media, articles & tweets, on the BUX game

JennaLaineESPN@JennaLaineESPN
With 432 passing yards today against the Rams, Tom Brady needs just 68 passing yards next week to break Drew Brees’ career passing yardage record. It’ll happen at Gillette Stadium.

Sam Monson@PFF_Sam
Real statement win from the Rams.

Bucs were the team expecting to come in and show where the class of the NFC needs to get to, and the Rams caused them problems on both sides of the ball.

For-real contenders

PFF@PFF
Cooper Kupp receiving lines this season:

Week 1 vs Bears
Small blue diamond 7 recs/108 yds/1 TD

Chris B. Brown@smartfootball
3 catches for 120 yards and a TD is the perfect DeSean Jackson statline

Week 2 vs Colts
9 recs/163 yds/2 TDs

Week 3 vs Bucs
9 recs/96 yards/2 TDs

Blaine Grisak@bgrisakDTR
The Rams defense hasn’t allowed a fourth down conversion or 20 points this year.

Rams24/7@Rams24_7
McVay now 4-1 vs Arians

TurfShowTimes@TurfShowTimes
There are five 3-0 teams:
Rams

Cardinals
Panthers
Broncos
Raiders

Matthew Stafford has 9 Pass TD, tied with Kurt Warner (1999) for the most ever by a Rams QB in their first three games of a season.

That year, Warner won MVP and the Rams won the Super Bowl 👀 pic.twitter.com/RTYkW3hrx2

— ESPN (@espn) September 26, 2021

Cameron DaSilva@camdasilva
The Rams have had 11 touchdown drives this season, and not a single one of them spanned less than 70 yards.

Cooper Kupp@CooperKupp
3-0.

The energy in the stadium was DIFFERENT and we definitely felt it!

Onward…

Lindsey Thiry@LindseyThiry
Rams coach Sean McVay and Aaron Donald both raving about the atmosphere, electricity and crowd noise in SoFi Stadium. Donald in particular was pumped to have a home field advantage.

Brady throwing to his teammates never gets old pic.twitter.com/8hfyeRHvkn

— 𝘡𝘩𝘢𝘪𝘺 (@LockdownWard) September 26, 2021

Everyone wanted ‘statement’ from Rams vs. Bucs — what we learned instead is more important

Jourdan Rodrigue

https://theathletic.com/2850966/2021/09/26/rodrigue-everyone-wanted-statement-from-rams-vs-tampa-bay-what-we-learned-instead-is-more-important/

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — What is that feeling called when a crowd swells up under a deep pass downfield and your chest kind of does, too? When the noise itself, the togetherness of that sound and watching the arc of the ball in the air seems to fill up the space between it and the ground and that spot behind your ribs and it all becomes one thing, all at once?

What is that feeling called, when a player snaps in a game, overflows, furious and vibrating with anger and unsure of where all of it is supposed to go, and then a teammate grabs him by the helmet and presses his own facemask against his and reminds him that he matters? What is the feeling called when people become one thing, all at once?

What about when the greatest football player on the planet bumps into his quarterback outside of the press room after a win, pulls him into a hug, and tells him he loves him?

Aaron Donald, who recorded his first sack on Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady in the Rams’ 34-24 win Sunday, said postgame that he just loves watching Matthew Stafford play. And the feeling just kind of came out of him.

“It’s a lot of fun, it’s a whooole lot of fun, man,” said Donald, grinning. “I saw him outside the door, I gave him a hug and I said, ‘I love you, man.’ He’s playing lights-out. … I’m just happy that guy is on my team.”

It was Donald (and then-teammate Jalen Ramsey) who first grabbed Kenny Young’s helmeted head with both hands and then pressed his facemask to Young’s last week, right before Young was ejected from a win against the Colts on the road. Young was angry because of an incident after the whistle that involved Colts offensive lineman Quenton Nelson. Young accidentally made contact with the official and was ejected from the game. He was fined, but was not suspended — and on Sunday night, he led the Rams in tackles, recorded a sack, forced a fumble, and had three tackles for loss. It wasn’t really about what he did — it was the way Young played, like he had something to say.

“Last week was not the greatest ending for me,” Young said after the game. “But it was more about reflecting, coming back to myself and really responding.”

