler unable to get around the blocking wideout. Bartell couldn't get around Britt during Johnson's longest TD play, while Nate Washington DESTROYED Justin King. The Rams were awful covering Titan tight ends, who caught 10 for 84. Paris Lenon repeatedly blew coverages before getting injured in the 2nd. Good coverage forced a couple of FGs, and Bartell broke up a pass to force a punt. But on 4th-and-5 late in the half, Butler, David Roach and Victor Adeyanju all missed Johnson, letting him take a pitchback 18 yards to set up a FG at the gun. Britt burned them for 44 in the 3rd, a play that would have been just 7 yards had Bartell not badly blown the tackle. That led to another FG. Laurinaitis gave up a 4th-down completion to Bo Scaife that kept a TD drive alive. Tennessee's last offensive TD was set up by Washington's 33-yard diving catch at the 5, beating King, who, surprise, never knew the ball was coming. Butler, surprise, was way late and no help from safety. 400-pound Alge Crumpler beat Bartell and Laurinaitis in the end zone to catch a desperation 4th-down throw from Collins to put Tennessee ahead 40-7. The secondary made some nice plays against the run and King is trying to step up the physical level of his play. But despite some well-paid players, it's as big a mess as any other unit on the team.
* Special teams: Special teams were the Rams' lone bright spot again. The play of the day was Darby's 51-yard sprint out of punt formation at the end of the 3rd, between very good blocks by Larry Grant and K.C. Asiodu. Liked the extra touch Tom McMahon put on that play; as Darby ran left, it looked like Craig Dahl was faking a fake right. Grant recovered a muffed punt return at the end of the game. Jordan Kent, who the Rams should have locked up for next year already, dropped Kenny Britt inside the 10 on one kickoff return. Amendola returned a couple of kicks across the 30 but was also trapped inside the 20 three times. Donnie Jones averaged 45 a punt with 3 inside the 20, though one was a meager 28-yarder that came down at the 17. Did the Rams really have to become awful at everything else before special teams could be any good? There must be a better balance that can be struck one day.
* Coaching: Though he's long been an obnoxious prima donna in the eyes of Rams Nation, I've tried to keep my disdain for Titans head coach Jeff Fisher a respectful one because of his long and successful career. But I would ask Fisher today why anyone should respect a head coach who's throwing deep, keeping his superstar running back in the game when he's got his 100 yards rushing, and going for it on 4th-and-goal, all when he's up 33-7 in the 4th quarter against a 1-11 team. Fisher just reaffirmed our long-time gut feeling about him today, didn't he? He's a walking, talking, living, breathing anal orifice. He's a 5-foot-10, 190-pound feminine hygiene product receptacle. Steve Spagnuolo's postgame handshake with him looked brusque and brief. Spagnuolo looked pissed off. And he should have been. Fisher didn't deserve the niceties of sportsmanship after his pour-it-on performance today. May Spagnuolo and however many Rams who are still here then remember this day the next time they cross paths with Fisher.
No need to remind me; Spagnuolo brought some of the Rams' problems today on himself. The Rams were in nickel on 1st-and-10 on Johnson's first TD run. I don't know why you'd do that much against Tennessee's unimposing passing game. But the Rams seemed to be in a lot of nickel today. They zone-blitzed on Johnson's mile-long TD reception. Because Leonard Little is so great a defensive back, I suppose. Leonard's good at sniffing out screen plays; leave him where the good Lord meant him to play and you're NOT looking at a 68-yard TD. The Rams looked poorly prepared for a lot of passes to tight ends, when that's been Tennessee's bread and butter for 15-some-odd years. 10 penalties for 82 yards isn't a ringing endorsement of the Rams as a well-coached team, either. After Incognito's second penalty, TV called his sideline tete-a-tete with Spagnuolo a “confrontation”. I think Incognito was just mad about what I lip-read as a “(B.S.) call”. Neither he nor Spagnuolo were losing control over there. But Spagnuolo never should have let Incognito's butt off the bench the first time. Enough is enough.
At the outset of the game, I thought Pat Shurmur must have been abducted and been replaced by some kind of alien. Play-action? Downfield thows? Misdirection? Four-receiver sets? Who are you, and what have you done with our offensive coordinator? The offense stayed in the small box for the second half, though. Jackson ran out of a lot of single-back sets, which puzzled me. He really could have used a fullback in front of him more often, after the bang-up job Billy Bajema did last week and the decent job Mike Karney's done all season. Tennessee also got defenders to Jackson unblocked far too many times to think the run schemes Shurmur used were good ideas. I'm not sure Tennessee was going to worry too much about the Rams spreading the field with Null behind center. The passing game plan was an improvement over last week, but the running game plan was largely a failure, not helped by this week's litany of offensive line mistakes, youthful QB errors, defensive missteps and lapses in discipline.
* Upon further review: You were expecting a competently-officiated game from Jeff Triplette's crew? Think again! Poor refereeing was central to some of today's key plays. Null was exactly right to protest his first INT. Vanden Bosch clobbered Jackson to the ground while the ball was in the air; obvious, blatant, textbook, IGNORED, pass interference. Hey, this was a Super Bowl XXXIV rematch, not XXXVI. The Titans got away with holding in the running game all day. Scott was held at the outset of Johnson's 39-yard TD. Johnson's third TD came courtesy of his TE grabbing Dahl and slamming him to the ground. Collins eluded pressure on a later TD pass to Crumpler because Little was slightly held and Adeyanju was brutally held. The one call they got right was not to call Ryan for a late hit on Johnson on the Titan sideline in the 4th. Ryan released contact before they got out of bounds; Johnson fell because he pushed off of Ryan. Getting that call right was such a pleasant surprise I'll let Triplette skate by with a D.
* Cheers: Fox doesn't exactly give Trent Green much chance to develop chemistry with a play-by-play announcer; he worked with Chris Rose this week. Green had good observations about the patience in Johnson's running style and about Null's (many) mistakes, though calling the Spagnuolo-Incognito sideline meeting a “confrontation” made much more of it than it was. I wonder how far the Rams have to be behind before Green quits claiming “they're still in it”, though. 26-0? 33-0? 1,000,006-0? Trent showed restraint questioning officials' calls and questioning Fisher's late-game tactics. He should probably do that as a first-year commentator. If his directors let him cut loose more next year, it'll a big step for him toward becoming one of the more-highly-regarded commentators.
* Who’s next?: The Houston Texans visit St. Louis for the first time next Sunday, presenting a quite different challenge than the Titans did today, since they thrive off of their passing game. Look for the Rams to keep the safeties dropped back to try to contain the league's #4 passing game and receiving yards leader Andre Johnson. I doubt, though, that there's much reason to expect they'll fare any better against the Houston superstar than the Seahawks did today, yielding him 190+ yards and 2 TDs in basically a half. (BTW, thanks for killing my fantasy playoff, Seattle.) Only Darelle Revis and Nnamdi Asomugha have really been able to slow Johnson down so far this year. He's an impressively physical receiver, so not only won't the Rams be able to cover him, he's going to break bunches of tackles when they do track him down. With Andre the giant destroying the Ram secondary, Matt Schaub will be able to get comfortable in the pocket. Houston's line doesn't let its QBs get battered all season any more; they're 7th-best in the league for sacks allowed. They'll hit St. Louis with the #29 rushing offense and have lost Steve Slaton for the season. But Slaton's absence eliminates the Rams' best chance to create a turnover, and the Rams have gotten rolled by plenty of rushing offenses worse than Houston's this season anyway. The team from the town where NASA's headquartered could hang some astronomical numbers on the Rams next week.
There'll be opportunities to make plays against the Houston secondary. Their safety play in particular is terrible. Even with the presence of good young linebackers Demeco Ryans and Brian Cushing, the Rams will have opportunities to break runs to the second and third levels and, if they stick with it like this week, to give Houston a problem with play-action. But they'll have to control the battle up front, which will be tough with this group. Mario Williams, you know, the guy the Texans never should have drafted first overall, leads them with 8 sacks and will be working on Alex Barron, and the Rams have never blocked Antonio Smith. If Null's the QB again, he's going to have to keep getting the ball out quick and hope for more help from his running game than he got this week. There's a chance of that; Houston's 20th in the league at run D at 114.5 yards per game.
The Texans haven't been the most-focused team in the world. They were expected to be much better than their current 6-7 record and have lost several games this year they were expected to win. They've blown big leads. Their kicker has not been clutch. If the Rams can get after Schaub, if the D is as effective as it was on 3rd down today, they could open up some cracks in the Houston facade and wait for them to crumble again. From here, though, it looks like Houston's Texas-sized passing game advantage will tilt the game too far in their favor.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
Monday, December 7, 2009
RamView, December 6, 2009
From The Couch
(Report and opinions on the game.)
Game #12: Bears 17, Rams 9
One day the Rams' growing pains will give way to growth, but not today. In their loss at Chicago, the offense even appeared to shrink, if that's possible. It's a team in need of a dose of Miracle-Gro. And players. Maybe even coaches.
* QB: I hope Kyle Boller (17-32-113, 48.0 rating) didn't waste a lot of time warming up before today's game. The game plan barely asked him to make any throws exceeding ten yards. But Boller couldn't avoid a disaster of a game even with the strategic safety belt locked tightly around the Ram offense. He looked a lot like Marc Bulger did early in the season, a man in desperate need of an open receiver but getting little help downfield. Boller and the Ram offense were not exactly clutch on 3rd downs, which they converted successfully only twice in 14 tries. I have Boller for 3-of-7 on 3rd down for 11 yards, with 3 sacks. Putrid. And like Bulger early this season, Boller didn't get a lot of help from his offensive line. The Bears took away Boller's mobility, giving him nowhere to scramble and sniffing out the Rams' bootleg plays like they were with him in the huddle. So just about any time Boller dropped back, he could expect pressure from the Bears but not much of anyone to throw to or anywhere to scramble. Nope, not a formula for raging success for Kyle (or any other QB). He did help put together a successful FG drive before halftime with a couple of completions to Brandon Gibson for 30 yards, but Boller was never going to have enough to beat the Bears today. He wasn't going to beat them with accuracy. He missed some open opportunities, most notably a rare long pass for Donnie Avery late in the first that he put too much air under, allowing the safety to come in late and nudge it away with his fingertips. Boller wasn't going to outsmart Chicago, either. The game plan didn't give him the material. No pump fakes; Hunter Hillenmeyer just read his eyes to pick him off late in the game. And very little play-action, which Boller didn't really sell well the few times it was tried, except on one successful Avery end-around. You know something? Keith Null showed he has a pretty sweet play-fake back in August. Just saying.
