RamView, October 25, 2009
From The Couch
(Report and opinions on the game.)
Game #7: Colts 42, Rams 6
Well, the Rams know what it was like to be the Japanese air force during the Godzilla movies. They knew they would have to play a perfect game today to stand a chance against the Colts, but as the final score makes plain, they were pretty much their normal 2009 selves, even as the Colts weren't really trying that hard. 17 in a row!
* QB: Every football show you watch lately hails 2009 as the Year of the Quarterback. For Rams quarterback Marc Bulger, 2009's been a year to forget. Today's stat line was the most dreadful one yet of a season gone bad: 14-26, 140 yards, no TDs, 2 INTs (one returned for TD), passer rating 37.3, worse than if he had just thrown every pass attempt into the ground. And this includes a 50-yard bomb to Donnie Avery the Rams' first series! Indisputably, Bulger has to get better help from his receivers than he did today. There were at least four dropped passes. The opening drive fizzled into a FG after Tim Carter dropped a 2nd-down pass and had no clue where he was going on a 3rd-down end zone incompletion. Mike Karney and Kenneth Darby dropped passes the next drive. Avery topped the day off by dropping a 4th-down pass. Bulger got pretty good protection a lot of the day, but three drives were killed by sacks. You can pin a lot of Bulger's bad numbers on his receivers and maybe a little on the offensive line. The brutal passer rating, though, belongs a lot to him. In the 3rd, rookie Jacob Lacey jumped Keenan Burton's out route to pick off Bulger deep in Rams territory and ran it in for a TD to put the Colts out of reach, 28-6. CBS’ analyst said Burton didn't come back for the ball hard enough, but still – isn't that play usually the veteran DB picking off the rookie QB instead of vice versa? Why's Bulger throwing that pass into a group of Colt defenders when he's got Steven Jackson open in the middle of the field for a checkdown? Surely Bulger knows where Jackson's going to be on every play, so why's he trying to force a much more difficult pass to Burton, on first down? I understand Bulger's end zone INT in the 4th even less. No doubt, as pointed out on TV, Burton ran a terrible pattern. But why did Bulger throw to him? After he pump-faked and froze the safety, he had Randy McMichael open in the middle of the field on a post route down at the goal line. Inside shoulder throw to the TE is a TD there. Why's Bulger throwing into “crowds” on the sidelines when he has open options in the middle of the field? It's been very popular to blame the inexperienced Rams receiving corps for the team's woeful offensive performance, and that argument holds a lot of water. But I'm not sure Marc Bulger didn't cost his team 14 points today. A lot may be out of Bulger's control; he may be just the “manager” of the offense, but the Rams don't have the margin of error to absorb big mistakes from their QB, and I believe there's going to be at least one “Doh!” moment when they review tape Monday.
* RB: Paradoxically, the better Steven Jackson plays, the worse the Rams do, as he’s coming off his best game of the season in an otherwise-pitiful blowout. This week the second half was his strong half, and he thrived despite an utterly predictable game plan that had him running up the middle on nearly every first down. Jackson owned the third quarter. He started by spinning out of a tackle in the backfield and gaining 11. The Rams' second FG drive was all Jackson, gashing the Colts over the right side for 12, 11, and 13 more, before getting Josh Brown into position with 8 yards on a 3rd-down inside handoff. He opened the next drive with a 14-yard run off the left side, and the way Jackson was piling up yards now, the Colts' 21-6 lead was starting to topple like a Jenga tower. Indy salted the game away, though - Jenga! - with a pick-six the next play. That didn’t slow Jackson down much. He powered up the middle for 9, then behind Jacob Bell for 14, to ignite a Rams drive that got back into the red zone. And fizzled. Badly. Not much later, Indy's up 35-6 and Jackson's coming out of the game with what I think was a shoe problem but scarily looked a little like a foot injury. We're near the time of year for scary stuff, but I can imagine little scarier than the Ram offense without Steven Jackson, whose 134 yards on 23 carries were nearly as much as Marc Bulger passed for. Kenneth Darby did chip in 16 yards, most of it on a 2nd-and-a-mile draw play, while I'm not sure Samkon Gado (4-5) has actually run forward for a gain this season. The Ram backfield, no, the Ram offense, no, the whole Rams team without Jackson would be like the Doors without Jim Morrison.
* Receivers: If there’s a sadder joke right now than the Ram receiving corps, I don’t want to hear it. Things got off to a hot start today when Donnie Avery (2-58) caught a 50-yard bomb from Bulger off a flea-flicker, though I don’t know why he couldn’t keep his feet under him on the play. The pass led him, he should have been on his way to the end zone; instead, he goes down in a heap and is injured (AGAIN) on the play. He did come back in time to drop a pass in the 4th. His replacement, Tim Carter (0-0), butchered the end of that opening drive by dropping a 2nd down pass and breaking the wrong way in the end zone on 3rd down. Why is he here again? Keenan Burton (3-28) earned some of the blame for both of Bulger’s INTs – he sure ran a poor route on the 2nd one, cutting behind the defender. It’s apparent the Rams have NO downfield threat without Avery on the field. It was just sad watching the DB outrun Burton on an attempted go route late in the game. With the tight ends chipping in only 3 catches for 16 yards combined, the only sort-of-bright spot was Danny Amendola (5-39), who did some damage with quick screens. As for the guy who’s so great the Rams traded Will Witherspoon for him, even though he couldn’t beat out Jason Avant at Philadelphia, even though the Rams drafted UNC’s third-best wideout – you know, the one with the broken leg? – instead of him in this past draft’s FIFTH round? Yeah, he was inactive. Answers at WR remain few and far between.
* Offensive line: The offensive line looked pretty good for stretches. They held the dangerous Colts DEs in check much of the way. They also had their best run-blocking game of the season. Jackson was only stopped for no gain or a loss twice. Richie Incognito got a strong block in front of Jackson on a 9-yard draw in the 2nd. A LB got through but great surge by the whole line got Jackson 11 after he broke that tackle early in the 3rd. Then they really started taking it to the Colts. Jackson went right for 12 behind Mike Karney and Randy McMichael. He went right for 11 the next play behind McMichael and Adam Goldberg. Then, right again, 13 more, behind Goldberg, Karney and Billy Bajema. Waiter, more RED MEAT over here, please! They got Jackson running left later, a couple of 14-yarders behind dominating blocks by Jacob Bell, and if even Bell's bringing it like that, the line must be having a great day, right? Well... Bell helped kill two early drives, once with a holding penalty, once with a missed block on a promising screen to Amendola. Jason Smith split time with Alex Barron at LT; in the 2nd, he whiffed on Dwight Freeney completely - no spin required on that play – and got Bulger splattered at the 1-yard line. Bulger was sacked again the next drive. As Bulger's trying to step up from the rush, Eric Foster knocks Barron back SIX FEET, into Bulger's way, giving him nowhere to go. Holy cats, Alex. Barron then held a spinning Freeney brutally on third down (no flag) and still couldn't stop him from getting to Bulger and forcing an incomplete pass. And guess who false-started to kill the Rams' first drive after halftime. As the Rams neared the red zone in the 3rd, no one blocked Robert Mathis on a 1-yard Samkon Gado loss; that was probably Bajema's block to make. Next play, Daniel Muir whips Jason Brown with a swim move and drops Bulger for the third time. I'd say most of the line played ok. Goldberg actually had a pretty good game. The weak(est) link was Barron, and now that we see Smith starting to get snaps over there, there's little reason not to keep him at LT the rest of the season. They're taking way too many lumps with Barron over there anyway. Smith needs the work and can’t be that much worse.
* Defensive line / LB: Not a good day at all to be a Rams defensive player. Today looked more like an 11-on-11 no-contact scrimmage than it looked like an actual game. I kept checking to see if Peyton Manning had a red jersey on. Leonard Little was the only Ram to even remotely pressure Manning, landing a couple of hits. He got Manning’s arm on one play, but of course, Peyton completed the pass anyway. Chris Long maybe got close enough once to hail a cab that could get him closer to the QB for minimum fare. Long usually does some good stuff that doesn’t get noticed on the box score, but today it was hard enough just to notice him, vs. either the pass or the run. With Indy already up 7-3, Long ate up the fake like a rube to set up a screen to Dallas Clark for 11. If Long stays home, Manning can’t even throw the pass! Next play, Clark manhandles Long, Reggie Wayne blocks James Butler and the LT wipes out Ron Bartell with a kickout block, leaving Donald Brown a huge hole to run through untouched for 45. It was depressing how easily the Rams were taken out of plays today, especially by tight ends. James Laurinaitis had just 4 tackles and got blocked out of a lot of plays. Joseph Addai scored an EASY 6-yard TD to put Indy up 21-3. The Rams had NINE in the box and still couldn’t touch the ballcarrier. Mike Pollak picked off O.J. Atogwe AND Laurinaitis. Ryan Diem easily drove off Little, a bit of a liability against the run himself. Clark easily drove off Paris Lenon. It was cake for Addai from there. The Colts’ 5th TD drive wasn’t pretty for the Rams. Their best stop of the drive only came because they had 12 men on the field. (Hey, I told them to try it.) Long got driven out of the way like a lightweight on a 12-yard Addai run. Addai went Little’s way for 8 after Leonard was flattened by yep, TE Gijon Robinson. That led to another passing TD, but the Colts weren't done on the ground, as somebody named Chad Simpson put the bow on the ugly package with a 31-yard TD run around left end to make it 42-6. Long got stopped by a double-team, but Larry Grant got blocked and looked out of position, Laurinaitis wasn't quite fast enough to keep Simpson from turning the corner, and as with a lot of the day, I don't know what James Butler was doing. I think he was trying to play the cutback, so no safety help on the play when Simpson shot up the sideline. C.J. Ah You lined up as an inside pass rusher a lot and led the defense with seven tackles. They also dropped him back in coverage a few times. Those seven tackles equaled the rest of the line’s output combined, according to NFL.com. I was surprised to see Long had as many as he did, 3. Little? None. Dominated ain’t the word for what happened to the Ram front seven today. The Colts just steamrolled them, with TD drives of 90, 78 and 93 yards, with little sign the Rams were ever going to stop them. Like I said up top: Japanese air force, meet Godzilla.
* Secondary: In some ways, the secondary played better than Manning’s 3-touchdown day made it look. Yes, Clark beat Ron Bartell and James Butler for 27 and the Colts' 2nd TD. That, however, was a damn perfect pass by Manning I'm not sure anybody could have defended. To open the game, Gijon Robinson beat tight coverage by Laurinaitis for 19 on 2nd-and-15. Then Reggie Wayne began abusing Bartell, beating him for 25 and 17 to set up his 5-yard TD where he just cut in front of Bradley Fletcher at the goal line. Wayne and Bartell may have been in the same ballpark today literally, but they sure weren't figuratively. Only an injury to Wayne gave Bartell much relief in that matchup. Bartell had a full plate; he was also called on to cover Dallas Clark a lot, and the Rams did hold him to 3 catches for 44. Butler and Craig Dahl hammered Clark to help get a rare defensive stop to start the 2nd. Bartell nearly intercepted a pass for Clark a little later; I still don't know how he managed not to catch the ball. Possibly he didn't see it until too late. Midway through the 3rd, Bartell and O.J. Atogwe perfectly bracketed Wayne on a 3rd-down deep pass to get the Rams the ball back, and a little hope, down 21-6. We know that didn't last long. Fletcher appeared to have the best day of any of the DBs. He was very strong in run support, and you have to notice that Manning didn't go after him a lot. Then, as he's smartly breaking up a sideline bomb for Pierre Garcon in the 4th, his leg buckles in holy-mother-of-God fashion, though it's been diagnosed as a hyperextended knee. Let's hope he heals fast; he's starting to look pretty good out there. Back after several weeks on the shelf, Butler looked mostly rusty. He wasn't a factor against the run (1 tackle), he took a bad angle on the Simpson TD run, and he bit on the play-fake on Austin Collie's TD like Lassie chomping on a Milk-Bone. The Rams need a lot better safety play than that; hell, they need a lot better defensive play, period, than they got today, or they're going 0-and-60, let alone 16.
* Special teams: Funny thing – one area the Rams may be settled in is their traditionally-awful special teams. The Colts didn’t do very much on returns. Donnie Jones pinned Indy inside the 15 four times, inside the 5 twice. And the defense actually made all of those stand up! Josh Brown did all the Rams’ scoring, from 30 and 45. Worst news of the day was a season-ending ACL injury to long snapper Chris Massey covering a punt in the 2nd. It’ll be up to Billy Bajema to replace Massey the rest of the way. What a shame to lose a favorite player, one of the team’s most consistent, and yet still unsung worker like Massey in a game like this one.
* Coaching: I know the Colts scored 42, but the defensive approach today was still fine. The little blitzing they did worked in that it rushed Manning’s throw or convinced him to check down on 3rd-and-long. I didn’t notice any of the Colts’ big plays beating blitzes, unless you count the play where no one covered Collie in the flat in the 3rd quarter, and I’m not sure Fletcher was supposed to blitz there. Too much blitzing would have just exposed the Ram secondary further. The Rams had to get there with their four-man rush, and they never did.
Since I’m voting lack-of-talent vs. scheme on defense this week, I’d better do it on offense, too. Once again this week what we mainly saw was Bulger rarely getting the ball downfield, nothing completed over 10 yards, few passes even being thrown that far. Yet opportunities downfield are popping up on the radar, mine anyway, maybe I’m poorly calibrated, that Bulger’s missing. And it really does seem true that without Avery on the field, the Rams have NO ONE capable of getting open more than 10 yards downfield and stretching the defense. Burton doesn’t have the speed; Carter needs a map to find the end zone. With Avery on the field, Pat Shurmur went deep early, and with a sweet flea-flicker play, pretty much a perfect call. I liked the well-set-up quick screens to Amendola, though I think he’s got the speed to use downfield a little more. I would have liked to see Jackson and the tight ends used more – they totaled just four catches, and I have to believe those guys could help free up the WRs. But without Avery, yeah, Shurmur’s trying to chop down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring. If you guessed Jackson was going up the middle on every first down today, you were right a lot more than you were wrong. It’s a tribute to Jackson that he gained as much as he did on plays where everybody knows he’s getting the ball, and where he’s going. Shurmur seemed to mix that up better in the 2nd half, getting Jackson going right, then left, and getting big gains out of it. You’d think that with ok protection and an awesome running game to balance it, that the passing game would still work a lot better than it is. I don’t know how much play-action the Rams tried. The raging success of the flea-flicker should make play-action a Shurmur staple, shouldn’t it? Somewhere along the way, Shurmur’s got to make more happen with the pieces he’s got. King Arthur didn’t have to chop down the tree to defeat the Knights Who Say Ni, you know.
* Upon further review: The weird play involving the Carl Cheffers crew was an Addai sweep on 3rd-and-2 in the 4th. The spot always looked poor, short by about a yard, and the Colts eventually challenged it. Cheffers reviews the play and announces that they’re going to “respot the ball to the middle of the line” and re-measure. That by itself wouldn’t change the measurement, would it? Yet, out come the chains, and now we’ve suddenly got a first down. They got the play right, but Cheffers needed to describe what was going on better. The spot certainly changed, didn’t it? Instead he frustrated the home fans when he could have completely avoided that. I’ll give the crew a C.
* Cheers: Full disclosure: I was unable to attend today's game, so I'd like to thank my fellow Rams fans and an estimable number of Colts fans for keeping the TV blackout lifted, though that stuck me with Kevin Harlan and Solomon Wilcots on CBS trying to one-up each other in the Stupid Stat of the Day competition. Harlan: the Rams have gone through 12 QBs since Manning became the Colts starter in 1998. That's important when the Rams have been in more Super Bowls than the Colts since 1998? Seems as meaningful to me as the Rams outrushing the Colts in the third quarter today. Wilcots won, though, with: Austin Collie gained 14 pounds while on a 2-year mission in Argentina, going from 196 to 220. I didn't major in math, either, but... Despite a snowstorm, last week, the Patriot cheerleaders dressed for Halloween, when Pats fans already have a lot to cheer about. A week closer to Halloween, in a climate-controlled dome, before thousands of fans with little else to cheer about, the Rams “cheerleaders” once again this year did not dress for Halloween. As this appalling lack of cheerleader professionalism continues, RamView has no choice but to call for a new Rams cheerleader coordinator. This year most of all, the Rams “cheerleaders” should be going the extra yard to spread cheer. If you're not trying to be the best, you're not trying.
* Who’s next?: During the offseason, I happily wrote that the head coaching change to Steve Spagnuolo from Scott Linehan would gain the Rams two or three wins, simply because Linehan was so awful. Well, we’re coming up on week 8 now, the change to Spagnuolo has yet to mean even ONE win, and the Rams look more and more like they’re heading down the road of historic futility the Detroit Lions paved last season. Speak of the bedeviled, that’s the Rams’ next opponent, with none other than Scott Linehan calling the offense for HC Jim Schwartz.
