RamView, 11/16/2014: Rams 22, Broncos 7 (Long)

RamView, November 16, 2014
From Row HH
(Report and opinions from the game.)
Game #10: Rams 22, Broncos 7

In St. Louis, pigs have taken flight, hell has frozen over, Kate Upton just asked me how I like my steak (medium rare, baby) and the Rams just nearly shut out Peyton F. Manning and the Denver F. Broncos. Games like this make me wonder why I ever try to figure this game out. And I love every minute of it.

Position by position:
* QB: I was no fan of the midweek move to start Shaun Hill (20-29-220, 102.7 PR), just one more reminder why I will never work in the NFL. Hill was exactly the QB the Rams needed this week, reading the field quickly and getting the ball out quickly without making any crucial mistakes. Hill led the Rams to an opening drive FG while also knocking off some rust. 3rd-and-3, he quickly spotted Kenny Britt behind Aqib Talib down the right seam for 33. Great play, but the throw was too far behind Britt; a better throw would have gone for a TD. He threw behind Jared Cook for a drop a couple of plays later, but stood tall in the pocket on another 3rd-and-3 to hit Cook in a crowd for a 1st down, setting up the Rams to run into chip shot FG range. Hill was rust-free by the end of the 1st, which he proved by hitting Britt with a perfect bomb for a 63-yard TD. Again, Hill made the play by quickly recognizing the coverage, and who knew he could put the ball out there that far? Later in the 2nd, Hill and Britt – St. Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship – continued to connect. Hill threw Britt a 21-yard shot put and an 11-yard quick slant to set up the Rams’ 2nd FG. Another key pass that drive was a 3rd-and-2 bullet to Stedman Bailey. Hill had a successful day going against the crowd. That’s a big reason he’s got his starting job back. He simply reads the defense better and makes more accurate throws than Austin Davis did. Hill can improvise, too. In the 3rd, he bounced off Joseph Barksdale and threaded the needle up the sideline to Benny Cunningham to convert 3rd-and-3 deep in the Rams’ end. Then, 3rd-and-10, he danced out of trouble and tossed to Cunningham again for 12. The Rams didn’t score that drive, but Hill got them 30 yards of field position Davis probably wouldn’t have. 3rd-and-3 at the Denver 4 late in the 3rd, with no one open, Hill winged a pass out the back of the end zone. Real exciting play, I know. But the same kind of play Davis lost 14 yards on in Kansas City and opened the door for Greg Zuerlein to miss a FG. Hill kept the kick short to guarantee the Rams going up 16-7. The Rams were 6-for-17 this week on 3rd down. Again, real exciting, I know. Beats the heck out of last week’s 1-for-10, though. Early in the 4th, another clutch 3rd-down throw to Bailey kept a drive alive for a long FG. With Shaun Hill back at the wheel, the Ram offense just looked more under control. He played smart and did all the little things you’d hope to get from a veteran QB. This game showed the Ram offense is in pretty good hands with Hill, and should be going forward.

* RB: The Rams are in good hands with Hill, and they’re on solid ground with Tre Mason (29-113), who became the first 100-yard rusher against the Broncos this season with his first career 100-yard game. Like a good hitter in baseball, Mason proved effective going to all fields. He was effective up the middle; a 10-yard run put the Rams in easy FG position on their opening drive. He hit to right field; the next drive, he cut back so abruptly he had to go down to one hand, then spun through a DB’s bad tackle and shot up the sideline for 15. And Mason showed he can pull it to left, with a 26-yard run that set up the Rams’ 3rd FG in the 3rd. He took a pitch, followed Greg Robinson smushing a DB, broke another bad tackle and beat the rest of the Broncos around the corner. Those were Mason’s highlight runs, but to mention just those would sell his game well short. He banged out a number of 3- and 4-yard runs that helped keep the sticks moving, the clock moving and Peyton Manning on the sideline. He showed both the ability to pick his way through traffic at the line of scrimmage and a power, tackle-breaking game when he had to. And the Rams haven’t had a back with Mason’s ability to get outside for some time. For two weeks running, Tre Mason has put up good numbers against top run defenses. And there’s more where that came from.