* RB: Whatever way you personally define what a hero is, Steven Jackson's (28-112) performing acts of athletic heroism, isn't he? Defenses put 8 and 9 in the box to stop him, his coaches make him easier to stop by making it obvious that he's getting the ball, and still he carried the Ram offense on his aching back. Jackson was still difficult to stop in the first half, in which he ran for 75 yards, slamming the Bear line over and over for 5 yards, 6 yards, 8 yards. His change of direction looked good this week, whether slaloming through the middle or bouncing a run outside. Sometimes he didn't need to change directions. He helped set up the Rams' first score with 11- and 13-yard runs off strong right-side blocks. The Bears shut the run down inside the 5 to force a FG, though. Still hanging around down 10-3, the Rams once again saw their running game bog down after halftime. Jackson found no room to run behind missed blocks and physically-dominated blockers before powering up the middle for 9 in the 4th to fuel a short FG drive, a FG Jackson was visibly unhappy to have settled for on the sidelines. It's obvious he wants to win. He yelled at the Ram sideline during the game. He didn't quit in the 4th, bouncing a run outside Billy Bajema's block for 23, efforts the offense eventually wasted with a punt. The Rams wasted Jackson as a resource today, pulling him off the field on most third downs, and ultimately would waste his game effort with another loss. Jackson's giving a lot this season to a team that looks like it's going 1-15. Let's hope that doesn't turn out to have been a wasted effort, too.
* Receivers: As much as one can tell from TV, the Ram receivers weren't open very often today. Jackson had the most catches, with 4; Brandon Gibson (3-38) and Donnie Avery (3-30) just 3 apiece. Danny Amendola had one catch for no gain and a drop. Two of Gibson's catches were key to the Rams' first FG drive; the longest was a 21-yarder he caught while kneeling, getting up and scrambling for 12 yards after the catch. Gotta like that YAC ability and his ability to improvise, but where was he the rest of the day? Where was Avery? His longest catch, for 18, came in garbage time. His best play was actually a run, a 15-yard end-around off the best, though never close to duplicated, play fake of the day. The Rams are trying to use his speed on plays like that and on smoke routes, but where was he the rest of the day? Receivers are easier to cover kept in a small box, and Charles Tillman is a good CB, but I wasn't expecting Zach Bowman to shut down the Rams all day, were you? Instead it's his helmet right on a ball caught, then fumbled, by Gibson in the 2nd, with safety Al Afalava returning it all the way back to the Ram 15. Randy McMichael (3-18) doesn't have the initial burst to get open on the bootleg plays the Rams were trying to him. So is it the talent that's being used, or how the talent's being used? Feels like some of both this week.
* Offensive line: Run-blocking was usually there for Jackson today, but pass-blocking usually wasn't for Boller. The Bears got to Boller the Rams' first drive with just a 4-man rush, with Adewale Ogunleye whipping Adam Goldberg right off the snap and Alex Barron getting beaten nearly as badly on the left side. Goldberg was rarely a match for Ogunleye's speed. The Bears DE just missed out on a couple more sacks, and the worst play I can think of with that speed mismatch going on is a naked bootleg in that direction. Which the Rams of course ran several times, and Ogunleye blew up several times. Ogunleye helped create the other two Bears sacks as well, though one has to be called a coverage sack, with the line giving Boller forever to throw. Barron was little better. Big pressure came on his side on Boller's INT, and Barron had to commit a brutal hold in the first after getting ripped but good by Alex Brown's rip move. Goldberg fared a lot better run-blocking, and Jacob Bell also had a good-looking game with a lot of good pull blocks. Jason Brown got pushed around a lot, though. Jackson's not going to get far on plays where the center just gets shoved backward into him. Randy McMichael started slowly, failing on a couple of blocks that would have sprung Jackson for big gains. But on the Rams' first FG drive, he sprung Avery on a smoke route, then, along with Ruvell Martin (!), sprung Jackson for 13 down to the Chicago 5 and got FIRED UP. The right side got dominated on 1st-and-goal, though, and Billy Bajema had a rare fail at fullback on 2nd-and-goal, to lead to just a FG there. Bajema was probably the Rams' best blocker today. He and Richie Incognito helped Jackson get 11 in the 2nd (Incognito came off injured later, replaced by Mark Setterstrom). Bajema had a block on the 13-yard run and picked off a run-blitz and sealed the edge tight for Jackson's longest run, a bounce outside RT for 23 in the 3rd. Too bad the run-blocking success they had didn't carry over to pass pro's side of the ledger.
* Defensive line / LB: Holding Matt Forte to 91 yards and the Bears to 120 total looks almost respectable compared to the last few weeks. James Laurinaitis got 12 tackles and was in on a bunch of stuffed runs early on. James Hall was very active early. He and Larry Grant stuffed Forte on back-to-back goal line plays in the 1st, but the stand ended on 3rd down when Chris Williams (in place of Orlando Pace) took care of Hall and Chris Long couldn't budge the tight end. Long whipped Williams to score one of the Rams' two sacks of Jay Cutler in the 3rd, but got stopped way too often by solo run-blocking by the TE. Pressure on Cutler was pretty good, even on the Bears' big plays, though not at all on the 71-yard pass to Bennett. Long and Hall got into the backfield enough to make Cutler nervous and flush him. It didn't equal sacks – Leonard Little got the only other one, a gift for touching Cutler down after a fumbled shotgun snap – but after the early huge coverage breakdowns, they got the Bears off the field. Good back pressure from Long helped force a three-and-out in the 2nd, Little's “sack” forced another, then Long's sack forced another in the 3rd. Then, though, the Bears got more serious about running and put the Rams back on their heels. Forte went right at a TE-dominated Long on 3rd-and-1 for 7. Hall was dominated on a 9-yard sweep. Cliff Ryan stopped a goal line run, getting off the ground to beat Olin Kreutz, but the Rams still couldn't stop that last Bears TD. They did keep the Bears within mathematical reach. Victor Adeyanju blew up a smoke pass to force a 3-and-out. James Butler atoned a little for an atrocious game by stuffing a couple of Kahlil Bell runs the next drive. But they failed to pin the Bears inside their 5 late. Forte went up the middle for 15, with Long getting spun completely around and Leger Douzable getting about blocked into Lake Michigan. Forte went up the middle for 8 more after Ryan got flattened. It took a great open-field tackle by Justin King, covering up for horrible overpursuit by Long, to shut that drive down, but Boller restarted it with a quick INT. And Forte went through David Vobora's arm tackle for 12. But the Rams bowed up before the 2:00 warning. Paris Lenon made a nice play to force Forte back into Ryan. And when Ron Bartell stopped Forte on 3rd-and-6, the D had gotten the offense the ball back a second time in the last 4:00 with a chance to tie the game. The Ram front seven may not have been great, but they were pretty good, a far cry ahead of where they've been lately. Hall and Ryan set a good early tone. Adeyanju's improving with playing time. Laurinaitis is still everywhere. Grant was clutch at the goal line and Lenon and Vobora weren't getting abused. I'm really concerned about his run defense after today, but Long was a decent factor in pass rush. Again, nothing great, but enough to win if the team shows up in some other areas. Which it didn't.
* Secondary: Oshiomogho Atogwe got the secondary off to a hot start by stripping the ball from Matt Forte to force a turnover on the game's second play. The rest of the secondary, though, only followed his lead in terms of being THE POLAR OPPOSITE. Devin Hester burned them for 48 on Chicago's very next play as disappointing Ron Bartell bit on his second stop fake and bitterly disappointing James Butler lost track of the ball, spinning right round like a record, baby. Quincy Butler then gave up a 36-yard end zone DPI, running Johnny Knox over without looking for the ball. The next possession unbelievably went even worse. Tasked with stopping the Bears on 3rd-and-9, the Rams instead let Earl Bennett get loose for 71. Laurinaitis' drop wasn't deep enough, and Bennett split Atogwe, who slipped, and useless SS Butler, who barely even ran in pursuit, to the point I assumed he was injured. No, he was back on the field the next possession, I guess with the invisible piano still on his back. Bartell got lucky at the end of that drive, never turning to find an end zone pass to Hester, but Hester's failure to keep both feet in bounds seemed to change the Rams' luck. They went on a string of five three-and-outs, with Dahl forcing one with a tackle-for-loss and Bartell nicely breaking up a slant pass for another. Bartell's illegal use of hands helped out a 3rd-quarter drive, though, which ended when Justin King misread a play, broke back a step in the Ram end zone, and got run over by crossing receiver Devin Aromashadu. Bennett curled in front of that mess at the goal line for a 3-yard catch and Chicago's 2nd TD. It's been a brutal season for the Ram secondary. Bartell's been a disappointment. Quincy Butler and King aren't physical and are still trying to figure out the game. Jonathan Who? Somebody Wade? James Butler is awful though I still assume he's playing hurt. Atogwe's been the only bright spot. And he had to leave the game right before halftime with a shoulder injury. I can't believe this team's damn luck sometimes.
* Special teams: After Chicago returned an ill-fated pop-up kickoff to midfield to open the game, it was a superb day for Ram special teams. Josh Brown actually hit some clutch kicks, banging FGs from 28, 48 and 50 to help the Rams stay in it. Danny Amendola was very frisky on returns, with a 43-yard kick return and a 30-yard punt return. David Roach (!) made one of the key plays of the day by sniffing out, and stopping, a fake FG flip to Greg Olsen in the 2nd. He and Kenneth Darby had key blocks on the long punt return; credit Daniel Fells, Bajema, Grant and Samkon Gado for great blocks on the long kick return. Coverage of Chicago's lethal return game was excellent. Newcomer Jordan Kent was terrific all game; his and long snapper Ryan Neill's efforts on one return shut Devin Hester down for about a 10-yard loss. And Donnie Jones, with nice help from Kent at the other end, was amazing punting, killing FOUR punts inside the 6 and a couple of others inside the 20. Thanks to Jones and company, the Rams actually dominated the field position battle for the majority of the game. They won the day on special teams with an effort that better teams typically turn into wins. Tom McMahon keeps this up, he'll be running a whole team one of these days.