Bad news: Linehan’s had a bye week to plan for the Rams. The best game Linehan called in 2.25 seasons here came off a bye, when the 0-7 Rams won in New Orleans in 2007. And the bye gets the Lions a lot healthier, giving Matthew Stafford, Daunte Culpepper and stud WR Calvin Johnson time to come back from injuries. The Rams won’t face the offense the Packers shut out two weeks ago. Thanks again for that bye week scheduling, NFL! There isn’t a big secret to defending the Lions; Linehan said as much in an interview last month. Play eight in the box and shade coverage to Calvin’s side. Linehan doesn’t have confidence in his running game yet and won’t punish a defense for directing extra attention toward #81. Kevin Smith gets just 3.2 a rush, and the Lions’ two longest runs this season are by Stafford and Culpepper. The Lions got a big game from Bryant Johnson when they beat Washington last month to break their 19-game losing streak. The Rams can’t let that 2nd receiver beat them, whether it’s him or rookie TE Brandon Pettigrew. The snowball starts rolling if that happens. In the end, though, it’s a Linehan offense; just blitz it. Stafford’s shown he’ll make the rookie-type mistake, and is still working on his accuracy. Culpepper’s a veteran but isn’t much less mistake-prone. Detroit’s o-line allowed the second-most sacks in the league thru six weeks and has a Barronesque penalty waiting to happen in Gosder Cherilus. Double Calvin, throw some pressure at them, let the chips fall where they may; some should fall right into your lap.
The main reason the Redskins lost to Detroit in September was abysmal offense, something we’re all too familiar with here. Certainly the Lions are going to stack up the line to stop Steven Jackson; it’s imperative for the Rams to open up the field with the pass. The Lions are actually among the league’s sack leaders but are still the 29th-ranked pass defense and allow a whopping passer rating against of 118.7. Yes, they’ve faced Brees, Rodgers, Cutler, Roethlisberger and Favre, but even Jason Campbell logged a 97.6! The Lions have as bad a secondary as the Rams will face this year outside practice – the Ram passing game runs out of excuses a little after noon this Sunday. DC Gunther Cunningham wants to blitz half the time but has had to play it more conservatively because his players screw up too much. Again, though, they’ve just gotten a free week to hammer out some of their defensive growing pains. Have I thanked the NFL for scheduling Detroit that bye week already? The Ram offense isn’t tasked with playing error-free ball like they were against the Colts. Their job this week is to commit fewer errors than Detroit.
Is that too high a hurdle now? Eight weeks into the season, does Steve Spagnuolo have the Rams coached up enough to outplay an offense engineered by Scott Linehan? Can they match wits and blows with the team coming off the worst season in NFL history? The answer may very well be no, and if it is, the 2009 season won’t be just a small step backward for the Rams, it’ll be a giant leap backward for Ramkind. And the moon’s going to seem nearby compared to the depth of the hole the Rams are on their way to digging themselves into.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
Monday, October 26, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
RamView, October 18, 2009
From The Couch
(Report and opinions on the game.)
Game #6: Jagwires 23, Rams 20 (OT)
Make it 16 straight losses, a YEAR without a win, for the Rams after a surreal amount of bad luck in Jacksonville. Untimely injuries, dropped interceptions, crap pass interference calls by crap referees, even the coin toss conspired against the gallant but near-luckless Rams today. Hey, “football gods,” you owe us one after today. Big time.
* QB: Marc Bulger (22-34-213, 79.7 rating) started this game with a hot hand left over from last week's performance off the bench. His first pass was a superb sideline cover-2 beater to Keenan Burton for 21. And after Steven Jackson drove the Rams into the red zone, Bulger hit Donnie Avery in the corner of the end zone with a pretty 17-yard pass for the Rams' FIRST first-quarter TD of the season, a 7-0 lead, and what appeared to be the start of a promising afternoon on offense. Not so fast. Next possession, Bulger went deep for Avery, who had a step, in the end zone, but the pass was slightly underthrown and intercepted by Rashean Mathis. Avery left the game injured a little later and it was all downhill from there. The offense's options the rest of the way: be carried on Jackson's broad shoulders or have Bulger throw a 5-yard pass (if that). Bulger spent most of the afternoon dumping off on 3rd-and-long. This may well have been due to lack of open, or healthy, receivers. Burton and Danny Amendola were the only WRs who could even take the field for stretches. A couple of times near midfield, though, in the 1st and again in the 3rd, Bulger could have kept a drive alive with better third-down throws to Amendola. Both times Amendola had to come back for a short, low ball, thrown by Bulger on the run, and he couldn't get the first. In Jagwire territory near the end of the first half, Bulger slightly overthrew Daniel Fells (and hung him out to dry), who was open on a promising deep middle route. In the second half, the Rams had one (rushing) first down until the final 2:00, when they finally sustained another drive. Bulger hit Amendola for 13 on 3rd-and-5 at the Jagwire 35. Then, after having a certain TD pass to Daniel Fells knocked down by LB Daryl Smith, he hit Randy McMichael for 14 to get the Rams inside the 10. But with one shot with 15 seconds left, Bulger couldn't make anything happen, the Rams settled for a FG and never saw the ball again. This game's filled with a lot of what-ifs. What if Bulger hits one of those 3rd-down passes to Amendola? What if he puts another foot or so on the intercepted TD bomb for Avery? Seems like small potatoes, but more and more, the Ram offense doesn't appear to have even that small a margin for error.
* RB: Called on to carry the Ram offense by himself with 10 or 11 Jagwires clawing at him, another heroic effort by Steven Jackson was wasted. He ran for only 50 yards but totaled 128 thanks to success with the screen pass. He kept the first Ram TD drive alive on 3rd-and-8, taking a screen 19 yards and running over a DB after getting a big block from Richie Incognito. He powered most of the Rams’ FG drive late in the 2nd, with a couple of 9-yard runs off the left side and a 7-yard run behind Mike Karney up the middle. The Karney-Jackson combo was successful several times. Jackson started the 3rd quarter powering right up the middle for 15. Unfortunately, it would be another lost 3rd quarter for him from there. He only had three carries for minus-1 and two incompletions between that run and the 1:49 mark of the 4th quarter, when he made the Rams’ offensive play of the day. Off play-action at the Rams 22, he got another block from Incognito, and with at least three Jagwires whiffing along the way, rumbled off for 38 yards, dragging four defenders the last five yards. Efforts like that made it a real shame the Rams could only tie the game in regulation. Jackson ran hard against a Jagwire D stacked up to stop him all day. He was dangerous as a receiver. He even picked blitzes up well today. The guy’s just about doing it all. And getting nothing to show for it.
* Receivers: Is it time to wonder what Donnie Avery (1-17) is ever going to amount to? Shortly after beating two Jagwires in the corner of the end zone and making a nice catch for the Rams’ first TD, he left the game, injured AGAIN (hip-related), and the line of scrimmage became a black hole from which the Ram passing game could or would not escape. The injury made Keenan Burton (5-37) the ersatz #1, but after a fast start, he did nothing, with just one catch for two yards in the 2nd half. Danny Amendola (3-25) had a couple of shots to convert 3rd downs but Bulger’s throws appeared to pull him in short of the mark. He did convert a 3rd-and-5 to extend the game-tying FG drive. Randy McMichael (3-32) turned a couple of short passes into 10-yard-plus first downs; maybe the Rams should have looked his way more. Daniel Fells (2-11) got clocked the first time Bulger threw his way and wasn’t much of a factor. Tim Carter (0-0), who’d been back about three days after originally being cut in training camp, was thrust into action but got hurt himself, leaving Burton and Amendola the Rams’ ONLY healthy WRs at times. Injuries don’t help, but save the Laurent Robinson signing, the Rams haven’t made a good decision at the position since drafting Kevin Curtis in 2003. This year’s decision to woefully understaff the position is certainly included.
* Offensive line: The offensive line wasn’t outplayed today as much as it was outnumbered. When the defense can load up the box with impunity, the linemen simply can’t pick up everybody, and so Jackson fell often to slashing LBs and DBs. Strictly line-vs.-line, the Rams held up all right. Surprised by Derrick Harvey dropping back in coverage during the opening drive, Bulger held the ball and was sacked after Atiyyah Ellison beat Jacob Bell AND put Alex Barron ON HIS ASS, but that was the only time Bulger was taken down, and he had great protection for stretches. And right after that sack, a great block out front by Richie Incognito sprung a Jackson screen for 19 and a first down anyway. Run blocking was up and down. Barron set the edge nicely for a 9-yard sweep left late in the 2nd but drew a false start in the 1st. Jackson ran behind Mike Karney for 9 and 7 during the Rams’ first-half FG drive and also got a nice block from Bell on that first run. Then again, he got dropped for -3 inside the 2:00 warning after Randy McMichael got no block on Clint Ingram at all. The Rams opened the 2nd half on offense with a 15-yard run for Jackson up the middle, with big blocks by Jason Brown, Incognito and Karney. Two plays later, Bell gets beaten badly on the backside and Jackson can only gain 1 after spinning out of a big loss. I didn’t keep careful track but it looked like Adam Goldberg and Jason Smith switched in and out at RT. Smith looked good run-blocking, but on the Rams’ final 3-and-out, both he and Barron got eaten alive on a Jackson run that lost three. Ingram then bulled Barron right back into Bulger to foul up a screen pass the next play. The Rams did get back to tie the game after the big 38-yard screen to Jackson, sprung by a decent block again by Incognito. Richie had a good game. Smith and Jason Brown I’d say were ok. Bell and Barron I’d call inconsistent. You’d have liked line play to be a little better, but you’d also have liked Jacksonville not to have stacked the line of scrimmage all day, either.
* Defensive line / LB: The Ram defense played with a lot of heart but couldn’t have had a lot of lung left after spending most of the 2nd half and all of OT on the field. It’s no wonder they had trouble stopping the Jagwires late. Unfortunately, though, they didn’t really stop them early, either. They sacked David Garrard three times but still gave him far too much time to throw. The 4-man rush rarely got there – Chris Long’s presence in the Ram defense was barely a rumor – and the Rams blitzed a lot and it didn’t get there a lot. The 41-yard bomb to Torry Holt beat a blitz, and Maurice Jones-Drew ran through Bradley Fletcher the next play for the first of three TDs. The Rams were terrible on 3rd down, stopping only 5 of 16 chances. Garrard scrambled through the gaping lane Leonard Little left for 9 on 3rd-and-8 at the end of the 1st. Good news, though; Ron Bartell forced a Jones-Drew fumble the next play. The D really asserted itself the next drive. Cliff Ryan came in unblocked to drop Jones-Drew for minus-3. James Hall followed with a MANLY play, going right through Eugene Monroe and grabbing Garrard for the Rams’ first sack. Little then discarded Eben Britton with ease and sacked Garrard again to end the drive. Ryan got a sack early in the 3rd thanks to LaJuan (WHO?) Ramsey collapsing the pocket single-handedly, and a blitzing Fletcher hit Garrard on 3rd down to end the drive. The Rams still held a 10-6 lead, and were looking solid, but the offense kept coming straight off the field. The Jagwires had the ball at least 20 minutes of the 2nd half and wore the Rams down. Another big factor was an injury that put Hall out of the game. C.J. Ah You was nowhere near as staunch against the run, which the Jags exploited. Ah You did make a big play at the end of the 3rd. With Garrard getting simply all day to throw by this point, Ah You tipped a red-zone pass at the line for an INT by James Laurinaitis. But the offense put the defense right back out there, and now they really started getting gashed. Garrard faked Ryan out of his jock and ran through Little’s vacated area for an 11-yard scramble. Then the killer blow, a Jones-Drew 26-yard draw down to the three. The entire d-line was pushed right and destroyed. Six Rams screwed tackles on the play, including a near-horse collar by Laurinaitis that Jones-Drew ran through. On 3rd-and-goal, Jones-Drew bounced off Larry Grant and through Ah You’s spot – he had been driven nearly all the way to the center – to give Jacksonville a 13-10 lead. The offense 3-and-outed AGAIN, though, and the Rams looked dead, if not for a moment of brilliance by Little. He stepped out on an intended screen pass for Greg Jones, plucked the ball from the receiver’s hands, sprinted 30 yards down to the 5 and DIVED for the pylon for the TD and a 17-13 lead. Sadly, that momentum wasn’t enough to energize another stop. Garrard scrambled for 13 through a lane left this time by Long. Jones-Drew swept right for 18 with DBs missing tackles and Ah You getting dominated by a TE. An unhurried Garrard hit Mike Sims-Walker for 26. Jones-Drew beat a zone blitz, and Little in coverage, on a 13-yard screen down to the 10, and he and his o-line just overpowered the Rams on their way to a go-ahead TD. The game was probably in effect over when the Rams lost the overtime coin toss. Two plays into OT, the Rams lost Bartell AND Will Witherspoon to injuries. Garrard hit Sims-Walker for 22 to get the Jags close, and Jones-Drew continued to overpower the Rams’ right side for another 20 yards to make Josh Scobee’s game-winning FG a chippie. The D was certainly gassed by the end of the game, but could too have helped itself out with more consistent play earlier in the game, especially pressure on Garrard. They played with great heart, but could be said to have expired today due to arrhythmia.
* Secondary: In a disappointing season, I don’t know that there’s been a more disappointing Rams player than Ron Bartell. Bartell was Torry Holt’s (5-101) bee-yotch today, as the future Hall-of-Famer chalked up his first 100-yard game since 2007. Holt turned Bartell inside out on a 41-yard catch in the first like it was training camp 2005 all over again and Bartell was a rank rookie. Holt also drew two (legit) DPIs off of Bartell, including one on a two-yard slant on 2nd-and-10 that had me screaming to put someone else on Torry. For the love of Taje Allen, just let him catch that! Well, it was hardly a banner day for any of the Ram secondary. Mike Sims-Walker (9-120) burned Craig Dahl and O.J. Atogwe for 35 before Bartell redeemed himself (a little) by forcing a Jones-Drew fumble to start the 2nd. Soft zone coverage was ineffective all day. Sims-Walker got the Jagwires in (very long) FG position right before halftime with a 22-yard catch – how can you let that happen? As much as poor offense kept putting the defense back on the field, the secondary didn’t help them get off quickly. A six-minute Jagwire drive in the 3rd should have been stopped earlier, but Dahl dropped an interception, Bartell and Jonathan Wade committed DPIs real and imagined, and Wade was 10 yards off Mike Thomas on a 3rd-and-4 completion. Quincy Butler (!) finally ended the drive by breaking up a pass to Sims-Walker. But Sims-Walker broke wide open underneath the too-soft zone for 26 on the last Jagwire TD drive, and he did it again on a 3rd-and-6 in OT, all but sealing the Rams’ doom. 335 yards passing by David Gerrard? TWO 100-yard Jacksonville receivers? Terrible game by the Ram secondary today. Terrible.
* Special teams: Surprisingly strong day for Josh Brown, who hit a 52-yarder I was certain he’d miss just before halftime, and the 27-yard game-tying FG with :07 left in the game. Most of his kickoffs boomed deep into the end zone, too, which makes Donnie Jones’ poor day even more puzzling. Jones shanked punts all day for a pedestrian 41.8 average and can kiss the Pro Bowl good-bye, missing several opportunities to pin the Jagwires back with even-decent punts. The broadcast blamed a swirling wind. Enough to take almost ten yards off a guy’s punts? Amendola had a 57-yard return, getting good blocks in the “wedge” area (and some Jagwires out of their lanes) and picking up a block downfield by Billy Bajema. But Jones was a big impediment today in the Rams’ battle for field position.
* Coaching: It's certainly fair to wonder whether the Rams could have safely taken another shot at the end zone with seven seconds left in regulation, especially with a timeout in hand. For those who believe so, what play do you call? The previous play took 8 seconds. If Bulger gets flushed again, game's over. If you're throwing a fade pass into the end zone, who's the receiver? McMichael maybe? Maybe run what the Titans tried at the end of Super Bowl 34 and hit Burton on a slant? I’m fine with the FG because I just don’t know that they would have had a successful play to run for the TD. And you’ve got to rely on the hometown timekeeper not to have an itchy trigger finger. In full hindsight, that last TO probably should have come after McMichael's catch with 0:23 left. A couple of other game-management issues can probably be chalked up to Steve Spagnuolo being a rookie coach. Why freeze Josh Scobey before the 58-yard attempt at the end of the first half? Wouldn't you rather have him rush that try? It looked like Jagwire HC Jack del Rio really got away with pushing the officials around, browbeating them into more than his fair share of calls. I'd like to have seen Spagnuolo bow up more against that kind of stuff. Without the other guy fighting back, veteran coaches like del Rio are going to run roughshod over the referees all day.
It looked like Pat Shurmur's play-calling got off to a good start. The opening drive was the Rams' best drive of the season. The offense looked nicely balanced and the no-huddle kept the Jagwires on their heels. Once Avery was gone for the game, though, the passing game went back into the shell it's been in all season. And the offense’s second-half woes continued. After an initial first down, they didn’t get another until the final 2:00 of regulation. They essentially three-and-outed the entire half. Shurmur tried to get the ball in Jackson’s hands each possession, but there was nothing to discourage the Jagwires from putting everyone in the box to stop him. The Rams’ longest completion the first 28:00 of the second half was seven yards. Bulger had one attempt longer than ten yards. Instead of stretching the field, Shurmur wrapped it up tight and put a double rubber band around it. I know he was down to Amendola and Burton at WR for a while, but what, neither of them can run a 15-yard route? The tight ends can only catch 4-yard passes in the flat? The Rams have no way to get an RB downfield for a pass? Did Shurmur know he was up against the worst pass defense in the league? As much as I want to cut Shurmur some slack for the injuries at WR, an offense relying heavily on Donnie Avery remaining healthy probably isn’t operating on the right premise.
