RamView, August 14, 2015
Preseason Game #1: Raiders 18, Rams 3
If the Rams achieved any goals they set
for their first preseason game of 2015, they must have been awfully
modest ones. They didn't cross the goal line on offense, didn't
dictate much of anything up front on defense, committed their usual
scad of penalties and got a couple of important players injured.
History won't care because it's preseason, but this game was a pretty
big zero.
Position by position:
* QB: After
two plays, it looked like Nick Foles (3-5-69) was on his way to a
great night. He started the game by hitting Lance Kendricks on that
deep corner he was missing at the scrimmage for 26. Tavon Austin then
took off with a smoke route for 35. After that, though, no open
receivers, and after the opening FG drive, declining pass protection
for Foles, taking a sack on his last play though he had enough time
to throw the ball away. Case Keenum (12-17-83) caused consternation
here at Austin Davis World Fan Club HQ by coming out as QB2. And he
may stay there. His deeper passes look like adventures, and he didn't
lead the offense to a TD, but he was still solid. He showed nice
accuracy and rhythm in the short passing game, good pocket presence,
and read the field well. My favorite play was the out pass he threw
to Chris Givens on 3rd-and-6 in the 3rd,
lobbing it over the head of a dog blitzer coming unblocked at him.
Factor in a couple of big gains nullified by penalty, and a couple of
receivers running bad routes to deny good plays, and Keenum made a
strong case for the backup job. Davis (1-2-12) didn't have much of a
chance behind the 3rd-string line; of his three dropbacks, he got
sacked once and hit on another. He'll need to make a much better case
to have a shot at QB2. Unless he's already been surpassed as QB3,
that is. Sean Mannion (8-13-53) didn't look bad at all leading the
Rams' final, up-tempo drive across midfield. Out routes had not
appeared to be a strength of his game, but he threw a bunch of good
ones, standing tall in the pocket and dealing. Watching him run the
offense, he looks well ahead of where Davis was as a rookie in
reading the field and making adjustments. Heck, he may be ahead of
where Davis is now.
* RB: Tre
Mason (2-6) did play but not a lot happened for the Rams on the
ground. Like Mason, Benny Cunningham (3-15) played for one drive. His
failed blitz pickup helped Foles get sacked in the 2nd,
though a false start let him off the hook. Isaiah Pead (4 touches-21)
had the best lead blocking. He didn't look as explosive as,
forgetting the torn ACL last year, I'd thought he would. Though Trey
Watts (7-16) and Malcolm Brown (2-18) both had 12-yard runs, little
about the Ram running game looked that explosive. Most of Watts'
night was spent getting blown up in the backfield behind really poor
blocking. Justice Cunningham's lead blocking was a bright spot; he
sprung several nice gains with good blocks, especially Pead's
nullified 8-yarder in the 3rd.
The Rams passed nearly twice as much as they ran, so it's fair to say
establishing the run wasn't high on their list for the game, and even
fairer to say that won't be their offensive personality in the
regular season once Todd Gurley's ready to be sprung on the league.
* Receivers: The heart of the WR
action tonight was the start of what looks like a very competitive
race between Chris Givens (5 touches-52) and Bradley Marquez (4-23)
for WR5. Givens turned what looked like a blown-up end-around into a
16-yard gain by cutting it up inside and was a pretty reliable target
for Keenum with comebacks and out routes. Marquez' hands were
inconsistent – he had a drop that cost a first down – but I like
the football smarts he shows. He tended to be the one getting the
rest of his fellow receivers lined up right, and he made a fine play
coming back to Mannion to save a sack on the final drive. Damian
Williams, who had a 25-yard catch nullified by penalty, should be
heard from in this race as well. Lance Kendricks (1-26) opened the
festivities with a catch on a deep corner route, then Tavon Austin
(1-35) broke away on a play that was exciting and disappointing at
the same time. He caught a smoke pass behind a strong block by Kenny
Britt (1-8), got half the Oakland defense leaning the wrong way by
cutting back inside, but then geared down dramatically while
switching the ball to his outside hand and coasted out of bounds in
front of what appeared to be the only Raider DB he had left to beat
for a TD. On the TV broadcast, Torry Holt, who should know about
these things, was a pretty consistent critic of the receivers'
route-running and inability to separate. A pass to Austin failed
because he didn't explode out of his break. A pass to Givens failed
because he didn't run the route full out because he wasn't expecting
the ball. Emory Blake (1-12) didn't break off a route he was supposed
to break off. Isiah Ferguson (1-15) looks hard to bring down but
doesn't look like he can separate from anyone. Not unexpectedly,
there's still a lot of cleaning up to get done here.