* Coaching: I used to have goldfish. Once when I moved them to a larger tank, they were too stupid to realize it for a long time. They stayed in the area of the small tank and swam around in circles, without the will to do anything different. They only figured out they had more room by accident. There's my insight into the mind of Pat Shurmur, who again this week was apparently unable to even conceive the idea of stretching the field, or trying anything different, keeping the passing game in the small tank for pretty much the first 58 minutes. Shurmur is Jerry Rhome all over again. It's little surprise the Rams were a woeful 2-for-14 on 3rd down; nearly every 3rd-down pass was thrown short of the needed yardage. (Please take the naked bootleg out back and shoot it, huh?) The Rams especially weren't going to get away with that with Jackson off the field for almost every 3rd down, about the most knuckleheaded way possible to manage his injury. So Shurmur was darn sure to use Jackson when he had him on the field, handing off on 1st down about 75% of the time. Jackson was a respectable, though highly unofficial, 18-95 on 1st down, despite the Ram offense's high predictability making him easier to stop. If only there were a way to fake the other team into thinking Jackson was going to run. You could loosen up the defense. Make the safeties worry about more than the Rams' in-over-their-heads receivers. You could keep him on the field on 3rd down and make the defense account for him, with minimum additional injury risk! Great Amos Alonzo Stagg's ghost, how could a football team pull off such a miraculous deception?
Why don't the Rams use more play-action? You, I, Trent Green, Dick Stockton, were all begging for it. Steven Jackson was begging for something; you could see him yelling at the sideline at one point. Richie Incognito got in a shouting match with Shurmur. The players don't believe in the game plan; is that enough for everybody? The Rams have the ideal person in the NFL to set up a lot of play-action and appear to run it very little, which baffles me. Its benefits would have seemed obvious by Week Freaking Thirteen. No, Shurmur would rather hand off on 2nd-and-22, throw useless 7-yard slants on 3rd-and-19 (that one turned into the fumble returned to the Ram 15), or hand off on 3rd-and-11 inside the opposing 40 to preserve the field goal opportunity. Yeah, the Rams have bad receivers, bad tackles and a bad second-string QB. But none of them are helped by the near-absences of balance and deception in the offensive play-calling. Are the Rams that much worse than Oakland? They've beaten Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh this year. The Rams have to abandon all hope against 4-7 Chicago?
Defensive coaching is way ahead of the offense, though I fail to comprehend why the Rams have NO defensive back capable of turning and finding the ball. I swear I saw some run blitzing this week after pleading for it last week, like the 3rd-and-2 where Dahl dropped Forte for a loss early in the 2nd. Ironically, as Trent Green pointed out, they got burned big on plays actually designed to fake Cutler into checking down, but unlike the offense, the defense appeared to quit trying what wasn't working. As far as game-management, I don't disagree with the FG on 4th-and-goal late in the half. You would hate to come away without a score after your first good long drive, and the Rams were getting the ball back after halftime. I wanted Spagnuolo to fire off some timeouts after Cutler's fumble after the FG. Not sure if that's too much killer instinct on my part or not enough on the Rams'.
But Steve Spagnuolo'd better change something here, quickly. The apparent player revolt at the revolting offensive game plan isn't good for anyone. What this coaching staff has done best is to keep everyone on the same page and playing hard despite the record. You'd like to write off other issues as rookie hiccups. Well, we're deep into the season now. Nobody's a rookie any more. The coaching staff's free pass is running out and it's time to start earning some trust. A competent offensive game plan, and Shurmur's capable of making one, would be a good start. Give the offense the reins or show it the whip; whatever it takes to get this horse moving.
* Upon further review: Peter Morelli and crew might have called the best game of the year. They called DPI well other than the one King got away with on 3rd-and-9 in the 4th. They made the correct call on Hester's non-TD catch in the 1st, not right away, but quickly enough to give Spagnuolo a refund on his challenge flag. Excellent call on the hold that produced Knox's long kickoff return. Those get missed far too often. And a correct call on Lenon's horse-collar of Forte a little later, though way after the play. My main complaint was going to be Devin Aromashadu's pick of King on the TD pass to Bennett, but the contact looking incidental and King not having position probably make it a legitimate non-call. Damn, I may have to break out the Golden Whistle for Morelli today. A-minus.
* Cheers: Dick Stockton and Trent Green got the call for Fox, were Ron Pitts and John Lynch sick this week? Stockton's been around long enough to have called Decatur Staleys games but wasn't too bad. He didn't blow near as many spots as he usually does. Both he and Green were all over the Rams' poor offensive game plan (any chance you're available, Trent?). Green was good on color, though he's still got a little Rams bias to kick. He broke down replays well and made many correct calls before the referees did. I don't know if Stockton's been demoted or Green's been promoted, (I don't think they're usually a team) but the two work well together and are worth another listen.
* Who’s next?: One of the Rams' worst seasons ever will next pay a warped tribute to their greatest season, as they travel to Tennessee for a Super Bowl XXXIV rematch, unfortunately without Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Az Hakim, Rickey Proehl, Orlando Pace, Adam Timmerman, Tom Nutten, Fred Miller, Kevin Carter, Ray Agnew, Grant Wistrom, D'Marco Farr, Keith Lyle, Todd Lyght, Jeff Wilkins, and certainly Mike Jones, not to mention Dick Vermeil and that one offensive coordinator. Sigh. (Leonard Little's still around, though.)
If that's not the main media angle for next week, then it's sure to be the faceoff between the league's top two RBs, Chris Johnson and Steven Jackson, though that may ultimately prove an unfortunate one for the Rams. Remember Johnson exploding all over the Ram defense last preseason? (And Quinton Ganther? And Omar Cuff?) He went into today leading the league not just in rushing yards, but also yards after contact. The Rams played the run well enough today, but are they ready for the option? The college play has become a dangerous weapon for the Titans now that Vince Young has taken over at QB and rallied Tennessee to a 5-1 run after an 0-6 start. The Rams will be severely tested to keep those two in check on the ground and force Young to throw, which seems the most reliable path to leaving Tennessee with a win.
The Ram offense doesn't really raise much hope of that happening, though. Tennessee's respectably in the top 10 in run defense, led by all-pro LB Keith Bulluck. The Rams have had trouble blocking Kyle Vanden Bosch since he was in pee-wee football. They're not afraid to blitz, getting to Peyton Manning three times with safety blitzes today. The 5-1 run has also coincided with the return of their top two corners, Nick Harper and huge hitter/dirty player Cortland Finnegan, to full health. The Rams' best hope could be to pick on Chris Hope, a(nother) strong safety very beatable with the deep ball. Of course, that'd mean hitting Tennessee with play action. As if.
Six weeks ago, this looked like a winnable game for the Rams, but now, both teams are a lot closer to their form of last year. That's a moment the Titans want to return to; they went 13-3. But it threatens to become an event horizon for the Rams, impending doom they're being helplessly pulled back into. This week will inspire a lot of living in the past in Rams Nation. It may take a lot of luck for the team to relive the right time.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
From The Couch
(Report and opinions on the game.)
Game #12: Bears 17, Rams 9
One day the Rams' growing pains will give way to growth, but not today. In their loss at Chicago, the offense even appeared to shrink, if that's possible. It's a team in need of a dose of Miracle-Gro. And players. Maybe even coaches.
* QB: I hope Kyle Boller (17-32-113, 48.0 rating) didn't waste a lot of time warming up before today's game. The game plan barely asked him to make any throws exceeding ten yards. But Boller couldn't avoid a disaster of a game even with the strategic safety belt locked tightly around the Ram offense. He looked a lot like Marc Bulger did early in the season, a man in desperate need of an open receiver but getting little help downfield. Boller and the Ram offense were not exactly clutch on 3rd downs, which they converted successfully only twice in 14 tries. I have Boller for 3-of-7 on 3rd down for 11 yards, with 3 sacks. Putrid. And like Bulger early this season, Boller didn't get a lot of help from his offensive line. The Bears took away Boller's mobility, giving him nowhere to scramble and sniffing out the Rams' bootleg plays like they were with him in the huddle. So just about any time Boller dropped back, he could expect pressure from the Bears but not much of anyone to throw to or anywhere to scramble. Nope, not a formula for raging success for Kyle (or any other QB). He did help put together a successful FG drive before halftime with a couple of completions to Brandon Gibson for 30 yards, but Boller was never going to have enough to beat the Bears today. He wasn't going to beat them with accuracy. He missed some open opportunities, most notably a rare long pass for Donnie Avery late in the first that he put too much air under, allowing the safety to come in late and nudge it away with his fingertips. Boller wasn't going to outsmart Chicago, either. The game plan didn't give him the material. No pump fakes; Hunter Hillenmeyer just read his eyes to pick him off late in the game. And very little play-action, which Boller didn't really sell well the few times it was tried, except on one successful Avery end-around. You know something? Keith Null showed he has a pretty sweet play-fake back in August. Just saying.
* RB: Whatever way you personally define what a hero is, Steven Jackson's (28-112) performing acts of athletic heroism, isn't he? Defenses put 8 and 9 in the box to stop him, his coaches make him easier to stop by making it obvious that he's getting the ball, and still he carried the Ram offense on his aching back. Jackson was still difficult to stop in the first half, in which he ran for 75 yards, slamming the Bear line over and over for 5 yards, 6 yards, 8 yards. His change of direction looked good this week, whether slaloming through the middle or bouncing a run outside. Sometimes he didn't need to change directions. He helped set up the Rams' first score with 11- and 13-yard runs off strong right-side blocks. The Bears shut the run down inside the 5 to force a FG, though. Still hanging around down 10-3, the Rams once again saw their running game bog down after halftime. Jackson found no room to run behind missed blocks and physically-dominated blockers before powering up the middle for 9 in the 4th to fuel a short FG drive, a FG Jackson was visibly unhappy to have settled for on the sidelines. It's obvious he wants to win. He yelled at the Ram sideline during the game. He didn't quit in the 4th, bouncing a run outside Billy Bajema's block for 23, efforts the offense eventually wasted with a punt. The Rams wasted Jackson as a resource today, pulling him off the field on most third downs, and ultimately would waste his game effort with another loss. Jackson's giving a lot this season to a team that looks like it's going 1-15. Let's hope that doesn't turn out to have been a wasted effort, too.
