reporters on the Carolina game

J.B. Long@JB_Long
Ball security issues. Miscues in all phases of special teams. Game management missteps. And you still win on the road, in victory formation. Take it every time.

Cameron DaSilva@camdasilva
Sean McVay just said Eric Weddle is in the concussion protocol. Update coming tomorrow.

Lindsey Thiry@LindseyThiry
“Cam is a readable guy,” – Rams LB Cory Littleton on what he saw when he intercepted a pass in the fourth quarter.

Rich Hammond@Rich_Hammond
Unofficially, I had Todd Gurley on the field for 51 of the Rams’ 72 plays. That’s 70.8 percent, compared to 86.0 in 2018 and 81.4 in 2017. Of course, there is no “typical game.” I’ll try to get more into that later.

My margin for error on that 51 is about 2 or 3 plays. The official stats will be posted late tonight, most likely.

Lindsey Thiry@LindseyThiry
“Man I’m glad we won that!” Sean McVay exclaims after he walked off the podium following his new conference.

Greg Beacham@gregbeacham
The Rams are now 14-3 on the road during the regular season under Sean McVay.

NFL Research@NFLResearch
Christian McCaffrey is 1 of 5 players with 10+ receptions and 120+ rushing yards in a single game in the Super Bowl era. @run__cmc is the first player to do so in 2 career games.

Gurley and Malcolm Brown split carries in Rams’ win over Panthers

Lindsey Thiry

https://www.espn.com/blog/nfcwest/post/_/id/132702/todd-gurley-and-malcolm-brown-split-carries-in-rams-win-over-panthers

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay said before Sunday’s game that star running back Todd Gurley would not be on a snap count, but it became apparent Sunday in a 30-27 victory over the Carolina Panthers that the offensive game plan has expanded to include backup Malcolm Brown.

Gurley rushed for 97 yards on 14 carries, and Brown finished with 53 yards and two touchdowns on 11 carries, as the Rams held off a late surge from the Panthers at Bank of America Stadium. Sunday’s game provided a first look at the Rams since their loss to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LIII after McVay elected to sit all of his starters and key reserves during the preseason. There appeared to be plenty of rust but also plenty of reason to think that a Super Bowl hangover will be avoided.

QB breakdown: Fresh off signing a four-year extension worth $134 million, with $110 million guaranteed, Jared Goff overcame a slow start — and a fourth-quarter blunder — to help the Rams improve to 1-0. Goff passed for 186 yards and a touchdown with an interception. In the first half, Goff overthrew a wide-open Robert Woods in Panthers territory on third down. In the fourth quarter, he was intercepted by cornerback James Bradberry. Goff settled in behind an offensive line that features two new starters in left guard Joe Noteboom and center Brian Allen — but it was far from a memorable performance.

Buying a breakout performance: The Rams signed outside linebacker Dante Fowler to a one-year deal worth $12 million with the hope that Fowler would continue the playmaking trend that he started last season. Fowler delivered, as he finished with three tackles and sacked quarterback Cam Newton twice. Before the opener, Fowler said his confidence had returned to the level he felt when he was a junior at Florida, before he was selected with the third overall pick in the 2015 draft.

Troubling trend: The Rams struggled to stop the run in 2018 and did not fare any better in the opener. Panthers running back Christian McCaffrey gashed the defense for 128 rushing yards and two touchdowns. He also caught 10 passes for 81 yards. McCaffrey averaged 6.7 yards per carry.

Pivotal play: Linebacker Cory Littleton intercepted a pass from Newton with under six minutes to play in the fourth quarter, with the Rams leading 30-20. The pick ended any attempt at a fourth-quarter comeback. Littleton, an undrafted free agent in the final season of his rookie contract, also forced and recovered a fumble in the first half.

Statistics show a so-so Panthers defense in loss to Rams. Reality is somewhat kinder.

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nfl/carolina-panthers/article234870217.html

If you only scan the boxscore of the Carolina Panthers’ season-opening loss to the Los Angeles Rams, one glaring conclusion would present itself naturally:

Like, say, how the Rams emerged from the offensive smog that smothered them in Super Bowl 53 and dropped 30 big ones on the Panthers.