* Upon further review: I've never been a Jeff Triplette fan and today did nothing to change my mind. Some of the DPI calls were horrendous, coming WELL after the play was over, and with heavy lobbying from the Jagwire sideline. Wade's play in the 3rd was no DPI – he was within five yards and released contact before the pass was thrown. Laurinaitis didn't interfere with Jones-Drew in the 4th, either. There is no faceguarding penalty in the NFL; James was guilty of nothing except good coverage. I wouldn't be complaining if he were still a Ram like he should be, but the sideline “catch” by Holt late in the 3rd was completely a reputation-based call. Torry can make that catch. Has many times before. DIDN'T THIS TIME. He had a toe out of bounds and the ball was still moving in his outstretched hands. What was Triplette watching on the replay monitor after the Rams challenged? Playboy After Dark? The fumble called on Garrard in the 3rd was also an awful call. How did the official think the ball ended up where it did if Garrard's arm wasn't in motion? Luckily, none of these questionable calls contributed to scoring drives, so I'll score Triplette and crew a D-minus and hope they don't do any other Rams games this year.
* Cheers: I guess we're going to get a lot of Ron Pitts and John Lynch on game calls this year, huh? Like them or not, anything's better than Matt Vasgersian. Pitts was all over Donnie Jones' off-day punting like he had money on him or something. Can't remember the last time a play-by-play guy was so obsessed with a punter. Play-calling was pretty sloppy at times, especially regarding carries by Jones-Drew, who Pitts sometimes called “Jones” or “Drew” instead of using his correct name. The Jagwires have Greg Jones at RB, too; Pitts should know better than to get lazy with Jones-Drew's name in the booth. Lynch's points about Avery's absence hurting the offense were good, and he agreed some of the DPI calls were cheesy, but yes, John, I know Torry Holt wanted to get back at his old team. Lynch beat that dead horse so much that by the end of the game he was beating a bottle of glue.
* Who’s next?: Who made up this schedule, anyway? “Let’s see, your team struggled to the second-worst record in the league last year, so, next season, we’ll schedule three of your first four games on the road, and we’ll have two of your first three home games be against possibly the two best teams in the league. We’ll make sure both those teams are undefeated when you play them, and that you’ll play one that’s on a 14-game winning streak and got a bye the week before so they’re nice and rested up for ya. Lotsa luck, Spags!”
At least next week will give St. Louis fans the rare treat of seeing Peyton Manning in person. True, you can see him half-a-dozen times during a commercial break in any televised sports event (has Peyton ever turned down a product endorsement? Seriously, LifeLock?), but he’s well on his way to becoming the greatest QB in NFL history, if he isn’t already. His arm, accuracy and football intelligence put him in a Hall-of-Fame class by himself, and he’s succeeded despite an everchanging cast of supporting characters. Nobody makes his whole team better as much as Manning does. This year, he’s thrown for over 300 yards every game and has a passer rating of 114.1. How do you stop the guy? Hey, don’t ask me. Or Arizona (lost 31-10). Or Seattle (lost 34-17). Or Miami, who lost to Indy despite holding the ball for FORTY-FIVE minutes. If you can’t even beat Peyton by denying him the ball, what can you possibly do? I wouldn’t blitz. Peyton’s killed the blitz his whole career, and rookie RB Donald Brown has been terrific at blitz protection. Losing a man in coverage won’t be a good gamble; it won’t give Manning less time. I'd consider rushing two, double-covering Reggie Wayne and septuple-covering Dallas Clark, who I can’t see the Rams holding under 100 yards, or 2 TDs. Maybe sneak a 12th guy onto the field every now and then, see if the referees notice (Hey, they almost didn’t against Seattle!). Maybe blitz all 11, or 12, guys whenever Indy gets inside the 10. I'm almost serious about some of these ideas. It's going to take something radical for this Rams team to hold the Colts under 30 points. At the very least, bend-but-don’t break, hope you can hold them to a FG every now and then.
Dwight Freeney has a remarkable streak for this remarkably-streaking Colts team: a sack in every game this season. He has to be one of the fastest defensive ends in NFL history, the reason he’s been able to turn his back to his blocker with his patented spin move thousands of times in his career without getting punished for it. If there’s a better 1-2 pass rush punch in the NFL than Freeney and Robert Mathis – 16.5 and 16 sacks respectively since the beginning of last season – I can’t name them. And the Colt defense that didn’t use to blitz much when Tony Dungy was head coach, likes to bring it now. The Rams are going to have their hands fuller than Nadya Suleman's babysitter. Colt defenses have been known to struggle against the run, so the Rams have a chance to run ball-control offense with Steven Jackson, if they can get promising young play-making OLB Tyjuan Hagler blocked. And the Ram passing game has to be able to sustain something against a young but underrated Colts secondary. If they didn't have enough for Jacksonville's league-worst pass defense, it's hard to see them having enough for Indianapolis.
In the 322 years since Sir Isaac Newton discovered its laws, there may never have been a more lopsided case of momentum than the one we'll have next week. The Colts have won 14 straight. The Rams have lost 16 straight. Sure, an ant can move a rubber-tree plant, as Spagnuolo'll no doubt be whistling at Rams Park all week.
But can a gnat stop an on-coming train?
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
From The Couch
(Report and opinions on the game.)
Game #6: Jagwires 23, Rams 20 (OT)
Make it 16 straight losses, a YEAR without a win, for the Rams after a surreal amount of bad luck in Jacksonville. Untimely injuries, dropped interceptions, crap pass interference calls by crap referees, even the coin toss conspired against the gallant but near-luckless Rams today. Hey, “football gods,” you owe us one after today. Big time.
* QB: Marc Bulger (22-34-213, 79.7 rating) started this game with a hot hand left over from last week's performance off the bench. His first pass was a superb sideline cover-2 beater to Keenan Burton for 21. And after Steven Jackson drove the Rams into the red zone, Bulger hit Donnie Avery in the corner of the end zone with a pretty 17-yard pass for the Rams' FIRST first-quarter TD of the season, a 7-0 lead, and what appeared to be the start of a promising afternoon on offense. Not so fast. Next possession, Bulger went deep for Avery, who had a step, in the end zone, but the pass was slightly underthrown and intercepted by Rashean Mathis. Avery left the game injured a little later and it was all downhill from there. The offense's options the rest of the way: be carried on Jackson's broad shoulders or have Bulger throw a 5-yard pass (if that). Bulger spent most of the afternoon dumping off on 3rd-and-long. This may well have been due to lack of open, or healthy, receivers. Burton and Danny Amendola were the only WRs who could even take the field for stretches. A couple of times near midfield, though, in the 1st and again in the 3rd, Bulger could have kept a drive alive with better third-down throws to Amendola. Both times Amendola had to come back for a short, low ball, thrown by Bulger on the run, and he couldn't get the first. In Jagwire territory near the end of the first half, Bulger slightly overthrew Daniel Fells (and hung him out to dry), who was open on a promising deep middle route. In the second half, the Rams had one (rushing) first down until the final 2:00, when they finally sustained another drive. Bulger hit Amendola for 13 on 3rd-and-5 at the Jagwire 35. Then, after having a certain TD pass to Daniel Fells knocked down by LB Daryl Smith, he hit Randy McMichael for 14 to get the Rams inside the 10. But with one shot with 15 seconds left, Bulger couldn't make anything happen, the Rams settled for a FG and never saw the ball again. This game's filled with a lot of what-ifs. What if Bulger hits one of those 3rd-down passes to Amendola? What if he puts another foot or so on the intercepted TD bomb for Avery? Seems like small potatoes, but more and more, the Ram offense doesn't appear to have even that small a margin for error.
* RB: Called on to carry the Ram offense by himself with 10 or 11 Jagwires clawing at him, another heroic effort by Steven Jackson was wasted. He ran for only 50 yards but totaled 128 thanks to success with the screen pass. He kept the first Ram TD drive alive on 3rd-and-8, taking a screen 19 yards and running over a DB after getting a big block from Richie Incognito. He powered most of the Rams’ FG drive late in the 2nd, with a couple of 9-yard runs off the left side and a 7-yard run behind Mike Karney up the middle. The Karney-Jackson combo was successful several times. Jackson started the 3rd quarter powering right up the middle for 15. Unfortunately, it would be another lost 3rd quarter for him from there. He only had three carries for minus-1 and two incompletions between that run and the 1:49 mark of the 4th quarter, when he made the Rams’ offensive play of the day. Off play-action at the Rams 22, he got another block from Incognito, and with at least three Jagwires whiffing along the way, rumbled off for 38 yards, dragging four defenders the last five yards. Efforts like that made it a real shame the Rams could only tie the game in regulation. Jackson ran hard against a Jagwire D stacked up to stop him all day. He was dangerous as a receiver. He even picked blitzes up well today. The guy’s just about doing it all. And getting nothing to show for it.
* Receivers: Is it time to wonder what Donnie Avery (1-17) is ever going to amount to? Shortly after beating two Jagwires in the corner of the end zone and making a nice catch for the Rams’ first TD, he left the game, injured AGAIN (hip-related), and the line of scrimmage became a black hole from which the Ram passing game could or would not escape. The injury made Keenan Burton (5-37) the ersatz #1, but after a fast start, he did nothing, with just one catch for two yards in the 2nd half. Danny Amendola (3-25) had a couple of shots to convert 3rd downs but Bulger’s throws appeared to pull him in short of the mark. He did convert a 3rd-and-5 to extend the game-tying FG drive. Randy McMichael (3-32) turned a couple of short passes into 10-yard-plus first downs; maybe the Rams should have looked his way more. Daniel Fells (2-11) got clocked the first time Bulger threw his way and wasn’t much of a factor. Tim Carter (0-0), who’d been back about three days after originally being cut in training camp, was thrust into action but got hurt himself, leaving Burton and Amendola the Rams’ ONLY healthy WRs at times. Injuries don’t help, but save the Laurent Robinson signing, the Rams haven’t made a good decision at the position since drafting Kevin Curtis in 2003. This year’s decision to woefully understaff the position is certainly included.
* Offensive line: The offensive line wasn’t outplayed today as much as it was outnumbered. When the defense can load up the box with impunity, the linemen simply can’t pick up everybody, and so Jackson fell often to slashing LBs and DBs. Strictly line-vs.-line, the Rams held up all right. Surprised by Derrick Harvey dropping back in coverage during the opening drive, Bulger held the ball and was sacked after Atiyyah Ellison beat Jacob Bell AND put Alex Barron ON HIS ASS, but that was the only time Bulger was taken down, and he had great protection for stretches. And right after that sack, a great block out front by Richie Incognito sprung a Jackson screen for 19 and a first down anyway. Run blocking was up and down. Barron set the edge nicely for a 9-yard sweep left late in the 2nd but drew a false start in the 1st. Jackson ran behind Mike Karney for 9 and 7 during the Rams’ first-half FG drive and also got a nice block from Bell on that first run. Then again, he got dropped for -3 inside the 2:00 warning after Randy McMichael got no block on Clint Ingram at all. The Rams opened the 2nd half on offense with a 15-yard run for Jackson up the middle, with big blocks by Jason Brown, Incognito and Karney. Two plays later, Bell gets beaten badly on the backside and Jackson can only gain 1 after spinning out of a big loss. I didn’t keep careful track but it looked like Adam Goldberg and Jason Smith switched in and out at RT. Smith looked good run-blocking, but on the Rams’ final 3-and-out, both he and Barron got eaten alive on a Jackson run that lost three. Ingram then bulled Barron right back into Bulger to foul up a screen pass the next play. The Rams did get back to tie the game after the big 38-yard screen to Jackson, sprung by a decent block again by Incognito. Richie had a good game. Smith and Jason Brown I’d say were ok. Bell and Barron I’d call inconsistent. You’d have liked line play to be a little better, but you’d also have liked Jacksonville not to have stacked the line of scrimmage all day, either.
* Defensive line / LB: The Ram defense played with a lot of heart but couldn’t have had a lot of lung left after spending most of the 2nd half and all of OT on the field. It’s no wonder they had trouble stopping the Jagwires late. Unfortunately, though, they didn’t really stop them early, either. They sacked David Garrard three times but still gave him far too much time to throw. The 4-man rush rarely got there – Chris Long’s presence in the Ram defense was barely a rumor – and the Rams blitzed a lot and it didn’t get there a lot. The 41-yard bomb to Torry Holt beat a blitz, and Maurice Jones-Drew ran through Bradley Fletcher the next play for the first of three TDs. The Rams were terrible on 3rd down, stopping only 5 of 16 chances. Garrard scrambled through the gaping lane Leonard Little left for 9 on 3rd-and-8 at the end of the 1st. Good news, though; Ron Bartell forced a Jones-Drew fumble the next play. The D really asserted itself the next drive. Cliff Ryan came in unblocked to drop Jones-Drew for minus-3. James Hall followed with a MANLY play, going right through Eugene Monroe and grabbing Garrard for the Rams’ first sack. Little then discarded Eben Britton with ease and sacked Garrard again to end the drive. Ryan got a sack early in the 3rd thanks to LaJuan (WHO?) Ramsey collapsing the pocket single-handedly, and a blitzing Fletcher hit Garrard on 3rd down to end the drive. The Rams still held a 10-6 lead, and were looking solid, but the offense kept coming straight off the field. The Jagwires had the ball at least 20 minutes of the 2nd half and wore the Rams down. Another big factor was an injury that put Hall out of the game. C.J. Ah You was nowhere near as staunch against the run, which the Jags exploited. Ah You did make a big play at the end of the 3rd. With Garrard getting simply all day to throw by this point, Ah You tipped a red-zone pass at the line for an INT by James Laurinaitis. But the offense put the defense right back out there, and now they really started getting gashed. Garrard faked Ryan out of his jock and ran through Little’s vacated area for an 11-yard scramble. Then the killer blow, a Jones-Drew 26-yard draw down to the three. The entire d-line was pushed right and destroyed. Six Rams screwed tackles on the play, including a near-horse collar by Laurinaitis that Jones-Drew ran through. On 3rd-and-goal, Jones-Drew bounced off Larry Grant and through Ah You’s spot – he had been driven nearly all the way to the center – to give Jacksonville a 13-10 lead. The offense 3-and-outed AGAIN, though, and the Rams looked dead, if not for a moment of brilliance by Little. He stepped out on an intended screen pass for Greg Jones, plucked the ball from the receiver’s hands, sprinted 30 yards down to the 5 and DIVED for the pylon for the TD and a 17-13 lead. Sadly, that momentum wasn’t enough to energize another stop. Garrard scrambled for 13 through a lane left this time by Long. Jones-Drew swept right for 18 with DBs missing tackles and Ah You getting dominated by a TE. An unhurried Garrard hit Mike Sims-Walker for 26. Jones-Drew beat a zone blitz, and Little in coverage, on a 13-yard screen down to the 10, and he and his o-line just overpowered the Rams on their way to a go-ahead TD. The game was probably in effect over when the Rams lost the overtime coin toss. Two plays into OT, the Rams lost Bartell AND Will Witherspoon to injuries. Garrard hit Sims-Walker for 22 to get the Jags close, and Jones-Drew continued to overpower the Rams’ right side for another 20 yards to make Josh Scobee’s game-winning FG a chippie. The D was certainly gassed by the end of the game, but could too have helped itself out with more consistent play earlier in the game, especially pressure on Garrard. They played with great heart, but could be said to have expired today due to arrhythmia.
* Secondary: In a disappointing season, I don’t know that there’s been a more disappointing Rams player than Ron Bartell. Bartell was Torry Holt’s (5-101) bee-yotch today, as the future Hall-of-Famer chalked up his first 100-yard game since 2007. Holt turned Bartell inside out on a 41-yard catch in the first like it was training camp 2005 all over again and Bartell was a rank rookie. Holt also drew two (legit) DPIs off of Bartell, including one on a two-yard slant on 2nd-and-10 that had me screaming to put someone else on Torry. For the love of Taje Allen, just let him catch that! Well, it was hardly a banner day for any of the Ram secondary. Mike Sims-Walker (9-120) burned Craig Dahl and O.J. Atogwe for 35 before Bartell redeemed himself (a little) by forcing a Jones-Drew fumble to start the 2nd. Soft zone coverage was ineffective all day. Sims-Walker got the Jagwires in (very long) FG position right before halftime with a 22-yard catch – how can you let that happen? As much as poor offense kept putting the defense back on the field, the secondary didn’t help them get off quickly. A six-minute Jagwire drive in the 3rd should have been stopped earlier, but Dahl dropped an interception, Bartell and Jonathan Wade committed DPIs real and imagined, and Wade was 10 yards off Mike Thomas on a 3rd-and-4 completion. Quincy Butler (!) finally ended the drive by breaking up a pass to Sims-Walker. But Sims-Walker broke wide open underneath the too-soft zone for 26 on the last Jagwire TD drive, and he did it again on a 3rd-and-6 in OT, all but sealing the Rams’ doom. 335 yards passing by David Gerrard? TWO 100-yard Jacksonville receivers? Terrible game by the Ram secondary today. Terrible.