* Receivers: As much as one can tell from TV, the Ram receivers weren't open very often today. Jackson had the most catches, with 4; Brandon Gibson (3-38) and Donnie Avery (3-30) just 3 apiece. Danny Amendola had one catch for no gain and a drop. Two of Gibson's catches were key to the Rams' first FG drive; the longest was a 21-yarder he caught while kneeling, getting up and scrambling for 12 yards after the catch. Gotta like that YAC ability and his ability to improvise, but where was he the rest of the day? Where was Avery? His longest catch, for 18, came in garbage time. His best play was actually a run, a 15-yard end-around off the best, though never close to duplicated, play fake of the day. The Rams are trying to use his speed on plays like that and on smoke routes, but where was he the rest of the day? Receivers are easier to cover kept in a small box, and Charles Tillman is a good CB, but I wasn't expecting Zach Bowman to shut down the Rams all day, were you? Instead it's his helmet right on a ball caught, then fumbled, by Gibson in the 2nd, with safety Al Afalava returning it all the way back to the Ram 15. Randy McMichael (3-18) doesn't have the initial burst to get open on the bootleg plays the Rams were trying to him. So is it the talent that's being used, or how the talent's being used? Feels like some of both this week.
* Offensive line: Run-blocking was usually there for Jackson today, but pass-blocking usually wasn't for Boller. The Bears got to Boller the Rams' first drive with just a 4-man rush, with Adewale Ogunleye whipping Adam Goldberg right off the snap and Alex Barron getting beaten nearly as badly on the left side. Goldberg was rarely a match for Ogunleye's speed. The Bears DE just missed out on a couple more sacks, and the worst play I can think of with that speed mismatch going on is a naked bootleg in that direction. Which the Rams of course ran several times, and Ogunleye blew up several times. Ogunleye helped create the other two Bears sacks as well, though one has to be called a coverage sack, with the line giving Boller forever to throw. Barron was little better. Big pressure came on his side on Boller's INT, and Barron had to commit a brutal hold in the first after getting ripped but good by Alex Brown's rip move. Goldberg fared a lot better run-blocking, and Jacob Bell also had a good-looking game with a lot of good pull blocks. Jason Brown got pushed around a lot, though. Jackson's not going to get far on plays where the center just gets shoved backward into him. Randy McMichael started slowly, failing on a couple of blocks that would have sprung Jackson for big gains. But on the Rams' first FG drive, he sprung Avery on a smoke route, then, along with Ruvell Martin (!), sprung Jackson for 13 down to the Chicago 5 and got FIRED UP. The right side got dominated on 1st-and-goal, though, and Billy Bajema had a rare fail at fullback on 2nd-and-goal, to lead to just a FG there. Bajema was probably the Rams' best blocker today. He and Richie Incognito helped Jackson get 11 in the 2nd (Incognito came off injured later, replaced by Mark Setterstrom). Bajema had a block on the 13-yard run and picked off a run-blitz and sealed the edge tight for Jackson's longest run, a bounce outside RT for 23 in the 3rd. Too bad the run-blocking success they had didn't carry over to pass pro's side of the ledger.
* Defensive line / LB: Holding Matt Forte to 91 yards and the Bears to 120 total looks almost respectable compared to the last few weeks. James Laurinaitis got 12 tackles and was in on a bunch of stuffed runs early on. James Hall was very active early. He and Larry Grant stuffed Forte on back-to-back goal line plays in the 1st, but the stand ended on 3rd down when Chris Williams (in place of Orlando Pace) took care of Hall and Chris Long couldn't budge the tight end. Long whipped Williams to score one of the Rams' two sacks of Jay Cutler in the 3rd, but got stopped way too often by solo run-blocking by the TE. Pressure on Cutler was pretty good, even on the Bears' big plays, though not at all on the 71-yard pass to Bennett. Long and Hall got into the backfield enough to make Cutler nervous and flush him. It didn't equal sacks – Leonard Little got the only other one, a gift for touching Cutler down after a fumbled shotgun snap – but after the early huge coverage breakdowns, they got the Bears off the field. Good back pressure from Long helped force a three-and-out in the 2nd, Little's “sack” forced another, then Long's sack forced another in the 3rd. Then, though, the Bears got more serious about running and put the Rams back on their heels. Forte went right at a TE-dominated Long on 3rd-and-1 for 7. Hall was dominated on a 9-yard sweep. Cliff Ryan stopped a goal line run, getting off the ground to beat Olin Kreutz, but the Rams still couldn't stop that last Bears TD. They did keep the Bears within mathematical reach. Victor Adeyanju blew up a smoke pass to force a 3-and-out. James Butler atoned a little for an atrocious game by stuffing a couple of Kahlil Bell runs the next drive. But they failed to pin the Bears inside their 5 late. Forte went up the middle for 15, with Long getting spun completely around and Leger Douzable getting about blocked into Lake Michigan. Forte went up the middle for 8 more after Ryan got flattened. It took a great open-field tackle by Justin King, covering up for horrible overpursuit by Long, to shut that drive down, but Boller restarted it with a quick INT. And Forte went through David Vobora's arm tackle for 12. But the Rams bowed up before the 2:00 warning. Paris Lenon made a nice play to force Forte back into Ryan. And when Ron Bartell stopped Forte on 3rd-and-6, the D had gotten the offense the ball back a second time in the last 4:00 with a chance to tie the game. The Ram front seven may not have been great, but they were pretty good, a far cry ahead of where they've been lately. Hall and Ryan set a good early tone. Adeyanju's improving with playing time. Laurinaitis is still everywhere. Grant was clutch at the goal line and Lenon and Vobora weren't getting abused. I'm really concerned about his run defense after today, but Long was a decent factor in pass rush. Again, nothing great, but enough to win if the team shows up in some other areas. Which it didn't.
* Secondary: Oshiomogho Atogwe got the secondary off to a hot start by stripping the ball from Matt Forte to force a turnover on the game's second play. The rest of the secondary, though, only followed his lead in terms of being THE POLAR OPPOSITE. Devin Hester burned them for 48 on Chicago's very next play as disappointing Ron Bartell bit on his second stop fake and bitterly disappointing James Butler lost track of the ball, spinning right round like a record, baby. Quincy Butler then gave up a 36-yard end zone DPI, running Johnny Knox over without looking for the ball. The next possession unbelievably went even worse. Tasked with stopping the Bears on 3rd-and-9, the Rams instead let Earl Bennett get loose for 71. Laurinaitis' drop wasn't deep enough, and Bennett split Atogwe, who slipped, and useless SS Butler, who barely even ran in pursuit, to the point I assumed he was injured. No, he was back on the field the next possession, I guess with the invisible piano still on his back. Bartell got lucky at the end of that drive, never turning to find an end zone pass to Hester, but Hester's failure to keep both feet in bounds seemed to change the Rams' luck. They went on a string of five three-and-outs, with Dahl forcing one with a tackle-for-loss and Bartell nicely breaking up a slant pass for another. Bartell's illegal use of hands helped out a 3rd-quarter drive, though, which ended when Justin King misread a play, broke back a step in the Ram end zone, and got run over by crossing receiver Devin Aromashadu. Bennett curled in front of that mess at the goal line for a 3-yard catch and Chicago's 2nd TD. It's been a brutal season for the Ram secondary. Bartell's been a disappointment. Quincy Butler and King aren't physical and are still trying to figure out the game. Jonathan Who? Somebody Wade? James Butler is awful though I still assume he's playing hurt. Atogwe's been the only bright spot. And he had to leave the game right before halftime with a shoulder injury. I can't believe this team's damn luck sometimes.
* Special teams: After Chicago returned an ill-fated pop-up kickoff to midfield to open the game, it was a superb day for Ram special teams. Josh Brown actually hit some clutch kicks, banging FGs from 28, 48 and 50 to help the Rams stay in it. Danny Amendola was very frisky on returns, with a 43-yard kick return and a 30-yard punt return. David Roach (!) made one of the key plays of the day by sniffing out, and stopping, a fake FG flip to Greg Olsen in the 2nd. He and Kenneth Darby had key blocks on the long punt return; credit Daniel Fells, Bajema, Grant and Samkon Gado for great blocks on the long kick return. Coverage of Chicago's lethal return game was excellent. Newcomer Jordan Kent was terrific all game; his and long snapper Ryan Neill's efforts on one return shut Devin Hester down for about a 10-yard loss. And Donnie Jones, with nice help from Kent at the other end, was amazing punting, killing FOUR punts inside the 6 and a couple of others inside the 20. Thanks to Jones and company, the Rams actually dominated the field position battle for the majority of the game. They won the day on special teams with an effort that better teams typically turn into wins. Tom McMahon keeps this up, he'll be running a whole team one of these days.
* Coaching: I used to have goldfish. Once when I moved them to a larger tank, they were too stupid to realize it for a long time. They stayed in the area of the small tank and swam around in circles, without the will to do anything different. They only figured out they had more room by accident. There's my insight into the mind of Pat Shurmur, who again this week was apparently unable to even conceive the idea of stretching the field, or trying anything different, keeping the passing game in the small tank for pretty much the first 58 minutes. Shurmur is Jerry Rhome all over again. It's little surprise the Rams were a woeful 2-for-14 on 3rd down; nearly every 3rd-down pass was thrown short of the needed yardage. (Please take the naked bootleg out back and shoot it, huh?) The Rams especially weren't going to get away with that with Jackson off the field for almost every 3rd down, about the most knuckleheaded way possible to manage his injury. So Shurmur was darn sure to use Jackson when he had him on the field, handing off on 1st down about 75% of the time. Jackson was a respectable, though highly unofficial, 18-95 on 1st down, despite the Ram offense's high predictability making him easier to stop. If only there were a way to fake the other team into thinking Jackson was going to run. You could loosen up the defense. Make the safeties worry about more than the Rams' in-over-their-heads receivers. You could keep him on the field on 3rd down and make the defense account for him, with minimum additional injury risk! Great Amos Alonzo Stagg's ghost, how could a football team pull off such a miraculous deception?
Why don't the Rams use more play-action? You, I, Trent Green, Dick Stockton, were all begging for it. Steven Jackson was begging for something; you could see him yelling at the sideline at one point. Richie Incognito got in a shouting match with Shurmur. The players don't believe in the game plan; is that enough for everybody? The Rams have the ideal person in the NFL to set up a lot of play-action and appear to run it very little, which baffles me. Its benefits would have seemed obvious by Week Freaking Thirteen. No, Shurmur would rather hand off on 2nd-and-22, throw useless 7-yard slants on 3rd-and-19 (that one turned into the fumble returned to the Ram 15), or hand off on 3rd-and-11 inside the opposing 40 to preserve the field goal opportunity. Yeah, the Rams have bad receivers, bad tackles and a bad second-string QB. But none of them are helped by the near-absences of balance and deception in the offensive play-calling. Are the Rams that much worse than Oakland? They've beaten Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh this year. The Rams have to abandon all hope against 4-7 Chicago?