* Receivers: Overdue though it may feel, Kenny Britt’s breakout game (4-128) was definitely welcome. On his first catch, for 33, he made a nice fake on Aqib Talib to make him think he was running a crossing route; that allowed him to get behind Talib deep down the seam. It wasn’t an easy catch for Britt, either, thrown behind him; he’s been dropping those. Later in the 1st, with the deep safety biting up on an actual crossing route, Britt burned Courtney Roby on a deep post for a 63-yard TD. He added two catches for 32 to set up the Rams’ 2nd FG. Britt didn’t do anything significant after halftime but this was still the game we’ve been waiting for him to have all season. He played both like a big possession receiver and like a deep threat. Another who played a big-WR-type game, oddly, was Stedman Bailey (3-26). He had two third down catches and a catch near the goal line and I doubt he was open by more than a foot on any of them. Hill just fired it in there and relied on him to win the contested ball. Rahim Moore was a hair away from picking off the first pass Hill threw to Bailey; good thing Bailey went and got it vs. letting it play him. Tavon Austin (2-10) was limited to quick screens but did beat the defense to the corner on a 10-yard end-around on the Rams’ FG drive in the 3rd. Jared Cook (3-19) had an early drop and was limited to dumpoffs, but he had a key 1st down catch on the opening drive and he did a good job breaking tackles after the catch. Nobody’s making the Pro Bowl off of this game but it will be huge if Britt can continue to play like a go-to receiver.

* Offensive line: It was a far better week than expected for the Ram offensive line. The Broncos were “supposed” to shut down the Ram running game; instead, the Rams rumbled for 131 yards, more than twice Denver’s league-leading average per game. Denver’s star DEs were “supposed” to run wild on the Rams’ overmatched tackles and pound Hill senseless. Instead, Demarcus Ware and Von Miller each scored just a sack apiece. Hill and the o-line had an effective partnership; they held up long enough and Hill got the ball out quickly enough to render pass rush harmless on most plays. The line also had a good partnership with Mason. He got a good portion of his yards on his own by breaking tackles and making nice moves, but he got a healthy portion running behind Greg Robinson or behind the pull blocking of a suddenly feisty Davin Joseph. This may have been a breakout game for Robinson. The Rams seemingly could get 3-4 yards running his direction any time they wanted to. What a fearsome sight he must have been to the DB he crushed leading out on Mason’s 26-yard run in the 3rd. And, yes, he mistakenly made a move thinking he was blocking inside on a pass in the 4th and left Ware a beeline to cream Hill for a near-turnover. But that was Ware’s one big play, and Robinson didn’t appear require a lot of help in the matchup, a far cry from Jake Long’s fiasco in Dallas last year. It looked like Denver was even trying to run games up front to keep Ware from getting matched up on Robinson. Joseph Barksdale has much more trouble with Miller. His solution to Miller’s speed was to treat him like the Ram defense treats Anquan Boldin: give up tons of cushion. This generally worked, though Barksdale about backed up over Hill a couple of times, and Miller got at least half a dozen pressures. His sack was kind of a fluke, though; he’d pushed Barksdale back into Hill but was on the ground when he reached up and tripped Hill trying to step up. The biggest problem the Rams had up front was Malik Jackson. Barksdale had trouble moving him on some run plays, as did Scott Wells, who got beat when Jackson spiked a goal line pass right back to Hill in the 2nd. Wells had his best game in quite some time, though. He did some strong drive blocking to open up lanes for Mason and threw a super cut block, on Ware attempting to stunt, that gave Hill time to convert on 3rd-and-10 during a FG drive in the 4th. A smart game plan executed well up front, and of all things, the Ram offensive line beat the Broncos at the line of scrimmage. Wonders will never cease.

