Barnwell: Rams surprising things for a 3-0 team

from Barnwell: Stacking surprises on the NFL’s seven 3-0 teams

Bill Barnwell

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/27680783/barnwell-stacking-surprises-nfl-seven-3-0-teams

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4. Los Angeles Rams

Not surprising: Wade Phillips has managed to get the most out of his defenders.

Most coaches who make it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame do so on the back of a great head-coaching career. It’s probably about time to start thinking about great coordinators and positional coaches as potential Hall candidates, too. Dante Scarnecchia is an obvious choice after spending most of the past two decades molding a dominant offensive line in front of Tom Brady in New England. If I had to pick a coordinator, Phillips is the first guy on the list. Even though he only won one playoff game across 8½ seasons as a head coach, he remains one of the league’s finest defensive minds at age 72.

If the Rams’ offense had held up its end of the bargain last February, we would be lauding Phillips for holding the Patriots to 13 points. Through three weeks, while the Rams have given up 49 points, 14 of those points came off of short fields against the Panthers in Week 1. On Sunday night, the Browns started drives from their own 38-, 43- and 49-yard lines, as well as a brief drive before the end of the first half from the Los Angeles 18. Those drives produced a total of three points.

Phillips got so far into Freddie Kitchens’ head that he somehow convinced the struggling Browns coach to call for a draw on fourth-and-9, something I don’t believe an NFL team has done on purpose since the Dolphins attempted a fourth-and-10 draw with Bernie Parmalee in 1997. Phillips saw Mayfield struggling to deal with pressure and repeatedly reacting to even the threat of pressure by rolling away from the pocket to his right to try to make a desperate play. By the end of the game, Phillips was lining up his front four in wide splits to try to isolate Cleveland’s tackles and then twisting his linemen to both create quick interior pressure while having someone waiting when Mayfield panicked and ran outside. While Mayfield stuck in the pocket and made a pair of great throws on the final drive, the game-sealing interception is a clear example of what Mayfield was doing wrong.

While the Rams have a competitive advantage with Aaron Donald collapsing pockets, this isn’t a one-man show. Phillips’ defense has improved on 2018 despite losing big names such as Ndamukong Suh and Lamarcus Joyner. Eric Weddle has stepped in at safety for Joyner, but another big name has made his presence felt. Remember when I mentioned Clay Matthews as a disappointment in the Packers section? Rushing the passer on more than 86% of passing plays, Matthews has four sacks in his first three games with the Rams, including two on Sunday night. The second of those sacks would qualify as a coverage sack, but he did a great job of shedding what appeared to be a stable block to take Mayfield down and prevent him from scrambling.

Phillips also has a habit of developing little-known inside linebackers into stars as a coordinator, and Cory Littleton continues to improve as one of Phillips’ star pupils. I mentioned this last week, but how many inside linebackers could hold their own while covering Michael Thomas on a drag route? Littleton had a monster game against the Panthers in Week 1 and would be a Pro Bowler if we were casting ballots after three weeks.

Should anyone be surprised here? The most important thing the Rams have done over the last decade is hire Sean McVay. The second-most important thing they’ve done, realistically, is convince Phillips to work alongside him.

Surprising: Jared Goff is struggling.

In general, Goff is doing great. He just pocketed a $25 million signing bonus. He has about as much job security as any young quarterback in football. He’s 24 and living in Los Angeles and has a brilliant coach who helps him unlock defenses at the line of scrimmage.

Over the first three weeks of this season, though, Goff hasn’t played well. Opposing defenses have emulated the Patriots’ game plan from the Super Bowl and played what amount to six-man fronts to try to force the Rams away from their outside zone game. Todd Gurley hasn’t been healthy enough to play his usual workload. The Rams are rebuilding the interior of their offensive line. This was supposed to be the point in which Goff could shoulder a larger portion of the workload, but that hasn’t happened.

Earlier in his career, the Rams spent money on pieces around Goff to surround their cheap young quarterback with talent. Now he is the expensive one. His cap hit doesn’t rise from $10.6 million to $36 million until next season, but the Rams have to expect him to play like a franchise quarterback now that he’s beginning a franchise quarterback caliber deal. He just hasn’t been that guy.

Remember the expected completion percentage stat I mentioned about Allen? A quarterback making Goff’s throws would be expected to complete 67.7% of his passes, the eighth-friendliest rate in the league in 2019. Goff is only completing 62.9%, and the only passers with a larger gap are either injured (Cam Newton, Ben Roethlisberger), chum (Josh Rosen) or subject to major criticism (Mitchell Trubisky, Andy Dalton). Goff is not supposed to be in a group with Dalton and Trubisky.

Plenty of quarterbacks get off to slow starts and recover just fine, and I’m not particularly concerned about his completion percentage being five points below expectation after three weeks. What does strike me as something to look out for, though, is how the Rams seem to be struggling with play-action. From 2017 to ’18, Goff averaged more than 10.1 yards per play-action pass, posted a passer rating of 112.3, and threw 21 touchdowns against three picks on 335 attempts. Through 40 play-action throws this season, he is averaging 7.9 yards per play-fake with a passer rating of 53.5. He has thrown three interceptions on play-action in three weeks, including both of his picks on Sunday.

The interceptions were throws Goff would like to take back. On the first pass, Brandin Cooks has a step on reserve cornerback T.J. Carrie, but the throw is late and in a place where Carrie can make a play. It required an impressive diving pick, but you’ll notice in this animation from NFL Next Gen Stats that Robert Woods (17) might also have been open across the middle of the field:

I can’t fault Goff for not squeezing that pass into Woods, in part because his second interception was a similar decision. Again, Woods has a step on his defender, but this pass is thrown in the wrong spot and gives Joe Schobert a chance to tip it up in the air. Goff needed to put more loft on it and fit it in the triangle between Jermaine Whitehead (35), Eric Murray (22), and Juston Burris (41), with the latter player eventually bringing in the tipped pick.

It wasn’t just the interceptions. McVay was visibly frustrated with Goff for what he seemed to consider a subpar decision on third-and-1 during the second half. He missed a wide-open out route to Cooks in the first half on a pass that Next Gen Stats estimated to have a 72.6 percent chance of completion.

Goff’s numbers on Sunday look fine apart from the interceptions — 24-of-38 for 269 yards with two touchdown passes to Cooper Kupp — but he was facing a Browns secondary missing all four of its starters and its best linebacker, Christian Kirksey. The five starting defensive backs played every snap; they included a pair of backups (Carrie and Terrance Mitchell), a special-teamer (Murray), a defensive back they claimed off waivers from the Raiders earlier this month (Burris), and another who was claimed off the Packers waiver wire last November (Whitehead). Isn’t this the sort of spot Goff is supposed to smash?

One more thing to worry about and then I’ll move on: Goff has traditionally been best in the warmest month of the NFL season under McVay. From 2017 to ’18, he posted a passer rating of 123.8 and averaged more than 10.3 yards per attempt in September. Over the ensuing three months of those seasons, Goff posted a passer rating of 94.6 while averaging 7.6 yards per pass. I don’t expect that sort of drop-off to occur again in 2019, but with Goff currently sporting a passer rating of 84.5 while averaging 7.0 yards per attempt and posting a Total QBR in between that of Josh Rosen and Eli Manning, I do know that we’re going to need to see a better Goff for the Rams to continue on their undefeated run.