Defensive coaching is way ahead of the offense, though I fail to comprehend why the Rams have NO defensive back capable of turning and finding the ball. I swear I saw some run blitzing this week after pleading for it last week, like the 3rd-and-2 where Dahl dropped Forte for a loss early in the 2nd. Ironically, as Trent Green pointed out, they got burned big on plays actually designed to fake Cutler into checking down, but unlike the offense, the defense appeared to quit trying what wasn't working. As far as game-management, I don't disagree with the FG on 4th-and-goal late in the half. You would hate to come away without a score after your first good long drive, and the Rams were getting the ball back after halftime. I wanted Spagnuolo to fire off some timeouts after Cutler's fumble after the FG. Not sure if that's too much killer instinct on my part or not enough on the Rams'.
But Steve Spagnuolo'd better change something here, quickly. The apparent player revolt at the revolting offensive game plan isn't good for anyone. What this coaching staff has done best is to keep everyone on the same page and playing hard despite the record. You'd like to write off other issues as rookie hiccups. Well, we're deep into the season now. Nobody's a rookie any more. The coaching staff's free pass is running out and it's time to start earning some trust. A competent offensive game plan, and Shurmur's capable of making one, would be a good start. Give the offense the reins or show it the whip; whatever it takes to get this horse moving.
* Upon further review: Peter Morelli and crew might have called the best game of the year. They called DPI well other than the one King got away with on 3rd-and-9 in the 4th. They made the correct call on Hester's non-TD catch in the 1st, not right away, but quickly enough to give Spagnuolo a refund on his challenge flag. Excellent call on the hold that produced Knox's long kickoff return. Those get missed far too often. And a correct call on Lenon's horse-collar of Forte a little later, though way after the play. My main complaint was going to be Devin Aromashadu's pick of King on the TD pass to Bennett, but the contact looking incidental and King not having position probably make it a legitimate non-call. Damn, I may have to break out the Golden Whistle for Morelli today. A-minus.
* Cheers: Dick Stockton and Trent Green got the call for Fox, were Ron Pitts and John Lynch sick this week? Stockton's been around long enough to have called Decatur Staleys games but wasn't too bad. He didn't blow near as many spots as he usually does. Both he and Green were all over the Rams' poor offensive game plan (any chance you're available, Trent?). Green was good on color, though he's still got a little Rams bias to kick. He broke down replays well and made many correct calls before the referees did. I don't know if Stockton's been demoted or Green's been promoted, (I don't think they're usually a team) but the two work well together and are worth another listen.
* Who’s next?: One of the Rams' worst seasons ever will next pay a warped tribute to their greatest season, as they travel to Tennessee for a Super Bowl XXXIV rematch, unfortunately without Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Az Hakim, Rickey Proehl, Orlando Pace, Adam Timmerman, Tom Nutten, Fred Miller, Kevin Carter, Ray Agnew, Grant Wistrom, D'Marco Farr, Keith Lyle, Todd Lyght, Jeff Wilkins, and certainly Mike Jones, not to mention Dick Vermeil and that one offensive coordinator. Sigh. (Leonard Little's still around, though.)
If that's not the main media angle for next week, then it's sure to be the faceoff between the league's top two RBs, Chris Johnson and Steven Jackson, though that may ultimately prove an unfortunate one for the Rams. Remember Johnson exploding all over the Ram defense last preseason? (And Quinton Ganther? And Omar Cuff?) He went into today leading the league not just in rushing yards, but also yards after contact. The Rams played the run well enough today, but are they ready for the option? The college play has become a dangerous weapon for the Titans now that Vince Young has taken over at QB and rallied Tennessee to a 5-1 run after an 0-6 start. The Rams will be severely tested to keep those two in check on the ground and force Young to throw, which seems the most reliable path to leaving Tennessee with a win.
The Ram offense doesn't really raise much hope of that happening, though. Tennessee's respectably in the top 10 in run defense, led by all-pro LB Keith Bulluck. The Rams have had trouble blocking Kyle Vanden Bosch since he was in pee-wee football. They're not afraid to blitz, getting to Peyton Manning three times with safety blitzes today. The 5-1 run has also coincided with the return of their top two corners, Nick Harper and huge hitter/dirty player Cortland Finnegan, to full health. The Rams' best hope could be to pick on Chris Hope, a(nother) strong safety very beatable with the deep ball. Of course, that'd mean hitting Tennessee with play action. As if.
Six weeks ago, this looked like a winnable game for the Rams, but now, both teams are a lot closer to their form of last year. That's a moment the Titans want to return to; they went 13-3. But it threatens to become an event horizon for the Rams, impending doom they're being helplessly pulled back into. This week will inspire a lot of living in the past in Rams Nation. It may take a lot of luck for the team to relive the right time.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
Monday, November 30, 2009
RamView, November 29, 2009
From Row HH
(Report and opinions on and from the game.)
Game #11: Seahawks 27, Rams 17
Bland, play-it-safe, joyless, unentertaining football ruled on the Rams sideline again today as they dropped their TENTH straight to the mediocre-long-ago Seahawks. The Rams are the German food of the NFL. Ach.
* QB: Kyle Boller's numbers, (28-46-282), especially the JeMarcusian 67.5 passer rating, may look better than they were in context, the context being he was running for his life all day. He kept the Rams in it for a while. The big difference between Boller and Marc Bulger is Boller's mobility, of course. With Seattle blitzing almost every play, Bulger would have left this game in worse shape than Tiger Woods' SUV. Boller was able to escape some of the rush, and his mobility helped get the Ram offense into a good rhythm at times. He started the game hitting Randy McMichael for 12 on a rollout and the Rams rolled right into scoring position early. (And didn't score.) His TD pass to Donnie Avery was off a bootleg. Boller made some good reads, especially in finding Ruvell Martin (!) wide open a couple of times for big gains. He didn't make enough, though, and might fairly have avoided three of the four sacks he took. Jordan Babineaux and Patrick Kerney got to him to kill a drive in the 1st because he held the ball too long. Babineaux was a delayed blitzer; you can't let that guy get to you. He scrambled for no gain late in the 2nd after missing Danny Amendola open on a shallow cross, though that drive still ended in a FG. The Rams' initial drive of the 2nd half ended in a huge loss on a rollout where Boller couldn't find a man, though he could have had McMichael breaking open late with a pretty tough throw. Boller's accuracy wasn't consistent; he missed some open opportunities with high balls or one-hoppers. But the worst part of Boller's game continues to be the crushing turnovers. Seattle took a 14-7 lead late in the 1st half on Justin Wilson's 65-yard return of a pass tipped by Kelly Jennings. Boller really couldn't win on this play. He forced an outside pass for Donnie Avery into double-coverage, but what was he going to do? It was fourth down. Jennings made a fine play (as long as it wasn't a penalty) on the ball and Wilson cashed in a lucky bounce. Boller's 2nd INT seemed a lot more preventable, though just as painful, coming in the end zone with the Rams still down 14-10. He rushed and back-footed a throw for Amendola that's a TD if he leads the receiver, but the pass was woefully underthrown and almost fair-caught by (again) Babineaux. Seattle turned that into a FG and eventually surged into a 17-point lead, called off the dogs and let Boller rack up some cosmetic yards, including a 16-yard near-TD scramble late in the game. Boller's a gamer, for sure, and seems to give the offense a shot of energy when he's in there. And he had to overcome some regression from the rest of the offense in pass protection and receivers getting open. But he just can't seem to avoid those really big, negative, game-killer plays. In the end I'm not sure Kyle Boller will reach a level here any higher than just good enough to get you beat.
* RB: Steven Jackson, (23-89) about the only fire this team has, was cooled a little today by his back injury and a lot by lack of running room. He got off to a fast start, with 25 yards on his first touch, running between fine blocks by Daniel Fells and Jacob Bell. That drive broke down, though, with Jackson getting stuffed on 3rd-and-1, and though he ran hard and still ran through some tackles at times, it was a struggle for Jackson to find anywhere to go, and he averaged less than 3 yards a carry after that big run. He still scored the Rams' 2nd TD with a 1-yard dive late in the 4th, and he's still an exemplary leader on this team, calling the offense to gather around him during one break in the action and trying to ignite it with some fiery motivation. I'm not sure how much Jackson's injury actually slowed him down, probably the most in his ability to change direction and get off his first read. Too bad nobody else has got his back. Samkon Gado (1-minus 1) and Kenneth Darby (also 1-minus 1) have been almost complete jokes this season and I'd swear neither one can walk and chew gum at the same time. They run like their shoelaces are tied together. I shouldn't have been, but I was agape this morning hearing that Jackson was on a pace for over 400 carries this season. He richly deserves far better backup than the Keystone Kops he has now.
* Receivers: Donnie Avery (4-48) scored the Rams' first TD but his inability to get open consistently ultimately hindered the passing game. Boller was looking for him at least a couple of the times he was sacked. None of the Ram receivers do a particularly good job of coming back to fight for a contested ball, which we saw in spades when Jennings beat Avery to a 4th-and-4 pass in the 2nd and tipped it to Wilson for a TD. Boller tried several throws along those lines – here comes the ball, now beat your man – but Avery and Brandon Gibson (3-18) weren't winning many of those one-on-one matchups. Danny Amendola (7-55) led in receptions and his sharp cutback after a catch inside the 10 got the Rams a big first down and set up Avery's TD. Ruvell Martin (2-60) got wide open in the Seahawk secondary for a couple of big gains. You can't stop Ruvell Martin; you can only hope to contain him. Well, you at least have to cover him, which Seattle really didn't either time. They made progress the last 2-3 weeks, but we saw again today that the Rams receivers can certainly stand to gain physical and mental toughness.
* Offensive line: The injury bug continues to bite the Ram offensive line hard. They were minus three starters after Jason Brown went down with a sprained knee in the 2nd. The makeshift lineup now had Mark Setterstrom at center, John Greco at RG and Adam Goldberg at RT. And seeing this lineup, Seattle blitzed practically every play after Brown left the game and got a blitzer through to Boller untouched practically every time. Goldberg looked really outmatched outside this week. Patrick Kerney really smoked him on Boller's first sack, though Babineaux also came in untouched. Hard to blame Gado there; he did pick up the blitzing LB inside. Setterstrom got beaten badly at center by a stunt and got beaten badly at RG by Brandon Mebane on a tackle-for-loss. Some of the sacks are fair to call coverage sacks, though Boller's scrambling would have saved them the second one had Alex Barron not quit blocking Cory Redding on the back side. PLAY TO THE WHISTLE! The fourth sack was a complete cluster, um, bomb, with every Ram lineman, and Daniel Fells, and Brandon Gibson apparently motioned across as an additional blocker, beaten soundly, leaving Boller looking like an unlucky Wal-Mart clerk on Black Friday. The best blocker today was Jacob Bell, who made a solid inside block that paired with Fells' big outside block to give Jackson a big lane on his 25-yard run. It feels pretty safe to say the running game missed Brown's and Richie Incognito's presence in the middle, where there was very little running room. It's definitely safe to say that by clogging up the middle and blitzing the Rams senseless, Seattle decisively won the game at the line of scrimmage.