* Special teams: Surprisingly strong day for Josh Brown, who hit a 52-yarder I was certain he’d miss just before halftime, and the 27-yard game-tying FG with :07 left in the game. Most of his kickoffs boomed deep into the end zone, too, which makes Donnie Jones’ poor day even more puzzling. Jones shanked punts all day for a pedestrian 41.8 average and can kiss the Pro Bowl good-bye, missing several opportunities to pin the Jagwires back with even-decent punts. The broadcast blamed a swirling wind. Enough to take almost ten yards off a guy’s punts? Amendola had a 57-yard return, getting good blocks in the “wedge” area (and some Jagwires out of their lanes) and picking up a block downfield by Billy Bajema. But Jones was a big impediment today in the Rams’ battle for field position.
* Coaching: It's certainly fair to wonder whether the Rams could have safely taken another shot at the end zone with seven seconds left in regulation, especially with a timeout in hand. For those who believe so, what play do you call? The previous play took 8 seconds. If Bulger gets flushed again, game's over. If you're throwing a fade pass into the end zone, who's the receiver? McMichael maybe? Maybe run what the Titans tried at the end of Super Bowl 34 and hit Burton on a slant? I’m fine with the FG because I just don’t know that they would have had a successful play to run for the TD. And you’ve got to rely on the hometown timekeeper not to have an itchy trigger finger. In full hindsight, that last TO probably should have come after McMichael's catch with 0:23 left. A couple of other game-management issues can probably be chalked up to Steve Spagnuolo being a rookie coach. Why freeze Josh Scobey before the 58-yard attempt at the end of the first half? Wouldn't you rather have him rush that try? It looked like Jagwire HC Jack del Rio really got away with pushing the officials around, browbeating them into more than his fair share of calls. I'd like to have seen Spagnuolo bow up more against that kind of stuff. Without the other guy fighting back, veteran coaches like del Rio are going to run roughshod over the referees all day.
It looked like Pat Shurmur's play-calling got off to a good start. The opening drive was the Rams' best drive of the season. The offense looked nicely balanced and the no-huddle kept the Jagwires on their heels. Once Avery was gone for the game, though, the passing game went back into the shell it's been in all season. And the offense’s second-half woes continued. After an initial first down, they didn’t get another until the final 2:00 of regulation. They essentially three-and-outed the entire half. Shurmur tried to get the ball in Jackson’s hands each possession, but there was nothing to discourage the Jagwires from putting everyone in the box to stop him. The Rams’ longest completion the first 28:00 of the second half was seven yards. Bulger had one attempt longer than ten yards. Instead of stretching the field, Shurmur wrapped it up tight and put a double rubber band around it. I know he was down to Amendola and Burton at WR for a while, but what, neither of them can run a 15-yard route? The tight ends can only catch 4-yard passes in the flat? The Rams have no way to get an RB downfield for a pass? Did Shurmur know he was up against the worst pass defense in the league? As much as I want to cut Shurmur some slack for the injuries at WR, an offense relying heavily on Donnie Avery remaining healthy probably isn’t operating on the right premise.
* Upon further review: I've never been a Jeff Triplette fan and today did nothing to change my mind. Some of the DPI calls were horrendous, coming WELL after the play was over, and with heavy lobbying from the Jagwire sideline. Wade's play in the 3rd was no DPI – he was within five yards and released contact before the pass was thrown. Laurinaitis didn't interfere with Jones-Drew in the 4th, either. There is no faceguarding penalty in the NFL; James was guilty of nothing except good coverage. I wouldn't be complaining if he were still a Ram like he should be, but the sideline “catch” by Holt late in the 3rd was completely a reputation-based call. Torry can make that catch. Has many times before. DIDN'T THIS TIME. He had a toe out of bounds and the ball was still moving in his outstretched hands. What was Triplette watching on the replay monitor after the Rams challenged? Playboy After Dark? The fumble called on Garrard in the 3rd was also an awful call. How did the official think the ball ended up where it did if Garrard's arm wasn't in motion? Luckily, none of these questionable calls contributed to scoring drives, so I'll score Triplette and crew a D-minus and hope they don't do any other Rams games this year.
* Cheers: I guess we're going to get a lot of Ron Pitts and John Lynch on game calls this year, huh? Like them or not, anything's better than Matt Vasgersian. Pitts was all over Donnie Jones' off-day punting like he had money on him or something. Can't remember the last time a play-by-play guy was so obsessed with a punter. Play-calling was pretty sloppy at times, especially regarding carries by Jones-Drew, who Pitts sometimes called “Jones” or “Drew” instead of using his correct name. The Jagwires have Greg Jones at RB, too; Pitts should know better than to get lazy with Jones-Drew's name in the booth. Lynch's points about Avery's absence hurting the offense were good, and he agreed some of the DPI calls were cheesy, but yes, John, I know Torry Holt wanted to get back at his old team. Lynch beat that dead horse so much that by the end of the game he was beating a bottle of glue.
* Who’s next?: Who made up this schedule, anyway? “Let’s see, your team struggled to the second-worst record in the league last year, so, next season, we’ll schedule three of your first four games on the road, and we’ll have two of your first three home games be against possibly the two best teams in the league. We’ll make sure both those teams are undefeated when you play them, and that you’ll play one that’s on a 14-game winning streak and got a bye the week before so they’re nice and rested up for ya. Lotsa luck, Spags!”
At least next week will give St. Louis fans the rare treat of seeing Peyton Manning in person. True, you can see him half-a-dozen times during a commercial break in any televised sports event (has Peyton ever turned down a product endorsement? Seriously, LifeLock?), but he’s well on his way to becoming the greatest QB in NFL history, if he isn’t already. His arm, accuracy and football intelligence put him in a Hall-of-Fame class by himself, and he’s succeeded despite an everchanging cast of supporting characters. Nobody makes his whole team better as much as Manning does. This year, he’s thrown for over 300 yards every game and has a passer rating of 114.1. How do you stop the guy? Hey, don’t ask me. Or Arizona (lost 31-10). Or Seattle (lost 34-17). Or Miami, who lost to Indy despite holding the ball for FORTY-FIVE minutes. If you can’t even beat Peyton by denying him the ball, what can you possibly do? I wouldn’t blitz. Peyton’s killed the blitz his whole career, and rookie RB Donald Brown has been terrific at blitz protection. Losing a man in coverage won’t be a good gamble; it won’t give Manning less time. I'd consider rushing two, double-covering Reggie Wayne and septuple-covering Dallas Clark, who I can’t see the Rams holding under 100 yards, or 2 TDs. Maybe sneak a 12th guy onto the field every now and then, see if the referees notice (Hey, they almost didn’t against Seattle!). Maybe blitz all 11, or 12, guys whenever Indy gets inside the 10. I'm almost serious about some of these ideas. It's going to take something radical for this Rams team to hold the Colts under 30 points. At the very least, bend-but-don’t break, hope you can hold them to a FG every now and then.
Dwight Freeney has a remarkable streak for this remarkably-streaking Colts team: a sack in every game this season. He has to be one of the fastest defensive ends in NFL history, the reason he’s been able to turn his back to his blocker with his patented spin move thousands of times in his career without getting punished for it. If there’s a better 1-2 pass rush punch in the NFL than Freeney and Robert Mathis – 16.5 and 16 sacks respectively since the beginning of last season – I can’t name them. And the Colt defense that didn’t use to blitz much when Tony Dungy was head coach, likes to bring it now. The Rams are going to have their hands fuller than Nadya Suleman's babysitter. Colt defenses have been known to struggle against the run, so the Rams have a chance to run ball-control offense with Steven Jackson, if they can get promising young play-making OLB Tyjuan Hagler blocked. And the Ram passing game has to be able to sustain something against a young but underrated Colts secondary. If they didn't have enough for Jacksonville's league-worst pass defense, it's hard to see them having enough for Indianapolis.
In the 322 years since Sir Isaac Newton discovered its laws, there may never have been a more lopsided case of momentum than the one we'll have next week. The Colts have won 14 straight. The Rams have lost 16 straight. Sure, an ant can move a rubber-tree plant, as Spagnuolo'll no doubt be whistling at Rams Park all week.
But can a gnat stop an on-coming train?
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
Monday, October 12, 2009
RamView, October 11, 2009
From Row HH
(Report and opinions from the game.)
Game #5: Vikings 38, Rams 10
The baseball Cardinals bowed out of postseason after an abysmal lack of production in scoring opportunities, and today, the Rams topped that. Three turnovers inside the 10 were their undoing in a loss to the Vikings that should have been a lot closer. St. Louis has a bad sports hangover right now, and more hair of the dog isn't helping any.
* QB: If Kyle Boller (20-31-209) could wave a magic wand and change a handful of plays, he would have won the starting job for the rest of the season today. One play he'd like to forget was his pratfall that turned the Rams' opening possession into a Vikings TD. He motioned to dump a screen pass over a madly-charging Kevin Williams' head and lost the ball on the way up in classic Football Follies fashion. And, of course, with the Rams' luck this year, the ball went to Jared Allen on a clean bounce, and he scooped and ran for a 52-yard TD. Boller perservered, though. He led the Rams on a 93-yard, 7½-minute drive that started late in the 1st quarter. A 62-yard drive got the Rams inside the 10 late in the half. Boller led a 15-play, 72-yard, 6-minute drive late in the 3rd. From all that, you'd think the Rams would have come away with a lot of points. Plus, Boller had the screen pass working, was finding his tight ends, and was even getting the ball downfield successfully and stretching the defense. He did miss one big chance to make a play. 3rd-and-2 at the Viking 16 during the first drive, he rolls right and tucks and scrambles for a yard, missing Avery breaking open in the corner of the end zone on that side. Much of the time, though, the Rams looked opportunity right in the eye, and opportunity poked them the eye Three Stooges-style. The 1st-quarter drive ended when Boller and Steven Jackson blew a handoff at the one-yard line and Allen (again) recovered the fumble. Boller hit Daniel Fells at the 3 just before halftime only to see the young TE lose the ball. After nearly getting his head ripped off by Kevin Williams during the 3rd-quarter drive, Boller toughly hung in to finish it out. But Bennie Sapp made two plays to deny the Rams TDs. He broke up what would have been a 44-yard TD bomb to Keenan Burton down the sideline, and a few plays later, broke up what would have been a 9-yard TD pass to Donnie Avery. Boller's throws were perfect; sometimes, the defense just makes a play. But after that, Tyrell Johnson picked Boller off in a crowd in the end zone. Likely still feeling the effects of Williams' personal foul, Boller was done for the day. That brought Marc Bulger back to the field, and he put up impressive numbers in the 4th - 7-for-7 for 88 yards and a TD – though against a Minnesota D playing much softer than they were in Boller's three quarters, as their multi-touchdown lead dictated. Avery came back for an intentionally-underthrown 27-yard pass down the sideline for the Rams' only TD of the day despite their many sorties near the goal line. It looks like Bulger will return as the starter after today. Hopefully he can get as much of the passing game working as Boller did, without the costly turnovers.
* RB: The Vikings undermined Steven Jackson more than a few times with run blitzes, but he still put up fairly effective stats: 109 total yards, 21-84 rushing. He used the whole field, bouncing a run outside for 9 and later tearing up the middle for 13 to set the Rams up at the Viking 1 early in the 2nd quarter. Too bad he was taken down with an ankle tackle on that play, because on the next, he never put away the handoff, the ball went flying out of his hands, and Jared Allen recovered to cost the Rams a TD. Jackson helped get the Rams back in scoring position late in the quarter, sneaking out of the backfield to rip off for 25 with a 3rd-and-9 screen pass, and bolting left around Randy McMichael’s block for 10 more. Samkon Gado (3-16) then popped around Richie Incognito’s pull block for 11 more, down to the 12, but the Rams fumbled away prosperity again. Jackson’s third quarter was very slow again this week, 3 rushes for 2 yards before he followed Mike Karney into a big hole up the middle of Viking territory for a 15-yard gain. But just as Jackson set the pins up for the Rams again, the offense threw another gutter ball. And so Steven Jackson is five weeks into the season without scoring a touchdown. He has shown every indication of being a patient player on the field and in the locker room. I just hope he can hold out. This has to be getting frustrating.
* WR: It was the best day so far this year to be a Rams receiver. Randy McMichael (3-45) opened the festivities with a 35-yard gain off a Boller rollout, punctuated by a hurdle. Donnie Avery had by far his best game of the year, 5-87 with a TD. He converted a 3rd-and-8 with a nifty run-after-the-catch with a smoke pass, and in the 4th, he took an underthrown sideline pass for Bulger in for a 27-yard TD. I'd still like to see the Rams get the ball to Keenan Burton (5-42) more. He's got good hands and consistently gains after the catch. After he converted a couple of first downs early, they kind of quit going to him. Daniel Fells (5-45) converted a couple of first downs himself before committing a critical error in the 2nd. Handcuffed a little by Boller's throw to him at the Viking 6, Fells secured the ball but decided to try backpedaling into the end zone from there, making himself a ripe target for Chad Greenway's jarring hit, hard enough to hammer even a well-protected ball loose. Danny Amendola caught 5 for 43 in the possession receiver role, but his incorrect route early in the 4th drew a crowd to Boller's rushed throw for Burton in the end zone. Unfortunately, there were a lot of Vikings in that crowd, and Tyrrell Johnson came away with the INT. The best day for the Ram receivers this season still wouldn’t turn out to be enough.
* Offensive line: Boller was only sacked once, but when Minnesota got to the Rams QB, the result was very painful, and there was an offensive line breakdown associated with it. Kevin Williams was credited with a sack on the Boller fumble Allen returned for Minnesota’s second TD. The play was supposed to be a screen left to Jackson, but Richie Incognito didn’t remotely slow Williams down en route to Boller, whose life was additionally complicated by Allen blocking-sledding Alex Barron and getting into the QB’s face. That’s far from the first time Incognito has executed poorly on a screen pass, too. When Williams nearly decapitated Boller in the 3rd, he beat Jason Brown, but that was only because Jacob Bell’s man beat him so badly, he got driven behind Brown and tripped him up. Boller was intercepted in the end zone later that drive, rushed to throw after Ray Edwards WHIPPED Adam Goldberg with a spin move. That’s not reassuring to see with Dwight Freeney coming in two weeks. Minnesota run-blitzed safeties in and tripped up Jackson a lot. Seems like the the fullback and tight ends should be responsible for a lot of that. Billy Bajema was beaten that way on back-to-back run stuffs in the 2nd. But that group was also quite effective. Randy McMichael may have had his best blocking game as a Ram. Jackson bounced an early run left for 10 after Daniel Fells sealed the edge. When Jackson ran down to the 1 early in the 2nd, Mike Karney put an impressive lick on the safety, while Brown and Incognito opened him a good hole up the middle. Jackson followed Karney several times for successful gains, especially on a 15-yard run up the middle in the 3rd. McMichael made great blocks on Jackson’s 25-yard screen in the 3rd and the 10-yard run the next play. Incognito and Keenan Burton then got Gado room for 11 more. But there were critical breakdowns, too. Incognito killed the Rams’ second drive with a tripping penalty. On the failed QB draw in the 2nd, the middle never opened up because Kevin Williams whipped Goldberg and Brown couldn’t budge Pat Williams. The Rams 3-and-outed twice right after halftime. Jackson got stuffed once by the safety after Karney nearly got knocked off his feet. An 3rd-and-2 handoff to Karney the next possession failed when Bell failed to get any piece of E.J. Henderson, who submarined the fullback. Though Jackson’s mistake on a key play is highlighted much more than Incognito’s on another play, though the halftime package shows Boller struggling without being able to emphasize breakdowns by Bell or Goldberg or Barron, it’s a team game. Offensive linemen have to make the clutch play, too; the Rams’ just aren’t making enough of them.
* Defensive line / LB: Against a much better offensive line than San Francisco’s, the defense’s performance wasn’t all that encouraging this week. They put little pressure on Brett Favre. The only sacks came from safety blitzes by O.J. Atogwe and Craig Dahl. Yes, Adrian Peterson had just 69 yards, but that was on a surprisingly-low 15 carries, and he still made his share of plays. He opened the scoring with a 5-yard TD sweep that I say is on Larry Grant, who crashed inside and came up nowhere near the play, leaving a lot of space on his side of the field for Atogwe and James Laurinaitis to try to cover. Peterson opened the next drive with 15 off right tackle, inside Leonard Little, with Will Witherspoon getting picked off in the hole, not for the last time. But Laurinaitis picked off Favre to end the drive. Favre’s stupid, way-off-balance pass was forced by good pressure from Little and by James Hall breaking down the pocket as the nose tackle on the play. Just a three-man rush there, but that was one of the few highlights today on the line. Cliff Ryan batted a pass back to Favre to help force a FG. Gary Gibson looked disruptive for a while before breaking a bone in his leg in the 3rd, ending his game and season. Laurinaitis made a terrific play to blow up a dangerous-looking screen to Peterson late in the first half. But he blew coverage on Shiancoe on the TD that made it 24-3, and Steve Hutchinson picked him off as Peterson walked in from 7 to put Minnesota up 31-3. I’ll still take his performance today because he also made quite a few good plays. The big problem today was pass rush, that is, lack of it. Little might have gotten close just the one time. If any DT got close to Favre, it was because they were letting him in to set up a screen. After getting called out for having no tackles last week, Chris Long got on the box score this week with two, but was much less effective than he was in San Francisco. He couldn’t get a thing done against Bryant McKinnie and was a complete non-factor. No realistic fan expected Steve Spagnuolo to have the reincarnation of his Super Bowl Giants D out there in blue and gold. At the same time, developing a consistent, improved pass rush and getting the most out of Chris Long weren’t unreasonable goals for the new HC, and to the entire team’s detriment, those are goals he and the defensive players aren’t making progress toward.