* Defensive line: Manning only paid two visits to Sack City, but that’s a productive week against him, and there’s little question the Ram defense also won their side of the line of scrimmage. They held Denver to a measly 28 yards rushing. C.J. Anderson couldn’t run anywhere no matter what direction he tried. Everyone on the front four stuffed him at some point, Eugene Sims a couple of times. This had Denver passing about 85% of the time and made the Ram pass rush the story of the day. Robert Quinn smoked Ryan Clady off the opening snap and drew a hold that stalled the Broncos out. That was one of several holds the Rams drew, and that was a fraction of what could have been called. William Hayes proved several times that pressures can be as important as sacks. In the 2nd, he got good push on Manning and forced a dumpoff that stalled out a drive. Hayes’ big rush on Manning in the 3rd saved the Rams a TD. Manning hurried a high pass and missed Demaryius Thomas over the middle, but bigger still, Wes Welker was wide open behind the secondary had Manning seen him. Still with a shot at a comeback in the 4th, Denver drove to the Ram 35 before Quinn rose up. He swatted down a pass on 1st down and appeared to tip another on 3rd down. Denver went for it on 4th, and with James Laurinaitis drawing a double team on an interior blitz, Quinn stunted up the middle and was on top of Manning like that, slinging the QB backward, with Aaron Donald following through for the big sack. Manning led one last desperation effort but crossed Hayes’ path again. William didn’t get a sack but he always kept coming. It was his late rush that coaxed the bad throw Trumaine Johnson picked off to set up the Rams’ last score. Storytelling by scorecard doesn’t do the front four’s effort justice. The Rams had somebody in Manning’s face all day, and did it largely with straight 4-man rush. They got him just twice, and he threw for 389, but the Rams got there quickly and forced a lot of checkdowns. It’s worth noting that the long TD pass to Emmanuel Sanders was one of the few plays all game the Rams didn’t get much pass rush. That’s the offensive power they were able to bottle up this week. This is the way we expected the Ram defense to win games all along.

* Linebackers: Some football genius suggested somewhere last week that Alec Ogletree, James Laurinaitis and T.J. McDonald, along with Quinn and Hayes, would need to have their best games this season to, um, keep this game respectable. So let’s talk about those LBs, strictly Ogletree and Laurinaitis, since some football genius had also said the Rams better play a ton of nickel, and they did. Making Manning settle for a lot of dumpoffs really paid off because of solid tackling in the back. Ogletree, who also stuffed Anderson a couple of times, ended up with 13 tackles. Laurinaitis pounced on dumpoffs to Anderson and Welker to gum up Denver’s 2nd drive in the 1st. He also blitzed more effectively than he has all year. He blitzed in clean on Manning at the end of that drive, and though he whiffed the sack, forced Manning to make a poor throw on the move, leaving Denver a 4th down they’d fail to convert. 3rd down at midfield in the 2nd, James came clean up the middle again, forcing another poor throw that McDonald should have picked off. LB-mania ran wild at the end of the 3rd. Laurinaitis charged up the middle, splitting Orlando Franklin and center Will Montgomery and finally landed his and the Rams’ first sack of the game. On the CBS broadcast, Dan Fouts pointed out that this play also saved a TD, with Andre Caldwell wide open deep. Not only that, the very next play, in the 4th, Ogletree had perfect coverage on backup TE Jacob Tamme, ran his seam route for him and picked off Manning at midfield after E.J. Gaines’ blitz forced yet another ill-advised throw. And with Denver in deep desperation mode at the end of the game, on 4th down at the Ram 40, Ogletree topped off a sterling game when he blitzed and SKYED and knocked down Manning’s pass at the line to put the Rams in victory formation. About the only flaw for the LBs this week was that Anderson (8-86) could leak out of the backfield wide open any time he wanted to. But even if it wasn’t Ogletree’s best game this season, it was close. It was definitely Laurinaitis’ best. When it took the best to beat the best, the Rams’ LBs were up to the test.