* Defensive line / LB: Once again the Ram defense let one of the league's worst rushing offenses look like Eric Dickerson's Rams, as the 32nd-ranked running team romped for 170 behind Justin Forsett's 22-130. The front seven has more holes than players. It's basically James Laurinaitis plus an occasional play from one of the other six. Laurinaitis led the D with nine tackles, and started the Rams off the right way by dragging Matt Hasselbeck down for a sack on the game's very first play. Guess how many sacks the Rams collected after the first play of the game. That's right, none. Leonard Little got some pressures, but I don't remember Chris Long doing much of anything despite getting a lot of work at both DE positions. That failure spread over to the run, where if Laurinaitis gets blocked, he's not getting much help. Like these plays. Forsett broke loose for 25 right after Josh Brown's missed FG after Laurinaitis was practically blocked into Seattle's bench, Cliff Ryan got wiped out at the line and Justin King stumbled trying to fill the gap. Little tried to jump into the backfield on Forsett's first TD run but instead got pushed back across center and gave Forsett the hole. Given a chance to stop Seattle on 4th-and-1 to start the 4th, the Rams instead got steamrolled by Forsett for an embarrassing 11 yards. Nobody attacked his gap; Laurinaitis attacked the next gap over. Forsett's 2nd TD, two plays later, was an equally easy run after his fullback stoned Paris Lenon in the hole. Dorsett, um, I mean Forsett, humbled the Rams one last time with a 26-yard run right to set up their last FG. Long was pushed WAY outside and Oshiomogho Atogwe missed him in the hole. You'd think one of those would be Long's, or the Rams', most humiliating play of the day, but that had to come when Matt Hasselbeck naked bootlegged left for 19 to set up a FG in the 3rd. The whole Ram defense bought the run fake right, leaving the other side of the field empty as the void of space. If Hasselbeck wasn't slower than me trying to get up from the Thanksgiving dinner table, he would have had a TD. Long was so faked out on that play that he was getting up from being knocked down to continue pursuing the play left even as Hasselbeck was running right by him the other direction. And so the Ram defense hits December an utter failure. They're getting physically dominated by bad offensive lines. Tackling is slipping. Atogwe and James Butler are getting paid a lot better than they're stopping runners. Rookie Darell Scott (!) made some nice plays in the middle of the line but the rest of the DTs look like the guys off the waiver wire and 2nd-day draft picks that they are. So do the OLBs, despite Lenon forcing a Louis Rankin fumble in the 1st. They don't pass rush very well and they're as easily fooled by misdirection as my cat. This defense won't be any good this year. I'm not sure it'll be any good in TWO years. How do they get there?
* Secondary: Hey, a rare short section, made possible by the Rams' gawdawful run defense. Not really needing to throw, Hasselbeck only threw for 102 yards. And the Rams still found ways to get beat by Nate Burleson (4-46) on third-and-long three times. One thing the defense did get right was their emphasis on Seattle's screen pass game, which they essentially took away. Atogwe was one of the Rams' more effective defensive players, batting down a pass on a blitz to end a drive and stopping Burleson short on 3rd down to force a 3-and-out in the 2nd. Atogwe also chipped in 9 tackles, which is where James Butler's become a major disappointment of this season as far as I'm concerned. I expected him to show up much more against the run than he does, and he was guilty of some bad arm tackles today, too. He's been hurt, true, but Butler's still looming as another poor Rams free agent investment.
* Special teams: The punting teams were the stars of the day. Donnie Jones averaged over 52 yards a try. K.C. Asiodu partially blocked a punt and gave the offense a golden opportunity to squander in the 3rd. Coverage was fine until the last punt, returned 29 by Nate Burleson. The Rams could have started off on the right foot with a 46-yard FG to finish their opening drive, but instead, Josh Brown hooks it right, Seattle immediately drives for a TD, and thanks for yet another momentum-killer, Mr. Highest Paid Kicker in the League. Radio said the snap was high, but didn't blame it for the miss, and I don't care anyway. Make the freaking field goal. I could give a crap that he hit from 55 to bring the Rams within 4 at halftime, either. The ones you don't think he'll make, he will. The makeable ones his team needs him to make sail wide right. 36-year-old Olindo Mare put nearly every kickoff deep into the end zone. His last one went through the back. He had the Rams in mediocre field position all game. Amendola didn't really have a chance to do anything significant. Touchbacks or clutch kicks from Brown, though, are few and far between. Mare's a weapon for his team. Brown, the 25th-most-accurate kicker in the league though drawing, make that stealing, the biggest paycheck at the position, is a liability to his.
* Coaching: If not now, when? The Seattle Seahawks had not won a road game all year (0-5). They came in with a 3-7 record and were playing their third straight road game. They ran for four yards the week before. Not four yards a carry. Four total yards. The schedule-maker was handing the Rams a gift here. (About time, by the way.) And while the Rams drove downfield successfully in the 1st quarter, in the stands, you could sense the Seahawks packing it in. They were ripe. All the Rams needed was some killer instinct. NOT a milquetoast FG attempt on 4th-and-1 inside the opponent 30. I begged Steve Spagnuolo last week to show he gets it, and he doesn't, not yet. We are sick of the Rams losing home games (11 straight now). We are sick of losing EVERY game we play in the division (14 straight now). And it's sure getting tiring losing EVERY TIME to a Seattle team that hasn't even been any good the last two years. But it's 10 straight to them now, with no sign it will EVER let up, because the head coach of a 1-9 team wants to play it safe in scoring territory at the start of the game. How did that work out, by the way?
I'll buy some reasons Spagnuolo didn't want to go for it on 4th-and-1. Jackson had just been stuffed on 3rd-and-1, and maybe he didn't have a read on Steven's health yet and was reluctant to slam him in there again. And you're certainly not going to rely on Frick Gado or Frack Darby on 4th-and-1. So why not sneak Boller? He's 6'3”, all he has to do is fall down. Or bootleg him. Or keep Jackson in as a decoy, play-action and throw a seam route to the TE. For Christ's sake, I don't care if you want to go Mike Martz on their ass and run the dreaded end-around, do something! I know much of anything creative scares this coaching staff, especially on offense, but show us you're mad as hell at all these pathetic losing streaks and you're not going to take it any more! I also suspect Brown missing the 4th-and-1 FG led Spagnuolo to go for it on 4th-and-4. Can't trust him to hit from 46, you're not going to trust him from 52. So that just compounded the decision to kick on 4th-and-1 when 4th-and-4 failed as miserably as it can fail, with a pick-six. Sure, I'm an irrational fan, but good luck convincing me Spagnuolo didn't cost his team 17 points today. Could have taken ten, gave up seven instead. Rams football: it's fan-tastic!
You could tell Boller was back in the lineup today, huh? Very first play Pat Shurmur calls is a rollout. I thought he was smart to use a lot of play-action, though the Rams could sell it a lot better. The Avery TD, where they sold it perfectly, could have been the Sweet Play of the Week had everything else about the Rams not sucked. Avery motioned left, and while the whole offense faked a Jackson handoff left, Avery doubled back right and was open pretty handily for the toss from Boller rolling right. Now, if he'd just started using blitz-beating plays like the Avery smoke route BEFORE getting blitzed by Seattle for three quarters. That adjustment was like the Titanic hanging a left after hitting the iceberg. Defensively, I thought the Rams had a good blitz mix working, getting pressure with it without getting burned by it. Seattle is extremely potent with screen passes and the outside players made a very successful effort to take that away from them, though you wonder how much that took away from the run defense, which simply cannot continue to be this wretchedly awful. A last question, I really don't know the answer: does this team ever run blitz? Do our DBs ever slash in and stop a back in the backfield? Does a team this bad against the run have anything to lose by gambling like that more? OK, that was three questions.
* Upon further review: Scott Green and crew were mostly on top of things. They got the call right when it briefly looked like the Rams had muffed away the blocked punt in the 3rd, but the Ram player, I believe Dominic Douglas, had been blocked into the ball. Patrick Kerney took Boller out flagrantly late on a play in the 4th and got a deserved flag for it. Jackson's late TD came about because they reviewed and reversed an apparent Boller TD scramble, which bordered on cruel and unusual punishment to Rams fans. By far the least popular call was the tripping penalty on Amendola in the end zone after Boller's 2nd INT, which looked much more incidental than intentional from the stands. How sure are we Avery wasn't interfered with on the pick-six? Jennings sure grabbed and spun him, though the ball was right there, too. B-minus for the crew assuming that call was OK.
* Cheers: It was just as well the game wasn't on TV locally. If the quality of the play on the field didn't turn St. Louisans off of watching Rams football forever, the embarrassingly sparse crowd would have. The Dome wasn't even half-filled this week, though the hardy few present generated solid noise in bursts and even got Sean Locklear to false-start in the 3rd to help force a FG. Too bad the defense was consistently quick to kibosh any momentum we could muster. People started getting up to leave after Boller's 2nd INT – that was with EIGHT minutes left. In the THIRD quarter! Needless to say, post-game traffic was pretty smooth today. Pee-wee, or youth (there were some mighty big kids out there) football got the halftime show, with the annual Punt, Pass and Kick demoted to a brief pre-game announcement. Sad to see that long-time tradition getting short shrift.
* Who’s next?: Ah, to have been a Chicagoan this summer. The city had the sports world by the tail. The White Sox and Cubs were in the middle of pennant races. With the hometown President and the mighty Oprah lobbying on the city's behalf, their 2016 Summer Olympic bid was in the bag. And Da Bears were on their way to the Super Bowl after trading for rifle-armed Broncos QB Jay Cutler. It was Chicago's world; the rest of us were just living in it.