* Offensive line: Remember how
the main goal of a preseason game is to not get anyone injured? Yeah,
maybe just forget that goal when you have Rodger Saffold on your
team. Saffold lasted an entire four plays before having to check out
with a shoulder injury. Early reports said it's not serious, though I
doubt that lessens the great schadenfreude the Raiders front office
gets every time there's Rodger Saffold injury news. After that, the
big news item was at center, where I'd be willing to declare the race
over after just one game, with Tim Barnes the winner in a rout. The
first reason is that Barnes played with the starting unit and looked
good. Mason's first run went for 5 despite there being only one good
block up front, by Barnes, who turned the nose tackle. Cunningham
later gained 5 on 3rd-and-short off Barnes throwing an awesome
one-armed block, showing he's gotten stronger like I've been begging
for him to do here. I haven't been his biggest fan, but Barnes looked
like NFL starting material tonight. Helping Barnes' cause was the
totally rancid egg Barrett Jones laid with the second string. He got
whipped off what seemed like every snap, especially in the second
half by ham-and-eggers like RICKEY F. LUMPKIN. Half a dozen times,
and every time Watts got buried for a loss in the 2nd
half, you could point right at Jones getting whipped immediately off
the snap as the reason the play blew up (and Watts actually turned
one of those fails into a 12-yard gain by bouncing out behind an
Andrew Donnal drive block). Jones even got Watts blown up on a screen
pass by failing badly on the lead block. I don't know if it was
conditioning, or if Jones ill-advisedly turned his intensity way down
against the scrubs, but he looked awful after halftime against people
against whom he ideally should have looked a lot better. He did
appear to hold up well in pass protection. Rookie starters Rob
Havenstein and Jamon Brown appeared to do well, though the Ram
offense was pretty left-handed and didn't test them a lot. Brown
looked good in the run game, though Cunningham needed a better pull
block from him on his first run. Pass protection problems came more
from the left side, especially from Brandon Washington, who replaced
Saffold at LG. He gave up the sack of Foles that counted, finding
Shelby Harris on a loop but still losing him pretty badly. On that
same drive, a play earlier, Greg Robinson, getting eaten up by a
speed rush, would have given up a sack AND gotten flagged for a hold,
but the Raiders bailed him out with an offsetting hold. He also
nearly gave up a sack on the first play of the drive. At the same
time, Robinson can definitely maul; on the sack Washington gave up,
he had his man pinned to the ground. Andrew Donnal should get called
out by the coaches for several good run mauls, though he also
committed a hold. I hoped Garrett Reynolds would step up at guard
with Saffold out, but he stayed with the twos and nullified a big
gain to Damian Williams with a hold. Farther down the depth chart,
Isaiah Battle's run-blocking is well ahead of his pass-blocking. He
gave up a sack in the 4th with a lazy reach-block attempt,
and he and David Wang got beaten a couple of other times to give up
pressures on Mannion. For a first preseason game, I'd say the run
blocking was good enough minus the bad work by Jones, and pass
protection was solid enough in the first half, with the ones and twos
picking up blitzes much better than they did in either practice I
saw. The potential and likely absence of Saffold up front is going to
prove a problem, though.
* Defensive line: Given
the slow start they got off to last regular season, I was all in
favor of a preseason preview of the dominating Sack City's supposedly
going to do in 2015, but we got one of their run-of-the-mill, ho-hum,
we're-just-warming-up preseason performances instead. No sacks, not
really any pressures, and the first quarter was nearly over before
anyone made a play behind the LOS. Robert Quinn nearly got there a
couple of times, and Aaron Donald disrupted a couple of plays with
his ninja quickness, but Oakland still put together roughly 50, 50
and 80-yard drives their first three possessions. A big problem was
Michael Brockers getting pwned by Rodney Hudson. Latavius Murray
(6-35) beat a blitz for 16 on a 1st-quarter draw, with Brockers
unable to get off his block. Oakland drove deep into Ram territory
late in the 1st.
Murray drew for 8, with the whole line overrunning it except
Brockers, not because he was disciplined, but because he couldn't
budge a double-team. Murray got another 1st
down inside the 10 after Quinn misread the play and overran it, and
Brockers couldn't get off a Hudson block. I don't believe Brockers
got off a block all night. William Hayes finally dropped Murray for a
loss with about a minute left in the quarter to make Sack City's
first impact play. VERY well-timed, as it was inside the 10 and
helped the Rams prevent a score. With the Rams' twos in, and Matt
Longacre accomplishing nothing in run D, I believe Trent Richardson
(5-18) matched his yardage total from last season. Oakland schooled
the Rams with the ol' Student Body Right for 16 in the 2nd,
with Martin Ifedi getting run over and Nick Fairley overrunning it.
Poor tackling and lack of pass rush allowed the feared Matt McGloin
to put together a 60-yard FG drive out of halftime to make it 12-3.