* Secondary: The Broncos saw key players taken out of their game plan the old-fashioned way: by attrition. Julius Thomas (2-3) left the game early due to an ankle injury, but while he was in there, he was smothered by T.J. McDonald, who made a fine play to stuff Thomas on 3rd-and-2 of Denver’s opening drive. After getting beaten by Emmanuel Sanders (5-102) a couple of times the next drive, E.J. Gaines broke up a quick pass for Sanders on 4th down. Physical play continued in the 2nd when Rodney McLeod lit up Wes Welker to break up a 2nd-and-9 pass. The Rams bent only a little, without coming close to breaking, until getting burned deep late in the half, as Sanders got behind McLeod all alone for a 42-yard TD, with McLeod and Janoris Jenkins doing little on the play other than pointing at one another. The verdict is that it was yet another deep coverage breakdown by McLeod, who has been here over two and a half seasons and still can’t get it right in coverage. That made it a 13-7 game and had the potential to be a game-changing play, but McLeod changed the game himself early in the 3rd. Manning went deep for Sanders again and McLeod broke the play up with a trainwreck of a hit, putting Sanders out of the game with a massive but clean hit that still drew a penalty. Demaryius Thomas (7-103) found plenty of running room in soft zone coverage, but Denver missed their top two targets. McDonald toyed with Jacob Tamme running deep routes better suited for J. Thomas. He also jumped all over a bubble screen to Andre Caldwell that would normally have been run by Sanders. In the 4th, a Gaines blitz helped set up an INT for Ogletree. When the Rams paid extra attention to D. Thomas late in the game, it paid off with an INT for Trumaine Johnson, who Manning likely never saw bracketing Thomas underneath before he popped up and made an excellent leaping pick. McDonald finished his tour de force by lighting up Caldwell in midair to break up a late pass. The Ram secondary was part high wire act – they left Broncos wide open deep several times but were bailed out by the pass rush – and part human cannonball.

* Special teams: Winning field position was key to the victory. Denver had a long field to travel every time they got the ball. Thanks to Johnny Hekker’s (43.3 avg) excellent hang time and sideline placement, and Trey Watts’ (!) relentless work at gunner, the Broncos couldn’t return a punt. Well, except the one where Maurice Alexander WIPED OUT Isaiah Burse in the 4th. Alexander also wiped out Andre Caldwell at the 11 with a diving tackle to blow up a kick return late in the 3rd. Somebody explain to me why this guy hasn’t played all year? And Greg Zuerlein got his Legatron mojo back with a superb 5-FG game, with clutch 53- and 55-yard bombs in the 4th quarter. Let’s also note Hekker’s excellent hold on the last one, adeptly handling a low snap and avoiding possible disaster. The Rams outplayed the Denver Broncos in all three phases of the game. Shut my mouth and slap my grandma.

* Strategery: After saying Jeff Fisher’s team looked poorly-coached last week, this week, I’m hoping I can get him to come to Vegas with me. Almost all the coaching staff’s decisions seemed to work. Fisher’s decision to start Hill steadied the offense and made Brian Schottenheimer’s smart game plan possible. With Hill both seeing and reading the field better than Davis, quick passing was very effective. The Rams attacked all parts of the field via pass and run. I especially liked attacking the edges in the running game with Mason and Austin. Schotty gets into too many ruts where he’s just trying to slam runners up the middle. I’d say going at the edges opened up the middle game. Britt’s first big catch came from a well-run route; his TD came from a well-drawn-up route combination that got the safety to bite on the crossing route. About the only disappointing play was the late 3rd-and-7 where they ran a sweep and Mason thoughtlessly ran out of bounds and stopped the clock. I expected one of those play-action calls that hadn’t worked for Davis even though he had guys wide open downfield. But Schottenheimer called a very good, very balanced, textbook ball-control game.

Gregg Williams’ willingness to adapt made this his best-called game of the season. The Rams blitzed more than I’d thought watching the game live, but very wisely given the opponent, they still had to have blitzed less than they have all season. It also seemed like they were in nickel almost the whole game, another choice I felt wise. Sure, Manning threw for nearly 400 yards, but Williams still made it so someone else was going to have to beat the Rams. The front’s dominance against the run made the strategy stand up. And Williams’ blitzes brought big dividends, paying off on both sacks, Ogletree’s INT, McDonald’s near-INT and two of the three 4th-down stops. Williams wields the blitz so much like a blunt instrument that it was a pleasure this week to see him wield it like a scalpel.