* Secondary: The Vikings receivers are hardly a group of world-beaters, but most of the Ram secondary struggled today all the same. After forcing Minnesota into an early 3rd-and-8, everyone laid 5 to 7 yards off all the receivers and Percy Harvin still got behind David Roach for a 22-yard catch. Harvin beat Justin King for 25 more to set up the first Viking TD. At some point the coaches are going to have to determine that they can’t let Bradley Fletcher get beat for a long bomb every game. This week it was Sidney Rice beating him for 47 in the 3rd on a ball Fletcher never knew was coming. We’ve seen that before. We’ll see it again. In the 4th, Rice beat Ron Bartell deep and drew a 34-yard DPI. Again, the CB never knew the ball was coming. FAKHIR BROWN LIVES! All of those long plays, naturally, led to Viking TDs. The DPI led to an easy TD for – guess what position – tight end Visanthe Shiancoe after Laurinaitis bit on the underneath slant and neither safety in the end zone closed on the TE in time. Um, it’s Brett Favre? Near the end zone? Think he might ever in his career have looked for the TE down there? Sigh. A terrific game by Craig Dahl wasn’t enough to compensate. He flashed into the backfield several times to stuff runs. He got a sack on a dog blitz late in the first half. Dahl’s most impressive play came early in the second; he closed from at least ten yards away to shut down a dangerous-looking smoke pass to Harvin. On one hand, the front seven’s got to stop giving QBs so much time to beat the defense deep downfield. On the other hand, the secondary’s got to play like they know the ball’s coming. Maybe the two units could meet somewhere in the middle?
* Special teams: Special teams trends are on the upswing, but there's still work to do. The Rams neutralized Harvin on kickoff returns with booming touchbacks by Josh Brown. Brown even actually made a FG today, from 29. The Rams neutralized the Viking punt return game by turning the ball over all the time. Donnie Jones' punts look a lot better on paper – 49.3 average – than they looked in person. His hang time was not up to his usual standard and he needed a couple of rolls to get good yardage. Danny Amendola got a couple of kickoffs across the 30. He seems to have a good eye for finding his blocks and could be getting close to breaking another one. He also nearly fumbled a punt away, though. And Quincy Butler and Fells each put the Rams in deep holes with blocks in the back on kick returns. That in particular is getting really old, especially when it seems like a problem that should be fairly easy to eliminate. Butler additionally put Minnesota in great position for a FG drive when he horse-collared Harvin in the 2nd. Special teams coach Tom McMahon needs to get the penalties fixed, pronto.
* Coaching: Among the offense’s many problems, one is emerging that is really intolerable: coming out flat after halftime. Both this week and last, they’ve opened the third quarter with at least two three-and-outs. The second one this week was another one of those possessions filled with weird play choices. An intended pass for Karney in the flat. A pass to Fells. Then on third-and-2, an inside handoff to Karney again. STEVEN WHO? Pat Shurmur’s very comfortable with the mobile Boller at QB, but he’s letting him run too much. Boller tucked and ran near the goal line in the 1st and missed Avery wide open in the end zone. Then there was the stupid QB draw called at the Viking 10 in the 2nd. That’s a fine play call, if your QB is Michael Vick. KYLE BOLLER IS NOT MICHAEL VICK. It also took too long to get the running game running left, where they had significant success, over running right, where Minnesota stuffed everything early on. Shurmur’s making progress. They showed some creativity by mixing in some no-huddle. They got some screens working against Minnesota’s run-blitzing, though they probably needed to do more. That also kept Jared Allen off-balance. The Rams actually threw downfield, and stretched the field, for the first time all season. But this team needs to stop coming out of halftime in a rut, especially with its play-calling.
Like the Vikings, the Rams were successful run-blitzing, and Ken Flajole’s scouting was good: the safety blitzes that got Favre sacked are blitzes he’s been susceptible to this year. But the Ram defense still felt too passive to me today. I wanted to blitz more and lay off the receivers less. I still don’t know why Fletcher’s getting so much of Jonathan Wade’s playing time. And I still don’t get the attraction with zone-blitzing and dropping defensive tackles off the line on short-yardage downs. It’s not like Favre needed more time to throw.
The penalty situation (7 for 82) for Steve Spagnuolo’s team isn’t getting better. Special teams penalties especially need to get cleaned up. The Rams continue to rank among the lead leaders in flags; that just can’t go on. The Rams’ preseason sure was no predictor of their turnover plus-minus for the regular season. They look like they’re really pressing once they get inside the red zone. Spagnuolo showed confidence in them by going for it a couple of times on 4th down, but with Minnesota up only 14-3 the last 2:00 of the first half, I’d have liked to see him call defensive timeouts (he had all three) to get the ball back. There’s no easy formula for him, but Spagnuolo needs to get his players’ confidence back, or this season’s going to disintegrate even faster than it is already.
* Upon further review: Lucky Don Carey – he's already gotten to do a Rams regular season game and a preseason game this year. Unlucky for just about any defensive lineman hoping to draw a holding call today, though. O-linemen were just tackling defenders at times, even right in front of Carey, but he showed little interest in making the call. He did throw a flag on Kevin Williams for defensive holding in the 1st; a good call, actually. And Williams' penalty for roughing Boller, and the late hit to Avery out of bounds late in the game, were both proper calls. Is officiating better this year, or am I just getting soft? I'll give Carey and crew a B.
* Cheers: Today's “sellout”, if you want to call it that, was made mainly possible by a surprisingly large number of fans in purple and gold. Vikings fans represented about as well as Packers fans did at the home opener. Rams fans did not come close to duplicating their effort from that game, though. After the defense let Minnesota convert 3rd-and-8 the opening possession, our attitude was pretty much, “oh, so that's how it's going to be?” and the Dome was pretty damn quiet the rest of the day. Most fans didn't even stay for the 4th quarter, with Boller's last INT providing a catalyst to head home early and nurse the wounds from a pretty bad sports weekend. Rams fans didn't even get that fired up about the old Super Bowl highlights running on the video board in conjunction with throwback uniform day. The SIU-C marching band provided a Michael Jackson tribute at halftime. Disappointingly, when they got to “Thriller”, the dance team did not perform the zombie dance. Which reminds me, Rams cheerleaders. The next home game is the Sunday before Halloween, and if you ladies shirk your professional duty again this year and do not wear Halloween costumes, I swear I will dump you for the San Diego cheerleaders. You've been warned.
* Who’s next?: If the Rams’ bus driver gets lost on the way to the stadium in Jacksonville next week, it’ll be understandable – the Rams have never played there. In 15 seasons, the Rams have played the Jagwires just twice, both wins at home, the last time a win for a coach who'd only been in charge a few weeks. Sounds like a temptingly familiar scenario. The coach back then? Joe Vitt. Just four years ago, but it seems like forty.
Just as I was about to praise the Jagwire defense for going out and just beating up the Titans a couple of weeks ago, this comes across the wire: Seattle 41, Jacksonville 0. Matt Hasselbeck's 4 TDs show the vulnerability of Jacksonville's secondary, the same group Kurt Warner flambed for a 92% completion percentage in week 2. The same group that's last in the league in pass defense. Jacksonville's hoping that, as in the Tennessee game, they can sell out against the run in a 3-4 look with John Henderson at nose and underachieving 2008 top draft pick Derrick Harvey dropping back into an OLB role. But this is the Rams' chance to get the passing game going against a very young defense that's only gotten to the QB three times all season. If the Rams can get that going, they can unleash Jackson on the Jagwires and maybe, just maybe, put themselves in position for their first win this season. If they're going to continue to shoot themselves in the foot, though, Jacksonville will beat them as surely as they smoked the mistake-prone Titans in week 4, and as surely as anybody else that has beaten the Rams this season has done it.
Thanks to his high draft position in most fantasy football leagues, Maurice Jones-Drew is the star of the Jagwires, the man you'd typically expect would carry their offense. He's fast, hard to find at 5'7”, and is an accomplished receiver and surprisingly physical, punishing runner. The Jagwires didn’t start winning, though, until their passing game started to click. David Garrard can throw it all over the yard, even though he's working with a mostly-anonymous corps of young receivers. Mike Sims-Walker? Mike Thomas? What does this crew have that, say, the Rams' receivers don't? Just future Hall-of-Famer Torry Holt, now in teal and black (yecch), who's helped bring the young fellas along while still catching a ball or two a game himself. Holt wouldn't normally need to be double-teamed at this stage of his career, but who knows how fired up he'll be to show his old team a thing or two. Sims-Walker is the type of big receiver who always gives the Rams fits. Thomas will be a handful, too; at about Jones-Drew's size, he's got elite speed and is gaining Garrard's confidence. Thomas will also be a load for the Rams on special teams. It'll be imperative for the Rams to win this one up front, like Seattle did today with a dominating 5-sack performance. Injuries are making it difficult for the Jagwire offensive line to gel, and even if they get their intended starting five on the field, it'll include rookies, Eben Britton and Eugene Monroe, at either tackle, or with 11-year veteran Tra, no, William, no, Tra again, Thomas a possible starter at LT. Whatever line the Jagwires roll out won't have worked together much, and the Rams ought to be able to blitz them into oblivion and help the secondary out by getting in Garrard's face all day. The Rams need an “on” week from their on-again, off-again pass rush.
Though they don't meet often, the NFL histories of these two teams will always be intertwined. The Jagwires exist because the NFL shunned St. Louis in the 1995 expansion derby. St. Louis will always have the better end of the deal, though, thanks to the Rams' Super Bowl championship here in 2000. These days, it's the Rams who look a lot like an expansion team, while the Jagwires will try to be one of several teams this season to beat the Rams with one of St. Louis' own Super Bowl heroes. And, both teams are among the candidates to one day replace the franchise Los Angeles lost in the whole mess 14 years ago. Who'll make history next week? Jacksonville's coming off an even more dreadful week than the Rams are, so hey, next Sunday could be the Rams' time.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
From Row HH
(Report and opinions from the game.)
Game #5: Vikings 38, Rams 10
The baseball Cardinals bowed out of postseason after an abysmal lack of production in scoring opportunities, and today, the Rams topped that. Three turnovers inside the 10 were their undoing in a loss to the Vikings that should have been a lot closer. St. Louis has a bad sports hangover right now, and more hair of the dog isn't helping any.
* QB: If Kyle Boller (20-31-209) could wave a magic wand and change a handful of plays, he would have won the starting job for the rest of the season today. One play he'd like to forget was his pratfall that turned the Rams' opening possession into a Vikings TD. He motioned to dump a screen pass over a madly-charging Kevin Williams' head and lost the ball on the way up in classic Football Follies fashion. And, of course, with the Rams' luck this year, the ball went to Jared Allen on a clean bounce, and he scooped and ran for a 52-yard TD. Boller perservered, though. He led the Rams on a 93-yard, 7½-minute drive that started late in the 1st quarter. A 62-yard drive got the Rams inside the 10 late in the half. Boller led a 15-play, 72-yard, 6-minute drive late in the 3rd. From all that, you'd think the Rams would have come away with a lot of points. Plus, Boller had the screen pass working, was finding his tight ends, and was even getting the ball downfield successfully and stretching the defense. He did miss one big chance to make a play. 3rd-and-2 at the Viking 16 during the first drive, he rolls right and tucks and scrambles for a yard, missing Avery breaking open in the corner of the end zone on that side. Much of the time, though, the Rams looked opportunity right in the eye, and opportunity poked them the eye Three Stooges-style. The 1st-quarter drive ended when Boller and Steven Jackson blew a handoff at the one-yard line and Allen (again) recovered the fumble. Boller hit Daniel Fells at the 3 just before halftime only to see the young TE lose the ball. After nearly getting his head ripped off by Kevin Williams during the 3rd-quarter drive, Boller toughly hung in to finish it out. But Bennie Sapp made two plays to deny the Rams TDs. He broke up what would have been a 44-yard TD bomb to Keenan Burton down the sideline, and a few plays later, broke up what would have been a 9-yard TD pass to Donnie Avery. Boller's throws were perfect; sometimes, the defense just makes a play. But after that, Tyrell Johnson picked Boller off in a crowd in the end zone. Likely still feeling the effects of Williams' personal foul, Boller was done for the day. That brought Marc Bulger back to the field, and he put up impressive numbers in the 4th - 7-for-7 for 88 yards and a TD – though against a Minnesota D playing much softer than they were in Boller's three quarters, as their multi-touchdown lead dictated. Avery came back for an intentionally-underthrown 27-yard pass down the sideline for the Rams' only TD of the day despite their many sorties near the goal line. It looks like Bulger will return as the starter after today. Hopefully he can get as much of the passing game working as Boller did, without the costly turnovers.
* RB: The Vikings undermined Steven Jackson more than a few times with run blitzes, but he still put up fairly effective stats: 109 total yards, 21-84 rushing. He used the whole field, bouncing a run outside for 9 and later tearing up the middle for 13 to set the Rams up at the Viking 1 early in the 2nd quarter. Too bad he was taken down with an ankle tackle on that play, because on the next, he never put away the handoff, the ball went flying out of his hands, and Jared Allen recovered to cost the Rams a TD. Jackson helped get the Rams back in scoring position late in the quarter, sneaking out of the backfield to rip off for 25 with a 3rd-and-9 screen pass, and bolting left around Randy McMichael’s block for 10 more. Samkon Gado (3-16) then popped around Richie Incognito’s pull block for 11 more, down to the 12, but the Rams fumbled away prosperity again. Jackson’s third quarter was very slow again this week, 3 rushes for 2 yards before he followed Mike Karney into a big hole up the middle of Viking territory for a 15-yard gain. But just as Jackson set the pins up for the Rams again, the offense threw another gutter ball. And so Steven Jackson is five weeks into the season without scoring a touchdown. He has shown every indication of being a patient player on the field and in the locker room. I just hope he can hold out. This has to be getting frustrating.
* WR: It was the best day so far this year to be a Rams receiver. Randy McMichael (3-45) opened the festivities with a 35-yard gain off a Boller rollout, punctuated by a hurdle. Donnie Avery had by far his best game of the year, 5-87 with a TD. He converted a 3rd-and-8 with a nifty run-after-the-catch with a smoke pass, and in the 4th, he took an underthrown sideline pass for Bulger in for a 27-yard TD. I'd still like to see the Rams get the ball to Keenan Burton (5-42) more. He's got good hands and consistently gains after the catch. After he converted a couple of first downs early, they kind of quit going to him. Daniel Fells (5-45) converted a couple of first downs himself before committing a critical error in the 2nd. Handcuffed a little by Boller's throw to him at the Viking 6, Fells secured the ball but decided to try backpedaling into the end zone from there, making himself a ripe target for Chad Greenway's jarring hit, hard enough to hammer even a well-protected ball loose. Danny Amendola caught 5 for 43 in the possession receiver role, but his incorrect route early in the 4th drew a crowd to Boller's rushed throw for Burton in the end zone. Unfortunately, there were a lot of Vikings in that crowd, and Tyrrell Johnson came away with the INT. The best day for the Ram receivers this season still wouldn’t turn out to be enough.
* Offensive line: Boller was only sacked once, but when Minnesota got to the Rams QB, the result was very painful, and there was an offensive line breakdown associated with it. Kevin Williams was credited with a sack on the Boller fumble Allen returned for Minnesota’s second TD. The play was supposed to be a screen left to Jackson, but Richie Incognito didn’t remotely slow Williams down en route to Boller, whose life was additionally complicated by Allen blocking-sledding Alex Barron and getting into the QB’s face. That’s far from the first time Incognito has executed poorly on a screen pass, too. When Williams nearly decapitated Boller in the 3rd, he beat Jason Brown, but that was only because Jacob Bell’s man beat him so badly, he got driven behind Brown and tripped him up. Boller was intercepted in the end zone later that drive, rushed to throw after Ray Edwards WHIPPED Adam Goldberg with a spin move. That’s not reassuring to see with Dwight Freeney coming in two weeks. Minnesota run-blitzed safeties in and tripped up Jackson a lot. Seems like the the fullback and tight ends should be responsible for a lot of that. Billy Bajema was beaten that way on back-to-back run stuffs in the 2nd. But that group was also quite effective. Randy McMichael may have had his best blocking game as a Ram. Jackson bounced an early run left for 10 after Daniel Fells sealed the edge. When Jackson ran down to the 1 early in the 2nd, Mike Karney put an impressive lick on the safety, while Brown and Incognito opened him a good hole up the middle. Jackson followed Karney several times for successful gains, especially on a 15-yard run up the middle in the 3rd. McMichael made great blocks on Jackson’s 25-yard screen in the 3rd and the 10-yard run the next play. Incognito and Keenan Burton then got Gado room for 11 more. But there were critical breakdowns, too. Incognito killed the Rams’ second drive with a tripping penalty. On the failed QB draw in the 2nd, the middle never opened up because Kevin Williams whipped Goldberg and Brown couldn’t budge Pat Williams. The Rams 3-and-outed twice right after halftime. Jackson got stuffed once by the safety after Karney nearly got knocked off his feet. An 3rd-and-2 handoff to Karney the next possession failed when Bell failed to get any piece of E.J. Henderson, who submarined the fullback. Though Jackson’s mistake on a key play is highlighted much more than Incognito’s on another play, though the halftime package shows Boller struggling without being able to emphasize breakdowns by Bell or Goldberg or Barron, it’s a team game. Offensive linemen have to make the clutch play, too; the Rams’ just aren’t making enough of them.