None of it lasted long, and faster than you can say “Rio de Janeiro,” the Bears' season headed downhill with the rest. Instead of leading the Bears to the playoffs, Cutler's led them to the league lead in interceptions. The team's returned the favor in not supporting Cutler very well. Matt Forte's rookie magic appears gone this season, and the Bears – the franchise of Red Grange, Bronko Nagurski, Gale Sayers and Walter Payton – are 28th in the NFL in rushing. 28th! The Bears! The problem starts in Chicago where it starts for a lot of teams, the offensive line. Orlando Pace may not play next week due to a groin injury; just as well for his long-time Rams fans. His play this year has only proven that the Rams made the right move to let him go. Pace can throw the occasional dominating run block but has been a liability in pass pro. Any Bears game I watch, there are guys just pouring in past Olin Kreutz, who I'd have to call a shell of his former self at center, and Roberto Garza looks awful at RG. Cutler gets hit a lot, and hears even more footsteps. He's jumpier in the pocket than Jim Carrey after a Red Bull, doesn't throw accurately enough under pressure to make defenses pay for blitzing, and locks in almost exclusively on TE Greg Olson when he does. I'll just say a capable defense, capably coached, would find ways to take advantage of these tendencies.
It's a bad time for Steven Jackson to be hurting; even with head coach Lovie Smith taking over as defensive coordinator, the Bears – the franchise of Dick Butkus, Richard Dent, Mike Singletary, Brian Urlacher (not this season; he's missed all of it with a broken wrist) – are only 23rd in the league against the run. The Bears can't run or defend the run? The Bears? But their only defensive playmaker lately's been CB Charles Tillman, the only guy in their secondary who can cover anybody, and he took a blow to the head in Minnesota. Avery's in trouble if Tillman plays, because Tillman, like Atogwe for the Rams, has a sixth sense for forcing fumbles. Two hands on the ball, wideouts. Still, you can throw away from Tillman, and if Chicago doesn't toughen up against the run, the Rams can feel really free to uncork their offense against them next week. Yeah, buddy. Let's just say a capable offense, capably coached, would find ways to take advantage of their weak spots.
God I love writing previews. The Rams haven't proven week-to-week that they've got any ability, other than Jackson's guts, that makes them suited to attack any other team's weaknesses. Why note that Forte's having an off year when two of the league's worst running teams just ripped the Rams on the ground? Why imagine ways for the Ram offense to attack defenses when its goal in life is to be boring? Why preview opponents in a vacuum that excludes the Rams' injuries, inexperience and outright lack of talent?
A capable team, capably coached, would find the Chicago Bears very beatable next week, even in Soldier Field. The Rams aren't there, unless Steven Jackson carries them there, which is possible.
There's your preview.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
From Row HH
(Report and opinions on and from the game.)
Game #11: Seahawks 27, Rams 17
Bland, play-it-safe, joyless, unentertaining football ruled on the Rams sideline again today as they dropped their TENTH straight to the mediocre-long-ago Seahawks. The Rams are the German food of the NFL. Ach.
* QB: Kyle Boller's numbers, (28-46-282), especially the JeMarcusian 67.5 passer rating, may look better than they were in context, the context being he was running for his life all day. He kept the Rams in it for a while. The big difference between Boller and Marc Bulger is Boller's mobility, of course. With Seattle blitzing almost every play, Bulger would have left this game in worse shape than Tiger Woods' SUV. Boller was able to escape some of the rush, and his mobility helped get the Ram offense into a good rhythm at times. He started the game hitting Randy McMichael for 12 on a rollout and the Rams rolled right into scoring position early. (And didn't score.) His TD pass to Donnie Avery was off a bootleg. Boller made some good reads, especially in finding Ruvell Martin (!) wide open a couple of times for big gains. He didn't make enough, though, and might fairly have avoided three of the four sacks he took. Jordan Babineaux and Patrick Kerney got to him to kill a drive in the 1st because he held the ball too long. Babineaux was a delayed blitzer; you can't let that guy get to you. He scrambled for no gain late in the 2nd after missing Danny Amendola open on a shallow cross, though that drive still ended in a FG. The Rams' initial drive of the 2nd half ended in a huge loss on a rollout where Boller couldn't find a man, though he could have had McMichael breaking open late with a pretty tough throw. Boller's accuracy wasn't consistent; he missed some open opportunities with high balls or one-hoppers. But the worst part of Boller's game continues to be the crushing turnovers. Seattle took a 14-7 lead late in the 1st half on Justin Wilson's 65-yard return of a pass tipped by Kelly Jennings. Boller really couldn't win on this play. He forced an outside pass for Donnie Avery into double-coverage, but what was he going to do? It was fourth down. Jennings made a fine play (as long as it wasn't a penalty) on the ball and Wilson cashed in a lucky bounce. Boller's 2nd INT seemed a lot more preventable, though just as painful, coming in the end zone with the Rams still down 14-10. He rushed and back-footed a throw for Amendola that's a TD if he leads the receiver, but the pass was woefully underthrown and almost fair-caught by (again) Babineaux. Seattle turned that into a FG and eventually surged into a 17-point lead, called off the dogs and let Boller rack up some cosmetic yards, including a 16-yard near-TD scramble late in the game. Boller's a gamer, for sure, and seems to give the offense a shot of energy when he's in there. And he had to overcome some regression from the rest of the offense in pass protection and receivers getting open. But he just can't seem to avoid those really big, negative, game-killer plays. In the end I'm not sure Kyle Boller will reach a level here any higher than just good enough to get you beat.
* RB: Steven Jackson, (23-89) about the only fire this team has, was cooled a little today by his back injury and a lot by lack of running room. He got off to a fast start, with 25 yards on his first touch, running between fine blocks by Daniel Fells and Jacob Bell. That drive broke down, though, with Jackson getting stuffed on 3rd-and-1, and though he ran hard and still ran through some tackles at times, it was a struggle for Jackson to find anywhere to go, and he averaged less than 3 yards a carry after that big run. He still scored the Rams' 2nd TD with a 1-yard dive late in the 4th, and he's still an exemplary leader on this team, calling the offense to gather around him during one break in the action and trying to ignite it with some fiery motivation. I'm not sure how much Jackson's injury actually slowed him down, probably the most in his ability to change direction and get off his first read. Too bad nobody else has got his back. Samkon Gado (1-minus 1) and Kenneth Darby (also 1-minus 1) have been almost complete jokes this season and I'd swear neither one can walk and chew gum at the same time. They run like their shoelaces are tied together. I shouldn't have been, but I was agape this morning hearing that Jackson was on a pace for over 400 carries this season. He richly deserves far better backup than the Keystone Kops he has now.
* Receivers: Donnie Avery (4-48) scored the Rams' first TD but his inability to get open consistently ultimately hindered the passing game. Boller was looking for him at least a couple of the times he was sacked. None of the Ram receivers do a particularly good job of coming back to fight for a contested ball, which we saw in spades when Jennings beat Avery to a 4th-and-4 pass in the 2nd and tipped it to Wilson for a TD. Boller tried several throws along those lines – here comes the ball, now beat your man – but Avery and Brandon Gibson (3-18) weren't winning many of those one-on-one matchups. Danny Amendola (7-55) led in receptions and his sharp cutback after a catch inside the 10 got the Rams a big first down and set up Avery's TD. Ruvell Martin (2-60) got wide open in the Seahawk secondary for a couple of big gains. You can't stop Ruvell Martin; you can only hope to contain him. Well, you at least have to cover him, which Seattle really didn't either time. They made progress the last 2-3 weeks, but we saw again today that the Rams receivers can certainly stand to gain physical and mental toughness.
* Offensive line: The injury bug continues to bite the Ram offensive line hard. They were minus three starters after Jason Brown went down with a sprained knee in the 2nd. The makeshift lineup now had Mark Setterstrom at center, John Greco at RG and Adam Goldberg at RT. And seeing this lineup, Seattle blitzed practically every play after Brown left the game and got a blitzer through to Boller untouched practically every time. Goldberg looked really outmatched outside this week. Patrick Kerney really smoked him on Boller's first sack, though Babineaux also came in untouched. Hard to blame Gado there; he did pick up the blitzing LB inside. Setterstrom got beaten badly at center by a stunt and got beaten badly at RG by Brandon Mebane on a tackle-for-loss. Some of the sacks are fair to call coverage sacks, though Boller's scrambling would have saved them the second one had Alex Barron not quit blocking Cory Redding on the back side. PLAY TO THE WHISTLE! The fourth sack was a complete cluster, um, bomb, with every Ram lineman, and Daniel Fells, and Brandon Gibson apparently motioned across as an additional blocker, beaten soundly, leaving Boller looking like an unlucky Wal-Mart clerk on Black Friday. The best blocker today was Jacob Bell, who made a solid inside block that paired with Fells' big outside block to give Jackson a big lane on his 25-yard run. It feels pretty safe to say the running game missed Brown's and Richie Incognito's presence in the middle, where there was very little running room. It's definitely safe to say that by clogging up the middle and blitzing the Rams senseless, Seattle decisively won the game at the line of scrimmage.
* Defensive line / LB: Once again the Ram defense let one of the league's worst rushing offenses look like Eric Dickerson's Rams, as the 32nd-ranked running team romped for 170 behind Justin Forsett's 22-130. The front seven has more holes than players. It's basically James Laurinaitis plus an occasional play from one of the other six. Laurinaitis led the D with nine tackles, and started the Rams off the right way by dragging Matt Hasselbeck down for a sack on the game's very first play. Guess how many sacks the Rams collected after the first play of the game. That's right, none. Leonard Little got some pressures, but I don't remember Chris Long doing much of anything despite getting a lot of work at both DE positions. That failure spread over to the run, where if Laurinaitis gets blocked, he's not getting much help. Like these plays. Forsett broke loose for 25 right after Josh Brown's missed FG after Laurinaitis was practically blocked into Seattle's bench, Cliff Ryan got wiped out at the line and Justin King stumbled trying to fill the gap. Little tried to jump into the backfield on Forsett's first TD run but instead got pushed back across center and gave Forsett the hole. Given a chance to stop Seattle on 4th-and-1 to start the 4th, the Rams instead got steamrolled by Forsett for an embarrassing 11 yards. Nobody attacked his gap; Laurinaitis attacked the next gap over. Forsett's 2nd TD, two plays later, was an equally easy run after his fullback stoned Paris Lenon in the hole. Dorsett, um, I mean Forsett, humbled the Rams one last time with a 26-yard run right to set up their last FG. Long was pushed WAY outside and Oshiomogho Atogwe missed him in the hole. You'd think one of those would be Long's, or the Rams', most humiliating play of the day, but that had to come when Matt Hasselbeck naked bootlegged left for 19 to set up a FG in the 3rd. The whole Ram defense bought the run fake right, leaving the other side of the field empty as the void of space. If Hasselbeck wasn't slower than me trying to get up from the Thanksgiving dinner table, he would have had a TD. Long was so faked out on that play that he was getting up from being knocked down to continue pursuing the play left even as Hasselbeck was running right by him the other direction. And so the Ram defense hits December an utter failure. They're getting physically dominated by bad offensive lines. Tackling is slipping. Atogwe and James Butler are getting paid a lot better than they're stopping runners. Rookie Darell Scott (!) made some nice plays in the middle of the line but the rest of the DTs look like the guys off the waiver wire and 2nd-day draft picks that they are. So do the OLBs, despite Lenon forcing a Louis Rankin fumble in the 1st. They don't pass rush very well and they're as easily fooled by misdirection as my cat. This defense won't be any good this year. I'm not sure it'll be any good in TWO years. How do they get there?