Steady was the watchword for Fisher, both in going with the steady hand at QB and in the interesting decision to just run out the last two minutes of the first half. The decision looked curious at first, but Fisher’s been down this road before this year. Denver had just cut the lead to six, would get the ball back after halftime and the Rams didn’t need to risk a critical mistake trying to force the ball downfield against what they’d been doing all game. So they kept Manning on the sideline another two minutes. The Rams did everything they had to do to compete with an offense with Denver’s firepower. They made Denver work for every yard. They controlled time of possession and won the field position game decisively. Even when Fisher took field position gambles in the 4th with long FG attempts, Zuerlein came up aces for him. If that was luck, like Branch Rickey said, it was the residue of design. The Rams had smart game plans on both sides of the ball and executed them to a tee.

That’s a well-coached team.

* Upon further review: Go ahead and laugh, but I was happy to spot Tony Corrente on the field during pregame. Finally the Rams were going to have a game called by one of the league’s top referees, instead of a rookie or a Boger or a Triplette. The officiating wasn’t as brutal as it has been in most Rams games this year, but Corrente and crew didn’t live up to my high expectations, either. Quinn surely has Ryan Clady’s arm prints on his neck from being collared (i.e. held) all game. They correctly called a horse collar tackle of Mason in the 3rd, but his face mask seemed to be fair game. One was uncalled on the horse collar play. He was flatout hauled down by the head on a carry in the 4th, but Corrente announced, it’s OK, he was hauled down by the side of his helmet. Isn’t that where the face mask is attached? How is that any safer than grabbing the face mask anyway? The most glaring bad call was the unnecessary roughness call against McLeod for his vicious but perfectly legal hit that put Sanders out of the game. That was a textbook shoulder-to-shoulder hit, but the field judge, his hands already full with an illegal contact call, decided he’d seen a helmet-to-helmet hit. I think he was reacting to Sanders being injured, but his concussion came from his head hitting the turf. For the entire Fisher regime, the Rams’ reputation has preceded them and these kind of calls always seem to go against them. Someone’s gotta figure out how to stop it. Grade: C-

* Cheers: The game was a sellout mainly because Rams fans were sellouts. The Dome was filled to capacity with Broncos fans, orange from the bottom row to the top. If Stan Kroenke was at this game, he’ll be convinced he should move the Rams to Denver to be their second team. Still, it was we hearty few, we St. Louis fans who had the most reason to make noise. I’d give us credit for three Denver false starts. The crowd noise played well on TV – I’m pretty sure this week’s crew for CBS was Ian Eagle, Dan Fouts, and me yelling hey – and it made for tough working conditions for Manning. There were plays where he ran all the way out to his wideouts to give them play calls. That was curious – no hand signal? It was also expending a lot of Peyton’s energy before the snap. I’m also pretty sure I felt the Dome shake after one of Manning’s INTs. Haven’t had that sensation in a heck of a long time. Imagine what the atmosphere in this stadium could be if the fans of the home team weren’t outnumbered.

* Who’s next?: A month ago, the San Diego Chargers were 5-1 and one of the league’s hottest teams, but then hit the skids, losing three in a row, including a 37-0 embarrassment at Miami. Their unconvincing win Sunday over winless Oakland suggests they’re still not quite back on track. The Rams have upset the Chargers a couple of times over the years, but they haven’t won in San Diego since 1975, when they beat third-year QB – hey, Dan Fouts. That’s not as bad as it may sound; the Rams have only visited San Diego three times since that win.