* Defensive line / LB: Against a much better offensive line than San Francisco’s, the defense’s performance wasn’t all that encouraging this week. They put little pressure on Brett Favre. The only sacks came from safety blitzes by O.J. Atogwe and Craig Dahl. Yes, Adrian Peterson had just 69 yards, but that was on a surprisingly-low 15 carries, and he still made his share of plays. He opened the scoring with a 5-yard TD sweep that I say is on Larry Grant, who crashed inside and came up nowhere near the play, leaving a lot of space on his side of the field for Atogwe and James Laurinaitis to try to cover. Peterson opened the next drive with 15 off right tackle, inside Leonard Little, with Will Witherspoon getting picked off in the hole, not for the last time. But Laurinaitis picked off Favre to end the drive. Favre’s stupid, way-off-balance pass was forced by good pressure from Little and by James Hall breaking down the pocket as the nose tackle on the play. Just a three-man rush there, but that was one of the few highlights today on the line. Cliff Ryan batted a pass back to Favre to help force a FG. Gary Gibson looked disruptive for a while before breaking a bone in his leg in the 3rd, ending his game and season. Laurinaitis made a terrific play to blow up a dangerous-looking screen to Peterson late in the first half. But he blew coverage on Shiancoe on the TD that made it 24-3, and Steve Hutchinson picked him off as Peterson walked in from 7 to put Minnesota up 31-3. I’ll still take his performance today because he also made quite a few good plays. The big problem today was pass rush, that is, lack of it. Little might have gotten close just the one time. If any DT got close to Favre, it was because they were letting him in to set up a screen. After getting called out for having no tackles last week, Chris Long got on the box score this week with two, but was much less effective than he was in San Francisco. He couldn’t get a thing done against Bryant McKinnie and was a complete non-factor. No realistic fan expected Steve Spagnuolo to have the reincarnation of his Super Bowl Giants D out there in blue and gold. At the same time, developing a consistent, improved pass rush and getting the most out of Chris Long weren’t unreasonable goals for the new HC, and to the entire team’s detriment, those are goals he and the defensive players aren’t making progress toward.
* Secondary: The Vikings receivers are hardly a group of world-beaters, but most of the Ram secondary struggled today all the same. After forcing Minnesota into an early 3rd-and-8, everyone laid 5 to 7 yards off all the receivers and Percy Harvin still got behind David Roach for a 22-yard catch. Harvin beat Justin King for 25 more to set up the first Viking TD. At some point the coaches are going to have to determine that they can’t let Bradley Fletcher get beat for a long bomb every game. This week it was Sidney Rice beating him for 47 in the 3rd on a ball Fletcher never knew was coming. We’ve seen that before. We’ll see it again. In the 4th, Rice beat Ron Bartell deep and drew a 34-yard DPI. Again, the CB never knew the ball was coming. FAKHIR BROWN LIVES! All of those long plays, naturally, led to Viking TDs. The DPI led to an easy TD for – guess what position – tight end Visanthe Shiancoe after Laurinaitis bit on the underneath slant and neither safety in the end zone closed on the TE in time. Um, it’s Brett Favre? Near the end zone? Think he might ever in his career have looked for the TE down there? Sigh. A terrific game by Craig Dahl wasn’t enough to compensate. He flashed into the backfield several times to stuff runs. He got a sack on a dog blitz late in the first half. Dahl’s most impressive play came early in the second; he closed from at least ten yards away to shut down a dangerous-looking smoke pass to Harvin. On one hand, the front seven’s got to stop giving QBs so much time to beat the defense deep downfield. On the other hand, the secondary’s got to play like they know the ball’s coming. Maybe the two units could meet somewhere in the middle?
* Special teams: Special teams trends are on the upswing, but there's still work to do. The Rams neutralized Harvin on kickoff returns with booming touchbacks by Josh Brown. Brown even actually made a FG today, from 29. The Rams neutralized the Viking punt return game by turning the ball over all the time. Donnie Jones' punts look a lot better on paper – 49.3 average – than they looked in person. His hang time was not up to his usual standard and he needed a couple of rolls to get good yardage. Danny Amendola got a couple of kickoffs across the 30. He seems to have a good eye for finding his blocks and could be getting close to breaking another one. He also nearly fumbled a punt away, though. And Quincy Butler and Fells each put the Rams in deep holes with blocks in the back on kick returns. That in particular is getting really old, especially when it seems like a problem that should be fairly easy to eliminate. Butler additionally put Minnesota in great position for a FG drive when he horse-collared Harvin in the 2nd. Special teams coach Tom McMahon needs to get the penalties fixed, pronto.
* Coaching: Among the offense’s many problems, one is emerging that is really intolerable: coming out flat after halftime. Both this week and last, they’ve opened the third quarter with at least two three-and-outs. The second one this week was another one of those possessions filled with weird play choices. An intended pass for Karney in the flat. A pass to Fells. Then on third-and-2, an inside handoff to Karney again. STEVEN WHO? Pat Shurmur’s very comfortable with the mobile Boller at QB, but he’s letting him run too much. Boller tucked and ran near the goal line in the 1st and missed Avery wide open in the end zone. Then there was the stupid QB draw called at the Viking 10 in the 2nd. That’s a fine play call, if your QB is Michael Vick. KYLE BOLLER IS NOT MICHAEL VICK. It also took too long to get the running game running left, where they had significant success, over running right, where Minnesota stuffed everything early on. Shurmur’s making progress. They showed some creativity by mixing in some no-huddle. They got some screens working against Minnesota’s run-blitzing, though they probably needed to do more. That also kept Jared Allen off-balance. The Rams actually threw downfield, and stretched the field, for the first time all season. But this team needs to stop coming out of halftime in a rut, especially with its play-calling.
Like the Vikings, the Rams were successful run-blitzing, and Ken Flajole’s scouting was good: the safety blitzes that got Favre sacked are blitzes he’s been susceptible to this year. But the Ram defense still felt too passive to me today. I wanted to blitz more and lay off the receivers less. I still don’t know why Fletcher’s getting so much of Jonathan Wade’s playing time. And I still don’t get the attraction with zone-blitzing and dropping defensive tackles off the line on short-yardage downs. It’s not like Favre needed more time to throw.
The penalty situation (7 for 82) for Steve Spagnuolo’s team isn’t getting better. Special teams penalties especially need to get cleaned up. The Rams continue to rank among the lead leaders in flags; that just can’t go on. The Rams’ preseason sure was no predictor of their turnover plus-minus for the regular season. They look like they’re really pressing once they get inside the red zone. Spagnuolo showed confidence in them by going for it a couple of times on 4th down, but with Minnesota up only 14-3 the last 2:00 of the first half, I’d have liked to see him call defensive timeouts (he had all three) to get the ball back. There’s no easy formula for him, but Spagnuolo needs to get his players’ confidence back, or this season’s going to disintegrate even faster than it is already.
* Upon further review: Lucky Don Carey – he's already gotten to do a Rams regular season game and a preseason game this year. Unlucky for just about any defensive lineman hoping to draw a holding call today, though. O-linemen were just tackling defenders at times, even right in front of Carey, but he showed little interest in making the call. He did throw a flag on Kevin Williams for defensive holding in the 1st; a good call, actually. And Williams' penalty for roughing Boller, and the late hit to Avery out of bounds late in the game, were both proper calls. Is officiating better this year, or am I just getting soft? I'll give Carey and crew a B.
* Cheers: Today's “sellout”, if you want to call it that, was made mainly possible by a surprisingly large number of fans in purple and gold. Vikings fans represented about as well as Packers fans did at the home opener. Rams fans did not come close to duplicating their effort from that game, though. After the defense let Minnesota convert 3rd-and-8 the opening possession, our attitude was pretty much, “oh, so that's how it's going to be?” and the Dome was pretty damn quiet the rest of the day. Most fans didn't even stay for the 4th quarter, with Boller's last INT providing a catalyst to head home early and nurse the wounds from a pretty bad sports weekend. Rams fans didn't even get that fired up about the old Super Bowl highlights running on the video board in conjunction with throwback uniform day. The SIU-C marching band provided a Michael Jackson tribute at halftime. Disappointingly, when they got to “Thriller”, the dance team did not perform the zombie dance. Which reminds me, Rams cheerleaders. The next home game is the Sunday before Halloween, and if you ladies shirk your professional duty again this year and do not wear Halloween costumes, I swear I will dump you for the San Diego cheerleaders. You've been warned.
* Who’s next?: If the Rams’ bus driver gets lost on the way to the stadium in Jacksonville next week, it’ll be understandable – the Rams have never played there. In 15 seasons, the Rams have played the Jagwires just twice, both wins at home, the last time a win for a coach who'd only been in charge a few weeks. Sounds like a temptingly familiar scenario. The coach back then? Joe Vitt. Just four years ago, but it seems like forty.
Just as I was about to praise the Jagwire defense for going out and just beating up the Titans a couple of weeks ago, this comes across the wire: Seattle 41, Jacksonville 0. Matt Hasselbeck's 4 TDs show the vulnerability of Jacksonville's secondary, the same group Kurt Warner flambed for a 92% completion percentage in week 2. The same group that's last in the league in pass defense. Jacksonville's hoping that, as in the Tennessee game, they can sell out against the run in a 3-4 look with John Henderson at nose and underachieving 2008 top draft pick Derrick Harvey dropping back into an OLB role. But this is the Rams' chance to get the passing game going against a very young defense that's only gotten to the QB three times all season. If the Rams can get that going, they can unleash Jackson on the Jagwires and maybe, just maybe, put themselves in position for their first win this season. If they're going to continue to shoot themselves in the foot, though, Jacksonville will beat them as surely as they smoked the mistake-prone Titans in week 4, and as surely as anybody else that has beaten the Rams this season has done it.
Thanks to his high draft position in most fantasy football leagues, Maurice Jones-Drew is the star of the Jagwires, the man you'd typically expect would carry their offense. He's fast, hard to find at 5'7”, and is an accomplished receiver and surprisingly physical, punishing runner. The Jagwires didn’t start winning, though, until their passing game started to click. David Garrard can throw it all over the yard, even though he's working with a mostly-anonymous corps of young receivers. Mike Sims-Walker? Mike Thomas? What does this crew have that, say, the Rams' receivers don't? Just future Hall-of-Famer Torry Holt, now in teal and black (yecch), who's helped bring the young fellas along while still catching a ball or two a game himself. Holt wouldn't normally need to be double-teamed at this stage of his career, but who knows how fired up he'll be to show his old team a thing or two. Sims-Walker is the type of big receiver who always gives the Rams fits. Thomas will be a handful, too; at about Jones-Drew's size, he's got elite speed and is gaining Garrard's confidence. Thomas will also be a load for the Rams on special teams. It'll be imperative for the Rams to win this one up front, like Seattle did today with a dominating 5-sack performance. Injuries are making it difficult for the Jagwire offensive line to gel, and even if they get their intended starting five on the field, it'll include rookies, Eben Britton and Eugene Monroe, at either tackle, or with 11-year veteran Tra, no, William, no, Tra again, Thomas a possible starter at LT. Whatever line the Jagwires roll out won't have worked together much, and the Rams ought to be able to blitz them into oblivion and help the secondary out by getting in Garrard's face all day. The Rams need an “on” week from their on-again, off-again pass rush.
Though they don't meet often, the NFL histories of these two teams will always be intertwined. The Jagwires exist because the NFL shunned St. Louis in the 1995 expansion derby. St. Louis will always have the better end of the deal, though, thanks to the Rams' Super Bowl championship here in 2000. These days, it's the Rams who look a lot like an expansion team, while the Jagwires will try to be one of several teams this season to beat the Rams with one of St. Louis' own Super Bowl heroes. And, both teams are among the candidates to one day replace the franchise Los Angeles lost in the whole mess 14 years ago. Who'll make history next week? Jacksonville's coming off an even more dreadful week than the Rams are, so hey, next Sunday could be the Rams' time.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
Monday, October 5, 2009
RamView, October 4, 2009
From The Couch
(Report and opinions on the game.)
Game #4: 49ers 35, Rams 0
Erasing any doubt they are the NFL's worst team, the epically inept Ram offense and bumbling special teams handed the 49ers THREE touchdowns today en route to a truly embarrassing loss, extending the franchise's losing streaks to 14 overall, 12 in the NFC West. Even the SCLSU Mud Dogs never looked this bad.
* QB: That crashing sound you heard was the Kyle Boller bandwagon going into a ditch, after a Rams season-low 13-24-108 today for a 48.6 passer rating. It wasn't for lack of a good start. He beat a blitz and hit Donnie Avery for 21, and later hit Daniel Fells for 18, to set up a FG attempt in the 1st. His best play of the day may have been a 3rd-and-5 throw to Randy McMichael late in the 1st half. Ray McDonald had jumped offside and was bearing down on him, but a very composed Boller hit the TE for 8 and the first down across midfield. Boller deserves credit for hanging in tough and taking quite a few shots. One thing that hurt his game today was that the 49ers shut down his scrambling lanes. And Boller suffered from plenty of what's been sinking the Ram offense all season. He got little help from his offensive line or the running game. Decent offensive gains were erased by penalties. There's nothing Boller could do about special teams gaffes or crappy play-calling or lousy blitz pickups. And it's doubtful he could have done anyfthing about Patrick Willis' two perfectly-timed blitzes for sacks. Other downs saw him with sufficient time to throw, but lack of an open receiver led to a throwaway. Pressing to make a play despite these problems in the 3rd, Boller committed a grave error. Rolling right, he committed the cardinal sin of throwing back across his body and back to the middle of the field. Thinking he had Keenan Burton open, Boller hit Willis instead, for a 49er pick-six that broke open the dam, 21-0. Possibly Burton should have done a better job coming to the ball, but that's a throw a QB of Boller's experience should be smarter than to try. Though Boller may have been the problem on that play, it's hard to argue he was the main problem with the Ram offense today. He made most of the plays that were there for him to make. There just weren't that many to make. It doesn't matter much if it's him, or Marc Bulger, or Keith Null, or Brock Berlin, or Norm van Brocklin, who takes snaps for this offense right now. It doesn't look equipped or even designed to do anything other than blow up on the launching pad.
* RB: Ineffective day for Steven Jackson, 23-79 rushing, just 3-6 receiving, with a third of his rushing yards coming after the 49ers were already up 35-0. Jackson got some decent run blocking in the first half. Opening play of the game, Randy McMichael and Mike Karney give him a massive gap on the right side, but he can’t hit it and only gains a yard. A variety of Jackson’s skills got the Rams in FG position later in the first. Strong inside running, a nifty cutback run, bouncing a plugged-up run outside, taking a screen pass upfield. Jackson seemed to be right in the flow of the game. But the next two possessions were 3-and-outs where Jackson only saw the ball for short runs on first down. His best run of the day came just before the 2:00 warning of the first half. On 2nd-and-20, he bounced a run outside for 15, driving Shawntae Spencer backward up the sideline for the last five yards. A first down followed. Then, playcalling kicked in, to Jackson’s detriment. A fake end-around meant to draw away OLB Parys Haralson didn’t, and Jackson was held to 2 yards. After an Alex Barron penalty, Jackson was the victim of a draw play call on 3rd-and-9. He ran all over the field but was only able to net 2. Still, with 13 carries for 49 yards at halftime, it looked like Jackson was on his way to an effective day. But the 3rd quarter was a disaster, 5 carries for minus-2 and a dropped pass. They tried another draw play on 3rd-and-long. Nothing. Willis came untouched from the back side to stuff a pitchback run the next possession. Jackson didn’t even get the ball the next drive. Then Manny Lawson completely whipped McMichael and dropped Jackson for minus-6. Then Richie Incognito didn’t block Takeo Spikes and Jackson was stuffed for another no-gainer. No wonder on 3rd down that he dropped the (poorly-thrown) ball; everyone else on the offense was doing it figuratively. Without the 49ers running away with a big lead, without the 3rd-quarter meltdown by the offensive line, with better play-calling, I’d like to have seen how Steven Jackson would have done today. As it was, he had to fight his own team too much to be successful, let alone the 49ers.