More of the same to start the 4th,
a 62-yard TD drive with no pass rush at all. This was the drive where
I went, wait a minute, Ethan Westbrooks has been on the field all
this time? Where was the unblockable guy I watched last Friday night?
And with the undersized Louis Trinca-Pasat drawing double-teams he
isn't going to beat in a million years, there was no penetration at
all up the middle. Now, Westbrooks did blow up three running plays
the next time Oakland had the ball. Trinca-Pasat broke one up as
well, and I still like his quickness off the ball a lot. Fairley made
a couple of plays, including a nifty coverage out of a zone blitz in
the 2nd.
And Chris Long, though I'm honestly starting to wonder about him, did
not play at all. Still, there was little that was “Sack City”
about tonight's defensive performance. At best it was “Mild Skin
Irritation City”. If the Rams intend to be more threatening than
prickly heat in September, they didn't build up to it on the field in
Oakland tonight, and some momentum in August is in order to revoke
the trademark on the Jeff Fisher Slow Start.
* Linebackers: The
LBs did little to outshine the front four, with the exception of
Akeem Ayers, whom I'm really starting to warm up to. He was the best
Ram defender with the ones. He closed nicely to hold Amari Cooper to
3 on a quick hitch. He helped end the drive later by getting in Derek
Carr's face on a blitz and forcing him to rush a screen pass
incomplete that probably would have been a TD had Carr had an extra
beat. James Laurinaitis didn't accomplish much on an edge blitz and
got stuffed by the fullback on Murray's 16-yard run. Daren Bates flew
in all alone and then completely blew the Rams' best opportunity for
a sack in the 2nd.
(Jo-Lonn Dunbar would have cost him the sack with a holding penalty
anyway.) On the next play, Bates got DESTROYED in the hole by a block
on a Trent Richardson run that may have ended his season. Bryce Hager
had several “teaching moments”. He had Clive Walford blanketed
down the middle in the 2nd,
but was never aware the ball was coming and still gave up a big
22-yard catch. That set up a TD the next play, where Hager screened
Lamarcus Joyner while trying to pick up a back in motion. He also
blew tackles on quick screens a couple of times to give up big gains
and make that a MUCH too lethal weapon for the Raider offense. If
Bates' season is indeed already over, it may be incumbent upon Hager
to learn quickly.
* Secondary: The good news out
of the game: my map is starting to show a suburb developing on the
outskirts of Sack City. It's called Pick City, and Trumaine Johnson
is the mayor. TruJo's rarely played better in a Rams uniform, and I
very much hope tonight was more than a “playing in my hometown”
(which he was) occasion. He made a pretty pass breakup in deep man
coverage to end Oakland's opening drive. On the 2nd drive,
after Janoris Jenkins blew a tackle to let Michael F. Crabtree get
away for 16, TruJo ruined his own excellent play on a pass to Amari
Cooper with a facemask penalty that put the Raiders in the red zone.
He more than atoned for that with a goal-line interception of Carr a
few plays later, perfectly jumping Cooper's route. Lamarcus Joyner
gave up a short Andre Holmes TD from Christian Ponder, but Hager
getting in the way had something to do with that. If any DB struggled
this week, it was Maurice Alexander. He blew a tackle on a 21-yard
quick screen to Chris Durham and fell in coverage when Brice Butler
pivoted back on his TD-scoring route in the 4th. Starters
like T.J. McDonald and Mark Barron did a good job of keeping
Oakland's many short throws in front of them and holding them to
short gains. Cody Davis also did that on a quick pass to Roberts, and
he bailed out Trovon Reed in the 3rd by breaking up a pass
at the goal line after Reed had gotten undressed by the WR off the
line. THAT is safety help. Top to bottom, the Ram secondary has
started 2015 playing with a lot of confidence, and is showing nice
improvement so far.
* Special teams: It happened
while he was at linebacker, but the other key injury of the game may
have taken away one of the Rams' very best players on special teams,
Daren Bates. Initial reports about his knee injury did not sound
encouraging; I think we're bracing for ACL news over the weekend.
Maybe rookie free agent Cameron Lynch will step up; he made a sweet
strip/tackle that nearly got the Rams the ball off the 2nd-half
kickoff. Punt coverage was much too slow getting downfield. Trindon
Holliday had ten yards of free space when he returned a punt for 22
in the 1st. Johnny Hekker put a punt inside the 10 in the
2nd, and though it hit very hard anyway, there was still
no Ram in the vicinity to stop it from barreling into the end zone.