And that’s not totally unfair. After scoring a meager three points against the New England Patriots in February, the second-highest scoring offense of 2018 once again drove like a well-oiled machine. Even though star running back Todd Gurley III didn’t score, he racked up 97 rushing yards at a 6.9 yards-per-carry clip. Receivers Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp shredded the Panthers for 15 combined catches. On top of all that, quarterback Jared Goff only was sacked once … and he took the blame for that lone error.

But diving deeper into the schemes and actual flow of the game, you begin to understand why Carolina’s defenders weren’t all doom-and-gloom in the locker room postgame.

“We felt like it was clicking from the first three-and-out we had,” cornerback Donte Jackson said of the defense. “We felt like we were on a good track in this game, and it showed … We’ve just got to finish, take away some of those self mistakes.”

Third down is an apt place to start analyzing. The Rams converted 9-of-17 third downs, which on paper seems like a brutal margin for Carolina. But a deeper dive reveals not all those conversions were as harmful as the stat implies.

In the first half, Carolina allowed four third-down conversions and stopped five others. On those five drives, the Rams scored just six total points. Los Angeles did score a touchdown in the second quarter, but only after a fumbled screen with Cam Newton and DJ Moore gave the Rams the ball 10 yards out from the end zone.

“We started off stopping them on third down,” defensive tackle Gerald McCoy said. “We’ve just got to be better as the game goes on. We’ve got to be consistent with what we’re doing.”

Therein lies the problem.

In the second half, the Rams were much more successful converting those critical downs. Much of that came as the Panthers played six defensive backs at once in a 3-2-6 scheme they hadn’t shown all summer. That meant cornerbacks Jackson and James Bradberry were on the field, as were safeties Eric Reid and Tre Boston, with nickel Javien Elliott and corner/safety Ross Cockrell in as the extra guys.

“The group (with six defensive backs) really does give us good versatility,” coach Ron Rivera said. “It was some of the things that we tried to create some matchups.”

And while all those defensive backs helped counter the Rams’ pass-inclined offense — Los Angeles threw 39 times compared with 28 designed runs — it did give Goff more time to pass with less pressure on him.

That’s key because of how differently Goff plays with and without defenders in his face. According to Football Outsiders’ analytics, Goff was ranked the No. 5 quarterback in 2018 when not facing pressure; but he fell all the way to No. 24 when pressured, one of the largest drops of any qualified passer.

McCoy admitted he was “a little bit” surprised at how often the team played that sixth defensive back, although he agreed the formation helped early on.

“I think we’ll be better if we rush more four-man, but with the offense that they ran, coach wanted an extra DB on the field, which was fine because it was working for us early on,” McCoy said. “I think we get in situations with certain teams, and (against) other team’s schemes where we can rush four, we’ll get a lot more pressure.”

Defensive end Mario Addison agreed with McCoy that rushing four players instead of three made a substantial difference in the pressure Goff faced.

“They were getting the ball out fast,” Addison said. “We need to come up with a better game plan as far as having all four of your best rushers on the field at one time instead of three.

“When we started rushing four men instead of three, we started putting better pressure on the quarterback.”

Both McCoy and Addison also said they were somewhat taken aback by how often the Rams ran the ball out of the shotgun, something they didn’t have a tendency to do last season en route to the Super Bowl.

In addition to the third downs and rushing situations, a few other defensive tweaks offer some optimism for the future. A number of Rams fumbles ended up bouncing back to them as Panthers players raced to fall on them. There were a handful of sloppy penalties, which multiple players attributed to it being the first week of the season.

“It’s the first game. You’re going to have some things happen that you don’t want to happen,” Jackson said. “If you want everything to go right for your team, you’re watching the wrong sport.”

Overall, Carolina held Goff to 186 yards passing, which would have tied for his second-fewest at any point last season. Bradberry recorded his first interception of the year and had a shot at a second. Before a second-half outburst, the Panthers only allowed 34 rushing yards in the first half.

So in the locker room postgame, while there were muffled explanations for what went wrong, there wasn’t despair. There was a sense of, “Look at what we did do, not what we didn’t.”

McCoy said as much himself.

“You see the negatives, but you take the positives. We gave ourselves a shot at the end,” he said. “We have a really good team. We really do. We gave the NFC champs all they wanted. We just made too many mistakes. They made more plays than us at the end.

“We have Thursday night coming up, so we’ll get it fixed. … Definitely planning to see those guys again.”