* WR: No receiver could break the 3-catch barrier this afternoon. Donnie Avery (3-47) made a nifty run after the catch for 22 to convert a 3rd-and-14 in the 1st, but that looked like the only time he was open downfield all day, not even 10 yards downfield at that. He also had 11- and 13- yard receptions off of quick screens. At least he got involved some. Keenan Burton (1-12) had one catch to convert a third down, but that was it. Daniel Fells (1-17) had a catch on the Rams' second drive and was never heard from again. Randy McMichael (2-17) was a limited factor other than converting a couple of third downs. Boller missed each of the TEs wide open downfield once. Ruvell Martin (0-0) thought he was open once; you could see him waving clear on the other side of the field from Boller on Willis’ INT TD. Sixty yards away, you’re not open, buddy. Danny Amendola (1-8) might as well have stayed home; his fumble on an end-around in the 4th led directly to San Francisco's last TD. I don't think Amendola's got anyone to blame but himself there; it looked like Boller put the ball right where it was supposed to be. It's gotten so bad with this receiving corps that the only way to get the ball in their hands reliably is with quick screens and handoffs, and even those are blowing up in the Rams' faces.
* Offensive line: Boller was just lucky to survive the day behind “protection” that got him sacked five times and left him under constant pressure. Patrick Willis got to him twice with perfectly-timed blitzes and perfectly-bad blitz pickups by the backs. Jackson completely whiffed on him on a sack in the 1st, and Kenneth Darby fell over trying to pick him up on a sack late in the game. Willis was the first of TWO blitzers on that play to come right through a gap completely untouched and completely ignored by Jason Brown and Jacob Bell. Takeo Spikes sacked Boller late in the 2nd; on that play, blitzers beat Jackson AND Mike Karney, with Alex Barron also getting beaten for good measure. After Barron’s illegal alignment ruined a scoring opportunity later in the 2nd, Steve Spagnuolo actually yanked him out of the game, curiously, in favor of John Greco, who I wasn’t aware had even practiced at LT in the NFL. A couple of other “sacks”, including another half-sack for Willis, were the product of Boller trying to scramble but with the 49ers doing a good job of closing down his running lanes. One of those resulted from both Greco and Adam Goldberg getting whipped and Boller having to run up his interior linemen’s backs. Greco at tackle is an interesting experiment, but he looked pretty lead-footed today compared to the fleet 49ers going up against him. There was some good run blocking in the first half. Karney and McMichael gave Jackson the whole right side of the field on the first play of the game, but he didn’t get there until it closed up. Richie Incognito was, I must admit, the best of the Rams on the o-line. His strong drive block got Jackson 5 on an early drive, followed by a Jackson draw for 6 behind Brown’s solid block. Incognito WIPED OUT Nate Clements at the end of a screen pass in the first, and late in the half, Jackson got a nice 6-yard run behind, once again, Incognito and Brown. It all fell apart after halftime, though. Manny Lawson whipped McMichael and dropped Jackson for minus-6. Spikes stuffed Jackson for no gain after Incognito failed to block him at all. Boller had to rush the 3rd-down throw, which Jackson dropped, after Incognito and Goldberg were BOTH beaten by rushing 49ers on a stunt. The Rams then got away from the run the rest of the quarter, not coming back to it until the game was well out of hand. If there’s a key to this game beyond the gross turnovers, it’s that the o-line let too much pressure get to Boller, and that the 49ers really beat them to the punch coming out of halftime. Hard to see things changing with the current group.
* Defensive line / LB: The blowout final score does no justice to the front seven’s performance, the only bright spot of the day. The 49er offense was responsible for just 14 points, and both of those TD drives started on the Rams’ half of midfield. The Rams sacked Shaun Hill four times and held Glen Coffee to a low-caf 74 yards and barely 3 yards a carry. They got plenty of hits on Hill and pressured him into throwing lots of checkdowns. Should have been more than enough to win, let alone lose by 5 TDs. Leonard Little blew up a Coffee run in the backfield to slow down San Francisco’s opening drive. They held the Niners to a (missed) FG attempt in the 2nd thanks to long-awaited pass rush. Chris Long blew up Joe Staley to flush Hill into a blitzing Larry Grant for a 1st-down sack. C.J. Ah You followed that up with a terrific sack on 3rd down. He drove the guard blocking him into Hill before the QB could even finish a three-step drop, and got the takedown. Next drive, LaJuan (WHO?) Ramsey blew up a Coffee run and Little pressured an incomplete screen pass on 2nd down, with newcomer Paris Lenon doing a nice job to pick Coffee up in the flat. A huge rush by Ah You at the end of the half forced Hill into an intentional grounding call. James Hall came out of halftime on fire. He sacked Hill (after Long flushed him again) to end the first drive after halftime. Hall stuffed the run and pressured and hit Hill throughout the half. The Rams got good play from the middle of the line. Cliff Ryan spilled Coffee for a 3rd-quarter loss. Ramsey and Gary Gibson and even Leger Douzable got to Hill for hits. Gibson really drilled Hill on the first play out of halftime. Little beat the Niner RT right off the snap to collect the Rams’ 4th sack of the day, but by then, they were behind 35-0. I don’t know what Steve Spagnuolo can say to his defense after it plays at an insanely high level while the team still gets smoked by 5 TDs. Every lineman had an effective game and the Rams controlled the line of scrimmage when the Niners had the ball. Hall was a wild man. Little didn’t look like he’s slowed down any. Ah You made impressive plays. Long was disruptive in ways that won’t show on the score sheet. The LBs were strong against the run. What more could these guys have done? Play offense, too? “Starting at wide receiver… number 94… Victor Adeyanju!” (Hey, he’s gotta play sometime!)
* Secondary: Coverage breakdowns hurt the defense on the two TDs they did give up. Vernon Davis got a clean run off the line and just went straight upfield to beat James Laurinaitis and a too-late Anthony Smith for the 2nd Frisco TD, Smith in for Craig Dahl because Dahl was injured earlier. Josh Morgan’s TD in the 4th was a comedy of errors; neither Justin King nor O.J. Atogwe looked like they knew what they were doing on the 24-yard score. King trailed Morgan downfield by 5 yards, and Atogwe was well late getting over to help out, though it looked like there was little else brewing on his half of the field. Atogwe and Bradley Fletcher looked asleep in the 3rd, letting Morgan inexplicably behind them for a 44-yard bomb the 49er receiver just as inexplicably dropped. Justin King looked good in coverage. He took away a slant route to force a Hill throwaway, forcing the missed FG attempt in the 1st. King looks like he needs to get a lot stronger, though. He slid off Davis to allow a 21-yard pass on 3rd-and-13 in the 1st, and he whiffed miserably in the backfield on a Delanie Walker end-around that gained 16 on 2nd-and-11 in the 3rd. Though nothing ultimately came of them, the DBs drew a couple of painful third-down DPIs. Beyond the breakdowns, though, the Ram secondary did a good job of making it difficult for Hill to find open receivers. Considering Ron Bartell didn’t play due to injury, you’d have to say the very young Ram DBs held up pretty well.
* Special teams: The day appeared off to a great start when Amendola returned the opening kickoff 91 yards, inside the 49ers’ 5-yard line. He cut back off a Mike Karney block, got a big alley and was gone. Except he also apparently got a hold from Anthony Smith. Special teams settled into brutal dysfunction from there. Josh Brown missed a 51-yard FG to end one of the Rams’ rare decent drives. The kick was reportedly into a strong wind, and the snap was bad, but the highest-paid kicker in the NFL is still 1-for-4 this season. The wind also made Donnie Jones look just-human, averaging under 43 a boot. After Barron’s penalty knocked the Rams from the red zone to being out of FG range late in the 1st half, Jones’ punt landing 5 yards deep in the end zone was particularly galling. And it wouldn’t be the Rams’ special teams if they didn’t hand the other team a TD. Or, in this case, foot, as Quincy Butler got too close to a poor, bouncing punt, wasn’t waved off by returner Amendola, and kicked it into the end zone, where the 49ers recovered. Butler had a chance to fall on the muffed punt in the end zone, which I’m pretty sure would have been a touchback, but he compounded the mistake by trying to run with it. Amendola was no factor the rest of the game and contributed a fumble returned for a TD on offense. Good thing the Rams got rid of Derek Stanley!
* Coaching: Wow, who thought that after four weeks, the Pat Shurmur offense would have Rams Nation pining for the return of Al Saunders? Draw plays on third-and-long have their place, if you’ve done anything to stretch out the field and spread the defense. Shurmur’s offense hasn’t. I don’t think they’ve tried a long downfield pass since Bulger’s desperation throw at the end of the Washington game. Like with Saunders last year, no one’s buying the fake end-arounds, like Parys Haralson didn’t in stuffing a Jackson run before halftime, because the Rams always fake it and never run a real one. Well, I take that back; they tried, of course, with the bizarre end-around left for Amendola piggybacked onto a fake end-around left for Avery. I think Shurmur just outsmarted himself there. If they had just handed off to Avery, it looked like he had a lane good for at least 10 yards. Simpler is better sometimes. Or maybe have Amendola lead and give the ball to the guy who’s been here longer than a week? And I don’t know what was behind having SAMKON GADO as the tailback on 3rd-and-1 on the 49er 32 in the 1st quarter, with Jackson on the bench. There has to have been a blocking mistake on that play, too. Who would design a play to have Barron cut-block, Bell pulling right and a great big gap for the OLB to run right through and help himself to the ball-carrier? Again, simpler is better, even in the current Ram offense, which can hardly be described as risk-taking. And down 21-0 in the 3rd, Jackson doesn’t see the ball on a possession in favor of passes to Avery (1st down), Mike Karney (no gain), Daniel Fells and Ruvell Martin? Is he your bell cow, or your black sheep?
The defensive game plan, in contrast, was a lot more like it. The Rams weren’t afraid to blitz this week and did a fine job of keeping pressure in Hill’s face. The four-DE alignment paid off for at least two of the Rams’ four sacks; the blitz got another. Two big plays to Morgan, though, beat blitzes, including the TD pass to him in the 4th.
I hope Steve Spagnuolo will be asked some personnel questions this week, not just the Gado-for-Jackson swap in the 1st. How well did he expect John Greco to play at left tackle? How many screen plays has he run from LT to know not to get too far downfield? Why are we running trick plays with Danny Amendola near the goal line when he’s been here a week? How many handoffs do you suppose he’s taken from Boller? Has he fielded enough punts to know to call Butler off in the situation that occurred today? Anthony Smith’s gotten enough turns on special teams to avoid that critical holding penalty? How much can you “churn” a roster before you run into communications problems on the field because some of the guys just met a couple of days ago? Ten penalties, ugly turnovers, an offense that can’t get out of its own way – the Rams looked truly like a poorly-coached team today. The coaching staff needs a bounceback week here as much as anybody.
* Upon further review: Though Tony Corrente is a California native, referees a curious number of Rams-at-49ers games, and called the Rams 10 times for 73 yards vs. 3-for-33 for the 49ers, he didn’t actually appear to mess much up. Anthony Smith’s holding penalty erased Amendola’s 91-yard kick return to start the game and probably cost the Rams a TD. Especially if that was far from the action like I think it was, you know what? Don’t do that. Barron cost the Rams a first down inside the 20 late in the half by lining up off the line of scrimmage. Do linemen in the NFL get away with that all the time? Yes. But you know what? DON’T DO THAT. The Rams had 12 men in the huddle before one play. DON’T DO THAT. Much as I’d love to blame Corrente, it’s not his fault that Greco’s ineligible downfield on a screen pass, or LaJuan Ramsey goes to a 49er’s head, or that the Rams can’t get lined up properly for a spike play at the end of a half, or that Billy Bajema commits a block in the back on a kickoff that was only returned to the 14 anyway. The worst call of the day was the DPI where Hall hooked Hill’s arm, because Corrente never specified who the penalty was on. He’s a favorite officiating target, but don’t blame Corrente for today’s calls. Blame the Rams for giving him so much to call in the first place. He gets a B today. The Rams get an F.
* Cheers: Ron Pitts and John Lynch's appearance in the broadcast booth was a welcome relief to those of us dreading the first Matt Vasgersian call of the season. Lynch might as well have been a hometown Rams broadcaster, given the generous way he played up the Rams' future in the 4th. Lynch sounds convinced the Rams are on the right track. Whether that’s defensive guys sticking together, or the kind of analysis that had many commentators saying last year that Jim Haslett should stay the Rams’ head coach, remains to be seen. The Rams are wearing throwback uniforms next week; in that spirit, they should throw back the stupid Good Humor man duds, in which they’re 0-2 this season and have been outscored 63-0. Those unis are ugly and cursed.
* Who’s next?: If they were playing anybody besides the Rams next week, the Minnesota Vikings would be walking right into a trap game. After a miracle win over San Francisco and a Monday night war with the Packers, they go on the road and have a short week to prepare. Classic trap scenario. Too bad for the Rams that they're, well, the Rams. They won't have the ability on special teams to exploit Minnesota's historic weakness (9 TDs allowed since week 1 of 2008) there. Likelier we'll see big plays by lethal Vikings returners Percy Harvin and (if healthy) Darius Reynaud.
The Ram defense may be able to slow Adrian Peterson down into having just a good day instead of a dominating day. They'll need good pursuit down the line and make him wait as long as possible before getting turned upfield. A strong day in run support from the safeties will help. Plus, when Peterson does break into the second level, a safety will have to be on the spot to prevent 10-yard runs from becoming 50-yarders. In a lot of third down situations, the Vikings won't even have Peterson on the field, which should help a lot. Then the Rams have to stop Brett Favre. Legend or not, the majority of passes he'll throw will be five-yarders. He's a manager of the offense just like the Rams QB is supposed to be, except he has an offensive line, a running game and receivers. If the Rams line stays solid up the middle, they'll at least prevent him from stepping up in the pocket and making his most dangerous plays. Stack the box on first and second down, get Favre running outside the pocket on passing downs and hope for some of the dumb off-balance throws that have helped make him the NFL's all-time interceptions leader. Otherwise, he'll make plays like the one at the end of their win over the 49ers that have helped make him a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. Favre's most dangerous targets are Harvin, for his breakaway speed, and Visanthe Shiancoe, because he's a tight end playing against the Rams. If the Rams hold their own in the middle against second-year center John Sullivan and defend sideline-to-sideline, they'll have a chance at respectability, anyway.
The Ram offense, meanwhile, is likely to score negative points against another of the league's defensive juggernauts. Let's face it. They've got nobody who's going to be able to block sackmaster Jared Allen. Jason Brown would have his hands full with man-mountain Pat Williams on a good day. After missing most of 2008 with a foot injury, MLB E.J. Henderson is back on form and appears on his way to a career season. Antoine Winfield can surely shut down any Ram receiver that dares venture more than eight yards downfield. And their most disruptive player is Kevin Williams, who Richie Incognito will have to slow down in what could be the matchup of the day. Maybe try watching that instead of exposing your eyes to the toxic wretchedness that is the Ram offense.
Better yet, assuming there isn't a sweep in the series, watch Game 4 of the Cardinals' playoff series against the Dodgers. The Cardinals will probably outscore the Rams for the day, anyway. My kingdom for a bye week.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
From The Couch
(Report and opinions on the game.)
Game #4: 49ers 35, Rams 0
Erasing any doubt they are the NFL's worst team, the epically inept Ram offense and bumbling special teams handed the 49ers THREE touchdowns today en route to a truly embarrassing loss, extending the franchise's losing streaks to 14 overall, 12 in the NFC West. Even the SCLSU Mud Dogs never looked this bad.
* QB: That crashing sound you heard was the Kyle Boller bandwagon going into a ditch, after a Rams season-low 13-24-108 today for a 48.6 passer rating. It wasn't for lack of a good start. He beat a blitz and hit Donnie Avery for 21, and later hit Daniel Fells for 18, to set up a FG attempt in the 1st. His best play of the day may have been a 3rd-and-5 throw to Randy McMichael late in the 1st half. Ray McDonald had jumped offside and was bearing down on him, but a very composed Boller hit the TE for 8 and the first down across midfield. Boller deserves credit for hanging in tough and taking quite a few shots. One thing that hurt his game today was that the 49ers shut down his scrambling lanes. And Boller suffered from plenty of what's been sinking the Ram offense all season. He got little help from his offensive line or the running game. Decent offensive gains were erased by penalties. There's nothing Boller could do about special teams gaffes or crappy play-calling or lousy blitz pickups. And it's doubtful he could have done anyfthing about Patrick Willis' two perfectly-timed blitzes for sacks. Other downs saw him with sufficient time to throw, but lack of an open receiver led to a throwaway. Pressing to make a play despite these problems in the 3rd, Boller committed a grave error. Rolling right, he committed the cardinal sin of throwing back across his body and back to the middle of the field. Thinking he had Keenan Burton open, Boller hit Willis instead, for a 49er pick-six that broke open the dam, 21-0. Possibly Burton should have done a better job coming to the ball, but that's a throw a QB of Boller's experience should be smarter than to try. Though Boller may have been the problem on that play, it's hard to argue he was the main problem with the Ram offense today. He made most of the plays that were there for him to make. There just weren't that many to make. It doesn't matter much if it's him, or Marc Bulger, or Keith Null, or Brock Berlin, or Norm van Brocklin, who takes snaps for this offense right now. It doesn't look equipped or even designed to do anything other than blow up on the launching pad.