Hekker also shanked a punt for 28; well, let's get those out of the
way in August. Greg Zuerlein did all the Rams' scoring with a 31-yard
FG in the 1st; Michael Palardy missed from 47 in the 3rd
kicking from the infield dirt in Oakland's detestable dump of a
stadium. With the kicking mistakes, punt coverage that didn't get
downfield and the possible loss of a leader for the season, this was
not the start the Rams wanted to have on special teams.
* Strategery: Well, guess what's
not going to change again this season? Marshall Faulk put the
not-too-fine point on it during the broadcast by mentioning, Wait a
minute, the Rams are out-penaltying the Raiders! And they did, and
then some, 10-75 to just 2-22. Of the Rams' 14 total penalties, seven
were by starters or veterans who are locks to make the team. Four
were pre-snap offensive penalties, three delays of game and a false
start. This Fisher garbage is simply never going to end.
Many more three-point games may end
his OC career quickly, but Frank Cignetti's game plan had plenty to
like. The Rams aren't likely to pass twice as much as they run in the
regular season (well, they better not be), but I didn't mind the
departure from the usual bland preseason gameplan. It took two plays
to get the ball to Austin in space, not the two months it used to
take. Givens got a couple of what should be Austin plays, an
end-around for 15 and an against-the-grain quick hitch for 8 that
went for 20 at the scrimmage Friday. The confidence-building drive
for Mannion at the end of the game was an excellent move. There
wasn't much done to stretch the field but there also weren't any
why-the-hell-did-he-call-that? plays. The very best call was the
play-action pass to Zach Laskey on 4th-and-1 in the 3rd.
If Cignetti keeps pulling off calls like that, he'll have a fan for
life.
Gregg Williams also showed good rhythm
calling plays at DC that I hope he'll carry into the regular season.
Other than Murray's long run of 16, he didn't really get burned on a
blitz. And though those blitzes once again produced zero sacks, a red
zone run blitz in the 3rd was perfectly timed and forced
Oakland to take a FG. I wish soft coverage were always as uncommon as
it was this game, but that probably had a lot to do with Oakland's
short-passing attack. As the Sack City planner, Williams has to get
much better pass rush generated than the Rams did here, and he also
needs to get to enforcing the old “you have to stop the run before
you can pass rush” rule up front. Targets to meet this preseason
and definitely beyond.
* Upon further review: The Tony
Corrente crew didn't bring their A game. They missed an easy-to-spot
false start on Cory Harkey at fullback. They called a hold on Rodney
McLeod on the first punt, but not the obvious hold of Cody Davis
during the return. A drive died at midfield in the 2nd
because they didn't call DPI when Damian Williams got grabbed before
the ball arrived. Westbrooks got his helmet ripped off during
Oakland's 2nd 2-point attempt without a flag. Cliche
Alert: it's preseason for the referees, too. Grade: C
* Cheers: A bizarre decision by
NFL Network to use the Oakland broadcast for this game, when St.
Louis' had two of its employees, Andrew Siciliano and Marshall Faulk,
along with Torry Holt. Marshall was always considered the smartest
member of the Greatest Show, but here, Torry was the one breaking
down how routes were run and linemen's footwork and generally giving
a football clinic from the booth. In the course of the Rams' 20 years
here, their preseason games have gone from all-but unwatchable to,
thanks to Faulk and Holt's knowledge and enthusiasm and Siciliano's
eye for detail, the best broadcast team you'll hear this preseason.
NFL needs to find a way to put this crew on regular-season games.
* Waiver bait: You'd
think differently, but this game didn't produce any candidates for
easy cuts. Snead/Fisher will have many difficult decisions ahead.
Jacob Hagen blew a tackle badly to turn a dumpoff into a big gain in
the 4th.
Not to be confused with Bryce Hager, who had a couple of bad misses.
Recent pickup Marcus Forston was a non-factor at DT to the point that
Oakland didn't pay for double-teaming Louis Trinca-Pasat. Longacre
looks neither like a run defender nor a legitimate second-unit player
on this defense (not that he couldn't be on other teams). The Turk
doesn't have much of a list yet.
* Who’s next?: For some
reason, CBS and the NFL have decided Jeff Fisher's return to
Tennessee is worthy of a national broadcast, so the Rams will be in
Nashville next Sunday night to play Marcus Mariota and the Titans.
The Ram offense should have an opportunity to break loose against a
Titan defense that gave up 24 first-half points in a 31-24 loss to
Atlanta. With a tweak in intensity, Sack City can entice the rookie
Titan QB into turnovers; he had two against the Falcons. Much like
the Ram d-line, though, Tennessee has invested highly in its
offensive line, with both dollars and high draft picks. National TV,
coach's old team, pretty flat performance so far this summer... it's
time for a statement game from the Rams. I will hope that statement
will be something besides “we don't care about preseason games”.
-- Mike
Game stats from espn.com
Photos from espn.com and stlouisrams.com
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