* Secondary: Hey, a rare short section, made possible by the Rams' gawdawful run defense. Not really needing to throw, Hasselbeck only threw for 102 yards. And the Rams still found ways to get beat by Nate Burleson (4-46) on third-and-long three times. One thing the defense did get right was their emphasis on Seattle's screen pass game, which they essentially took away. Atogwe was one of the Rams' more effective defensive players, batting down a pass on a blitz to end a drive and stopping Burleson short on 3rd down to force a 3-and-out in the 2nd. Atogwe also chipped in 9 tackles, which is where James Butler's become a major disappointment of this season as far as I'm concerned. I expected him to show up much more against the run than he does, and he was guilty of some bad arm tackles today, too. He's been hurt, true, but Butler's still looming as another poor Rams free agent investment.
* Special teams: The punting teams were the stars of the day. Donnie Jones averaged over 52 yards a try. K.C. Asiodu partially blocked a punt and gave the offense a golden opportunity to squander in the 3rd. Coverage was fine until the last punt, returned 29 by Nate Burleson. The Rams could have started off on the right foot with a 46-yard FG to finish their opening drive, but instead, Josh Brown hooks it right, Seattle immediately drives for a TD, and thanks for yet another momentum-killer, Mr. Highest Paid Kicker in the League. Radio said the snap was high, but didn't blame it for the miss, and I don't care anyway. Make the freaking field goal. I could give a crap that he hit from 55 to bring the Rams within 4 at halftime, either. The ones you don't think he'll make, he will. The makeable ones his team needs him to make sail wide right. 36-year-old Olindo Mare put nearly every kickoff deep into the end zone. His last one went through the back. He had the Rams in mediocre field position all game. Amendola didn't really have a chance to do anything significant. Touchbacks or clutch kicks from Brown, though, are few and far between. Mare's a weapon for his team. Brown, the 25th-most-accurate kicker in the league though drawing, make that stealing, the biggest paycheck at the position, is a liability to his.
* Coaching: If not now, when? The Seattle Seahawks had not won a road game all year (0-5). They came in with a 3-7 record and were playing their third straight road game. They ran for four yards the week before. Not four yards a carry. Four total yards. The schedule-maker was handing the Rams a gift here. (About time, by the way.) And while the Rams drove downfield successfully in the 1st quarter, in the stands, you could sense the Seahawks packing it in. They were ripe. All the Rams needed was some killer instinct. NOT a milquetoast FG attempt on 4th-and-1 inside the opponent 30. I begged Steve Spagnuolo last week to show he gets it, and he doesn't, not yet. We are sick of the Rams losing home games (11 straight now). We are sick of losing EVERY game we play in the division (14 straight now). And it's sure getting tiring losing EVERY TIME to a Seattle team that hasn't even been any good the last two years. But it's 10 straight to them now, with no sign it will EVER let up, because the head coach of a 1-9 team wants to play it safe in scoring territory at the start of the game. How did that work out, by the way?
I'll buy some reasons Spagnuolo didn't want to go for it on 4th-and-1. Jackson had just been stuffed on 3rd-and-1, and maybe he didn't have a read on Steven's health yet and was reluctant to slam him in there again. And you're certainly not going to rely on Frick Gado or Frack Darby on 4th-and-1. So why not sneak Boller? He's 6'3”, all he has to do is fall down. Or bootleg him. Or keep Jackson in as a decoy, play-action and throw a seam route to the TE. For Christ's sake, I don't care if you want to go Mike Martz on their ass and run the dreaded end-around, do something! I know much of anything creative scares this coaching staff, especially on offense, but show us you're mad as hell at all these pathetic losing streaks and you're not going to take it any more! I also suspect Brown missing the 4th-and-1 FG led Spagnuolo to go for it on 4th-and-4. Can't trust him to hit from 46, you're not going to trust him from 52. So that just compounded the decision to kick on 4th-and-1 when 4th-and-4 failed as miserably as it can fail, with a pick-six. Sure, I'm an irrational fan, but good luck convincing me Spagnuolo didn't cost his team 17 points today. Could have taken ten, gave up seven instead. Rams football: it's fan-tastic!
You could tell Boller was back in the lineup today, huh? Very first play Pat Shurmur calls is a rollout. I thought he was smart to use a lot of play-action, though the Rams could sell it a lot better. The Avery TD, where they sold it perfectly, could have been the Sweet Play of the Week had everything else about the Rams not sucked. Avery motioned left, and while the whole offense faked a Jackson handoff left, Avery doubled back right and was open pretty handily for the toss from Boller rolling right. Now, if he'd just started using blitz-beating plays like the Avery smoke route BEFORE getting blitzed by Seattle for three quarters. That adjustment was like the Titanic hanging a left after hitting the iceberg. Defensively, I thought the Rams had a good blitz mix working, getting pressure with it without getting burned by it. Seattle is extremely potent with screen passes and the outside players made a very successful effort to take that away from them, though you wonder how much that took away from the run defense, which simply cannot continue to be this wretchedly awful. A last question, I really don't know the answer: does this team ever run blitz? Do our DBs ever slash in and stop a back in the backfield? Does a team this bad against the run have anything to lose by gambling like that more? OK, that was three questions.
* Upon further review: Scott Green and crew were mostly on top of things. They got the call right when it briefly looked like the Rams had muffed away the blocked punt in the 3rd, but the Ram player, I believe Dominic Douglas, had been blocked into the ball. Patrick Kerney took Boller out flagrantly late on a play in the 4th and got a deserved flag for it. Jackson's late TD came about because they reviewed and reversed an apparent Boller TD scramble, which bordered on cruel and unusual punishment to Rams fans. By far the least popular call was the tripping penalty on Amendola in the end zone after Boller's 2nd INT, which looked much more incidental than intentional from the stands. How sure are we Avery wasn't interfered with on the pick-six? Jennings sure grabbed and spun him, though the ball was right there, too. B-minus for the crew assuming that call was OK.
* Cheers: It was just as well the game wasn't on TV locally. If the quality of the play on the field didn't turn St. Louisans off of watching Rams football forever, the embarrassingly sparse crowd would have. The Dome wasn't even half-filled this week, though the hardy few present generated solid noise in bursts and even got Sean Locklear to false-start in the 3rd to help force a FG. Too bad the defense was consistently quick to kibosh any momentum we could muster. People started getting up to leave after Boller's 2nd INT – that was with EIGHT minutes left. In the THIRD quarter! Needless to say, post-game traffic was pretty smooth today. Pee-wee, or youth (there were some mighty big kids out there) football got the halftime show, with the annual Punt, Pass and Kick demoted to a brief pre-game announcement. Sad to see that long-time tradition getting short shrift.
* Who’s next?: Ah, to have been a Chicagoan this summer. The city had the sports world by the tail. The White Sox and Cubs were in the middle of pennant races. With the hometown President and the mighty Oprah lobbying on the city's behalf, their 2016 Summer Olympic bid was in the bag. And Da Bears were on their way to the Super Bowl after trading for rifle-armed Broncos QB Jay Cutler. It was Chicago's world; the rest of us were just living in it.
None of it lasted long, and faster than you can say “Rio de Janeiro,” the Bears' season headed downhill with the rest. Instead of leading the Bears to the playoffs, Cutler's led them to the league lead in interceptions. The team's returned the favor in not supporting Cutler very well. Matt Forte's rookie magic appears gone this season, and the Bears – the franchise of Red Grange, Bronko Nagurski, Gale Sayers and Walter Payton – are 28th in the NFL in rushing. 28th! The Bears! The problem starts in Chicago where it starts for a lot of teams, the offensive line. Orlando Pace may not play next week due to a groin injury; just as well for his long-time Rams fans. His play this year has only proven that the Rams made the right move to let him go. Pace can throw the occasional dominating run block but has been a liability in pass pro. Any Bears game I watch, there are guys just pouring in past Olin Kreutz, who I'd have to call a shell of his former self at center, and Roberto Garza looks awful at RG. Cutler gets hit a lot, and hears even more footsteps. He's jumpier in the pocket than Jim Carrey after a Red Bull, doesn't throw accurately enough under pressure to make defenses pay for blitzing, and locks in almost exclusively on TE Greg Olson when he does. I'll just say a capable defense, capably coached, would find ways to take advantage of these tendencies.
It's a bad time for Steven Jackson to be hurting; even with head coach Lovie Smith taking over as defensive coordinator, the Bears – the franchise of Dick Butkus, Richard Dent, Mike Singletary, Brian Urlacher (not this season; he's missed all of it with a broken wrist) – are only 23rd in the league against the run. The Bears can't run or defend the run? The Bears? But their only defensive playmaker lately's been CB Charles Tillman, the only guy in their secondary who can cover anybody, and he took a blow to the head in Minnesota. Avery's in trouble if Tillman plays, because Tillman, like Atogwe for the Rams, has a sixth sense for forcing fumbles. Two hands on the ball, wideouts. Still, you can throw away from Tillman, and if Chicago doesn't toughen up against the run, the Rams can feel really free to uncork their offense against them next week. Yeah, buddy. Let's just say a capable offense, capably coached, would find ways to take advantage of their weak spots.
God I love writing previews. The Rams haven't proven week-to-week that they've got any ability, other than Jackson's guts, that makes them suited to attack any other team's weaknesses. Why note that Forte's having an off year when two of the league's worst running teams just ripped the Rams on the ground? Why imagine ways for the Ram offense to attack defenses when its goal in life is to be boring? Why preview opponents in a vacuum that excludes the Rams' injuries, inexperience and outright lack of talent?
A capable team, capably coached, would find the Chicago Bears very beatable next week, even in Soldier Field. The Rams aren't there, unless Steven Jackson carries them there, which is possible.
There's your preview.
--Mike
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