* RB: Ineffective day for Steven Jackson, 23-79 rushing, just 3-6 receiving, with a third of his rushing yards coming after the 49ers were already up 35-0. Jackson got some decent run blocking in the first half. Opening play of the game, Randy McMichael and Mike Karney give him a massive gap on the right side, but he can’t hit it and only gains a yard. A variety of Jackson’s skills got the Rams in FG position later in the first. Strong inside running, a nifty cutback run, bouncing a plugged-up run outside, taking a screen pass upfield. Jackson seemed to be right in the flow of the game. But the next two possessions were 3-and-outs where Jackson only saw the ball for short runs on first down. His best run of the day came just before the 2:00 warning of the first half. On 2nd-and-20, he bounced a run outside for 15, driving Shawntae Spencer backward up the sideline for the last five yards. A first down followed. Then, playcalling kicked in, to Jackson’s detriment. A fake end-around meant to draw away OLB Parys Haralson didn’t, and Jackson was held to 2 yards. After an Alex Barron penalty, Jackson was the victim of a draw play call on 3rd-and-9. He ran all over the field but was only able to net 2. Still, with 13 carries for 49 yards at halftime, it looked like Jackson was on his way to an effective day. But the 3rd quarter was a disaster, 5 carries for minus-2 and a dropped pass. They tried another draw play on 3rd-and-long. Nothing. Willis came untouched from the back side to stuff a pitchback run the next possession. Jackson didn’t even get the ball the next drive. Then Manny Lawson completely whipped McMichael and dropped Jackson for minus-6. Then Richie Incognito didn’t block Takeo Spikes and Jackson was stuffed for another no-gainer. No wonder on 3rd down that he dropped the (poorly-thrown) ball; everyone else on the offense was doing it figuratively. Without the 49ers running away with a big lead, without the 3rd-quarter meltdown by the offensive line, with better play-calling, I’d like to have seen how Steven Jackson would have done today. As it was, he had to fight his own team too much to be successful, let alone the 49ers.
* WR: No receiver could break the 3-catch barrier this afternoon. Donnie Avery (3-47) made a nifty run after the catch for 22 to convert a 3rd-and-14 in the 1st, but that looked like the only time he was open downfield all day, not even 10 yards downfield at that. He also had 11- and 13- yard receptions off of quick screens. At least he got involved some. Keenan Burton (1-12) had one catch to convert a third down, but that was it. Daniel Fells (1-17) had a catch on the Rams' second drive and was never heard from again. Randy McMichael (2-17) was a limited factor other than converting a couple of third downs. Boller missed each of the TEs wide open downfield once. Ruvell Martin (0-0) thought he was open once; you could see him waving clear on the other side of the field from Boller on Willis’ INT TD. Sixty yards away, you’re not open, buddy. Danny Amendola (1-8) might as well have stayed home; his fumble on an end-around in the 4th led directly to San Francisco's last TD. I don't think Amendola's got anyone to blame but himself there; it looked like Boller put the ball right where it was supposed to be. It's gotten so bad with this receiving corps that the only way to get the ball in their hands reliably is with quick screens and handoffs, and even those are blowing up in the Rams' faces.
* Offensive line: Boller was just lucky to survive the day behind “protection” that got him sacked five times and left him under constant pressure. Patrick Willis got to him twice with perfectly-timed blitzes and perfectly-bad blitz pickups by the backs. Jackson completely whiffed on him on a sack in the 1st, and Kenneth Darby fell over trying to pick him up on a sack late in the game. Willis was the first of TWO blitzers on that play to come right through a gap completely untouched and completely ignored by Jason Brown and Jacob Bell. Takeo Spikes sacked Boller late in the 2nd; on that play, blitzers beat Jackson AND Mike Karney, with Alex Barron also getting beaten for good measure. After Barron’s illegal alignment ruined a scoring opportunity later in the 2nd, Steve Spagnuolo actually yanked him out of the game, curiously, in favor of John Greco, who I wasn’t aware had even practiced at LT in the NFL. A couple of other “sacks”, including another half-sack for Willis, were the product of Boller trying to scramble but with the 49ers doing a good job of closing down his running lanes. One of those resulted from both Greco and Adam Goldberg getting whipped and Boller having to run up his interior linemen’s backs. Greco at tackle is an interesting experiment, but he looked pretty lead-footed today compared to the fleet 49ers going up against him. There was some good run blocking in the first half. Karney and McMichael gave Jackson the whole right side of the field on the first play of the game, but he didn’t get there until it closed up. Richie Incognito was, I must admit, the best of the Rams on the o-line. His strong drive block got Jackson 5 on an early drive, followed by a Jackson draw for 6 behind Brown’s solid block. Incognito WIPED OUT Nate Clements at the end of a screen pass in the first, and late in the half, Jackson got a nice 6-yard run behind, once again, Incognito and Brown. It all fell apart after halftime, though. Manny Lawson whipped McMichael and dropped Jackson for minus-6. Spikes stuffed Jackson for no gain after Incognito failed to block him at all. Boller had to rush the 3rd-down throw, which Jackson dropped, after Incognito and Goldberg were BOTH beaten by rushing 49ers on a stunt. The Rams then got away from the run the rest of the quarter, not coming back to it until the game was well out of hand. If there’s a key to this game beyond the gross turnovers, it’s that the o-line let too much pressure get to Boller, and that the 49ers really beat them to the punch coming out of halftime. Hard to see things changing with the current group.
* Defensive line / LB: The blowout final score does no justice to the front seven’s performance, the only bright spot of the day. The 49er offense was responsible for just 14 points, and both of those TD drives started on the Rams’ half of midfield. The Rams sacked Shaun Hill four times and held Glen Coffee to a low-caf 74 yards and barely 3 yards a carry. They got plenty of hits on Hill and pressured him into throwing lots of checkdowns. Should have been more than enough to win, let alone lose by 5 TDs. Leonard Little blew up a Coffee run in the backfield to slow down San Francisco’s opening drive. They held the Niners to a (missed) FG attempt in the 2nd thanks to long-awaited pass rush. Chris Long blew up Joe Staley to flush Hill into a blitzing Larry Grant for a 1st-down sack. C.J. Ah You followed that up with a terrific sack on 3rd down. He drove the guard blocking him into Hill before the QB could even finish a three-step drop, and got the takedown. Next drive, LaJuan (WHO?) Ramsey blew up a Coffee run and Little pressured an incomplete screen pass on 2nd down, with newcomer Paris Lenon doing a nice job to pick Coffee up in the flat. A huge rush by Ah You at the end of the half forced Hill into an intentional grounding call. James Hall came out of halftime on fire. He sacked Hill (after Long flushed him again) to end the first drive after halftime. Hall stuffed the run and pressured and hit Hill throughout the half. The Rams got good play from the middle of the line. Cliff Ryan spilled Coffee for a 3rd-quarter loss. Ramsey and Gary Gibson and even Leger Douzable got to Hill for hits. Gibson really drilled Hill on the first play out of halftime. Little beat the Niner RT right off the snap to collect the Rams’ 4th sack of the day, but by then, they were behind 35-0. I don’t know what Steve Spagnuolo can say to his defense after it plays at an insanely high level while the team still gets smoked by 5 TDs. Every lineman had an effective game and the Rams controlled the line of scrimmage when the Niners had the ball. Hall was a wild man. Little didn’t look like he’s slowed down any. Ah You made impressive plays. Long was disruptive in ways that won’t show on the score sheet. The LBs were strong against the run. What more could these guys have done? Play offense, too? “Starting at wide receiver… number 94… Victor Adeyanju!” (Hey, he’s gotta play sometime!)
* Secondary: Coverage breakdowns hurt the defense on the two TDs they did give up. Vernon Davis got a clean run off the line and just went straight upfield to beat James Laurinaitis and a too-late Anthony Smith for the 2nd Frisco TD, Smith in for Craig Dahl because Dahl was injured earlier. Josh Morgan’s TD in the 4th was a comedy of errors; neither Justin King nor O.J. Atogwe looked like they knew what they were doing on the 24-yard score. King trailed Morgan downfield by 5 yards, and Atogwe was well late getting over to help out, though it looked like there was little else brewing on his half of the field. Atogwe and Bradley Fletcher looked asleep in the 3rd, letting Morgan inexplicably behind them for a 44-yard bomb the 49er receiver just as inexplicably dropped. Justin King looked good in coverage. He took away a slant route to force a Hill throwaway, forcing the missed FG attempt in the 1st. King looks like he needs to get a lot stronger, though. He slid off Davis to allow a 21-yard pass on 3rd-and-13 in the 1st, and he whiffed miserably in the backfield on a Delanie Walker end-around that gained 16 on 2nd-and-11 in the 3rd. Though nothing ultimately came of them, the DBs drew a couple of painful third-down DPIs. Beyond the breakdowns, though, the Ram secondary did a good job of making it difficult for Hill to find open receivers. Considering Ron Bartell didn’t play due to injury, you’d have to say the very young Ram DBs held up pretty well.
* Special teams: The day appeared off to a great start when Amendola returned the opening kickoff 91 yards, inside the 49ers’ 5-yard line. He cut back off a Mike Karney block, got a big alley and was gone. Except he also apparently got a hold from Anthony Smith. Special teams settled into brutal dysfunction from there. Josh Brown missed a 51-yard FG to end one of the Rams’ rare decent drives. The kick was reportedly into a strong wind, and the snap was bad, but the highest-paid kicker in the NFL is still 1-for-4 this season. The wind also made Donnie Jones look just-human, averaging under 43 a boot. After Barron’s penalty knocked the Rams from the red zone to being out of FG range late in the 1st half, Jones’ punt landing 5 yards deep in the end zone was particularly galling. And it wouldn’t be the Rams’ special teams if they didn’t hand the other team a TD. Or, in this case, foot, as Quincy Butler got too close to a poor, bouncing punt, wasn’t waved off by returner Amendola, and kicked it into the end zone, where the 49ers recovered. Butler had a chance to fall on the muffed punt in the end zone, which I’m pretty sure would have been a touchback, but he compounded the mistake by trying to run with it. Amendola was no factor the rest of the game and contributed a fumble returned for a TD on offense. Good thing the Rams got rid of Derek Stanley!
* Coaching: Wow, who thought that after four weeks, the Pat Shurmur offense would have Rams Nation pining for the return of Al Saunders? Draw plays on third-and-long have their place, if you’ve done anything to stretch out the field and spread the defense. Shurmur’s offense hasn’t. I don’t think they’ve tried a long downfield pass since Bulger’s desperation throw at the end of the Washington game. Like with Saunders last year, no one’s buying the fake end-arounds, like Parys Haralson didn’t in stuffing a Jackson run before halftime, because the Rams always fake it and never run a real one. Well, I take that back; they tried, of course, with the bizarre end-around left for Amendola piggybacked onto a fake end-around left for Avery. I think Shurmur just outsmarted himself there. If they had just handed off to Avery, it looked like he had a lane good for at least 10 yards. Simpler is better sometimes. Or maybe have Amendola lead and give the ball to the guy who’s been here longer than a week? And I don’t know what was behind having SAMKON GADO as the tailback on 3rd-and-1 on the 49er 32 in the 1st quarter, with Jackson on the bench. There has to have been a blocking mistake on that play, too. Who would design a play to have Barron cut-block, Bell pulling right and a great big gap for the OLB to run right through and help himself to the ball-carrier? Again, simpler is better, even in the current Ram offense, which can hardly be described as risk-taking. And down 21-0 in the 3rd, Jackson doesn’t see the ball on a possession in favor of passes to Avery (1st down), Mike Karney (no gain), Daniel Fells and Ruvell Martin? Is he your bell cow, or your black sheep?
The defensive game plan, in contrast, was a lot more like it. The Rams weren’t afraid to blitz this week and did a fine job of keeping pressure in Hill’s face. The four-DE alignment paid off for at least two of the Rams’ four sacks; the blitz got another. Two big plays to Morgan, though, beat blitzes, including the TD pass to him in the 4th.
I hope Steve Spagnuolo will be asked some personnel questions this week, not just the Gado-for-Jackson swap in the 1st. How well did he expect John Greco to play at left tackle? How many screen plays has he run from LT to know not to get too far downfield? Why are we running trick plays with Danny Amendola near the goal line when he’s been here a week? How many handoffs do you suppose he’s taken from Boller? Has he fielded enough punts to know to call Butler off in the situation that occurred today? Anthony Smith’s gotten enough turns on special teams to avoid that critical holding penalty? How much can you “churn” a roster before you run into communications problems on the field because some of the guys just met a couple of days ago? Ten penalties, ugly turnovers, an offense that can’t get out of its own way – the Rams looked truly like a poorly-coached team today. The coaching staff needs a bounceback week here as much as anybody.
* Upon further review: Though Tony Corrente is a California native, referees a curious number of Rams-at-49ers games, and called the Rams 10 times for 73 yards vs. 3-for-33 for the 49ers, he didn’t actually appear to mess much up. Anthony Smith’s holding penalty erased Amendola’s 91-yard kick return to start the game and probably cost the Rams a TD. Especially if that was far from the action like I think it was, you know what? Don’t do that. Barron cost the Rams a first down inside the 20 late in the half by lining up off the line of scrimmage. Do linemen in the NFL get away with that all the time? Yes. But you know what? DON’T DO THAT. The Rams had 12 men in the huddle before one play. DON’T DO THAT. Much as I’d love to blame Corrente, it’s not his fault that Greco’s ineligible downfield on a screen pass, or LaJuan Ramsey goes to a 49er’s head, or that the Rams can’t get lined up properly for a spike play at the end of a half, or that Billy Bajema commits a block in the back on a kickoff that was only returned to the 14 anyway. The worst call of the day was the DPI where Hall hooked Hill’s arm, because Corrente never specified who the penalty was on. He’s a favorite officiating target, but don’t blame Corrente for today’s calls. Blame the Rams for giving him so much to call in the first place. He gets a B today. The Rams get an F.
* Cheers: Ron Pitts and John Lynch's appearance in the broadcast booth was a welcome relief to those of us dreading the first Matt Vasgersian call of the season. Lynch might as well have been a hometown Rams broadcaster, given the generous way he played up the Rams' future in the 4th. Lynch sounds convinced the Rams are on the right track. Whether that’s defensive guys sticking together, or the kind of analysis that had many commentators saying last year that Jim Haslett should stay the Rams’ head coach, remains to be seen. The Rams are wearing throwback uniforms next week; in that spirit, they should throw back the stupid Good Humor man duds, in which they’re 0-2 this season and have been outscored 63-0. Those unis are ugly and cursed.
* Who’s next?: If they were playing anybody besides the Rams next week, the Minnesota Vikings would be walking right into a trap game. After a miracle win over San Francisco and a Monday night war with the Packers, they go on the road and have a short week to prepare. Classic trap scenario. Too bad for the Rams that they're, well, the Rams. They won't have the ability on special teams to exploit Minnesota's historic weakness (9 TDs allowed since week 1 of 2008) there. Likelier we'll see big plays by lethal Vikings returners Percy Harvin and (if healthy) Darius Reynaud.
The Ram defense may be able to slow Adrian Peterson down into having just a good day instead of a dominating day. They'll need good pursuit down the line and make him wait as long as possible before getting turned upfield. A strong day in run support from the safeties will help. Plus, when Peterson does break into the second level, a safety will have to be on the spot to prevent 10-yard runs from becoming 50-yarders. In a lot of third down situations, the Vikings won't even have Peterson on the field, which should help a lot. Then the Rams have to stop Brett Favre. Legend or not, the majority of passes he'll throw will be five-yarders. He's a manager of the offense just like the Rams QB is supposed to be, except he has an offensive line, a running game and receivers. If the Rams line stays solid up the middle, they'll at least prevent him from stepping up in the pocket and making his most dangerous plays. Stack the box on first and second down, get Favre running outside the pocket on passing downs and hope for some of the dumb off-balance throws that have helped make him the NFL's all-time interceptions leader. Otherwise, he'll make plays like the one at the end of their win over the 49ers that have helped make him a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. Favre's most dangerous targets are Harvin, for his breakaway speed, and Visanthe Shiancoe, because he's a tight end playing against the Rams. If the Rams hold their own in the middle against second-year center John Sullivan and defend sideline-to-sideline, they'll have a chance at respectability, anyway.
The Ram offense, meanwhile, is likely to score negative points against another of the league's defensive juggernauts. Let's face it. They've got nobody who's going to be able to block sackmaster Jared Allen. Jason Brown would have his hands full with man-mountain Pat Williams on a good day. After missing most of 2008 with a foot injury, MLB E.J. Henderson is back on form and appears on his way to a career season. Antoine Winfield can surely shut down any Ram receiver that dares venture more than eight yards downfield. And their most disruptive player is Kevin Williams, who Richie Incognito will have to slow down in what could be the matchup of the day. Maybe try watching that instead of exposing your eyes to the toxic wretchedness that is the Ram offense.
Better yet, assuming there isn't a sweep in the series, watch Game 4 of the Cardinals' playoff series against the Dodgers. The Cardinals will probably outscore the Rams for the day, anyway. My kingdom for a bye week.
--Mike
Game stats from nfl.com
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