In their recent division losses, the Chargers haven’t looked like a team with a line that can take over a game on either side of the ball. Phillip Rivers can use the help up front: he’s currently battling bruised ribs and is roughly as mobile as Kurt Warner riding piggy-back on Marc Bulger even when healthy. Robert Quinn vs. speed-challenged King Dunlap, with a mostly-stationary target to hit, could be a winning equation for Sack City. Young RT D.J. Fluker is still pretty much what his pre-draft scouting reports said, a strong run-blocker with footwork flaws that make him beatable in pass pro. The Chargers also showed trouble picking up blitzes in recent losses, so Gregg Williams can order from the full play-calling menu. Rivers’ art, though, besides making whiny faces and yelling at his teammates and coaches, is getting pinpoint throws off at the last possible second. Let up on Rivers as a pass rusher and he will make you pay. The Chargers do not stress secondaries with a lot of speed. Malcom Floyd (who has a brother named Malcolm) and Keenan Allen are big receivers who are strong at winning jump balls and back-shoulder throws. Eddie Royal is the speed receiver, but they’ve used him much more in a downfield role lately than the slot role he seems perfectly suited for, without much success. And speaking of jump balls, though he’s 34 and preseason reviewers have tried to write his (Hall of Fame) career obits for a couple of years now, the main receiver for the Rams to stop is still TE Antonio Gates. With 9 TDs this season, Gates is enjoying a career resurgence. If T.J. McDonald continues his current defensive hot streak, Rivers loses his favorite receiver in the clutch, and we’ll get to see him make plenty of crabby faces. The return of RB Ryan Mathews, who’s been out with a knee injury since week 2, may fix a lot of what’s ailed the Charger offense. He has a lengthy injury history and has been a turnover liability, but he’s a fast, physical back who will run around or over people and he gives their whole offense some swagger. Mathews could easily restore the Charger offense back to its early-season success.

The Charger defense, like a classic Dodge Charger, is rear-wheel drive. Its power comes from the back. Eric Weddle is the NFL’s best all-around safety. He’s the best run-stopper the position has to offer and is as good a cover safety as there is in the league. Brandon Flowers is a shutdown corner whom everyone throws away from. Oakland had success throwing at Shareece Wright, but I also remember him shutting down A.J. Green in the playoffs last year. If Richard Marshall’s on the field, though, feel free to throw at him; he’s as bad as any corner in the league. Or run the ball. It’s a stretch, but Jamaal Charles ran on them a couple of weeks ago the way Tre Mason ran on the Broncos. The Chargers have not tackled well up front in recent losses and you don’t have to have world-class moves to make them miss. It’s not a defensive line you see getting a lot of penetration against the run. San Diego has struggled for some years to build a quality pass rush, with plenty of draft and free-agency failures to show for it. They did get Melvin Ingram back from an injury Sunday, and Corey Liuget, the most disturbingly-shaped player in the NFL, has some pass-rushing spark from the interior. The player to key on in the front seven will be Jarrett Johnson. Johnson’s a lot like Ahmad Brooks of the 49ers. He sets a very good edge against the run, and while not lightning-quick, he’s still a pass-rush factor on every dropback. I’d want to tend to run and throw away from his side, especially since I’m not sure Dwight Freeney has a whole heck of a lot left on the other side. They’ll flip around in John Pagano’s 3-4, so Shaun Hill will have to keep an eye out. Pagano comes from the Ravens and didn’t do a lot of blitzing there, but he’s had to lately in San Diego because they’re not getting to QBs with their straight-up rush. This could all set up quick screens to Austin, and given his quickness and that he won’t be covered by a good corner on a defense that isn’t tackling well, could lead to big-play opportunities.

Remember that whole Schedule From Hell thing I’ve been carping about for two months? Well, the Rams are now 3-4 since that stretch of the schedule started; take that, Hell! But which Rams team is going to show up in San Diego? The team that dominated the Broncos? The team that got wiped out by the Chiefs and Vikings? The team that’s taken and blown various big leads? Jeff Fisher’s Rams have shown they can beat anyone, but they also haven’t shown they can win with any consistency. Will next Sunday signal the start of something big, or be another plunge in the Rams’ roller-coaster ride? Everybody hold on tight.

— Mike
Game stats from espn.com