Everybody wanted to see the Rams make a statement Sunday night against Tampa Bay. Everybody wanted to know: Was this a measuring-stick game? And now that they’ve won it: Is this a Super Bowl-caliber team?

Donald definitively thinks so. His reasoning, though, wasn’t really about the impressive stats the Rams put up on Sunday night (the offense on Sunday exceeded 30 points for the second time in three games; the unit crossed that mark only three times in 16 games in 2020; the defense is holding teams to an average of 18.3 points per game).

No, it was about a feeling.

“I think we’ve got a good group, man. Everybody gets along well — like, great,” he said. “Everybody likes being around each other. We enjoy being around each other. Everybody is always having fun together. And last time we had a team like that, we went to the Super Bowl. To have that here right now, it’s fun. It’s fun to come to work, it’s fun to be around these guys.”

The Rams are winning, and that helps, but they’re happy, too. They’re winning and they like each other. Hell, they’re winning and they love each other.

It’s not even about the overt, meme-able moments that McVay has provided — about how he’s in a “better mood”, or how he sprinted downfield to meet receiver DeSean Jackson after his 75-yard touchdown catch (the first for Jackson back in his hometown of Los Angeles), or how he completely lost his cool (in a positive way!) when Bucs kicker Ryan Succop missed his field goal attempt to end the first half.

It’s how left tackle Andrew Whitworth and guard Austin Corbett are blocking opponents 30 yards downfield from the line of scrimmage. It’s how Stafford found Jackson again on a deep shot, as low-probability as that play is, after missing him twice earlier in the game. It’s the Rams’ offense problem-solving in real time after a failed first drive and two punts to open the game, to score either a touchdown or a field goal on the next six consecutive drives. It’s the Rams’ defense giving them a chance to gather themselves after those first two drives, forcing Brady and his offense to go three-and-out with help from stars such as Donald, Leonard Floyd and Ramsey but also a couple of lesser-known players — like outside linebacker Justin Hollins. Hollins was a waiver pickup last summer who is now starting for the Rams. His four critical tackles on Sunday night all came on third down.

“(When) it’s all 11 (players) making plays, it’s hard for a team to beat a defense like that,” Donald said. “We have to continue to get better and continue to do those things (and) the sky is the limit.”

It wasn’t a perfect game. The defense allowed too many explosive passing plays (even though it is structured to prevent them), and too many catch-and-run plays that led to big yards. The offense’s opening drive featured dropped passes by receivers Cooper Kupp and Robert Woods. Woods later was the recipient of a crucial third-and-10 conversion, in which he caught a Stafford ball for 20 yards that helped set up a touchdown a few plays later to put the Rams ahead by 14 points.

“We truly embody the attitude of, ‘There’s not going to be perfection, but we’re going to push for that,” Kupp said, “and being OK with making mistakes, and being (able) to say ‘This is not good enough.’ That’s the beauty of it. We’ve got the right guys that when those mistakes happen, everyone is pushing for success. Everyone is doing what they can to be positive, to be a producer on this team.

“When you’ve got the right guys, it just makes it so much easier to see a mistake, correct it and then move forward knowing that everyone is moving forward together. And I’m really glad to be a part of this team … you know that all the other 10 guys on the field with you, they’re all moving toward that same goal.”

It’s the linemen and the practice squad cornerbacks joking about who has bigger calves as practice ends. It’s Sebastian Joseph-Day demonstrating a TikTok dance to defensive line coach Eric Henderson after hit-sled drills, and punter Johnny Hekker nicknaming the types of post-practice protein shakes the team gets. It’s how reserve running back Sony Michel greeted his teammates with a calming smile in an adverse, spiraling situation last week in Indianapolis. It’s Ramsey sitting with an undrafted free-agent cornerback a week before he was cut, trying to get him as immersed into the playbook as he could even though the writing was on the wall. It’s Donald pulling Stafford in for a hug; but it’s also Donald pulling Young’s anger and frustration into himself as he locked eyes with him, so someone else could hold it for him, take it away from him for a minute. Stafford is an elite quarterback; Young is a former fourth-round pick who barely hung on at times last year, but who overhauled his entire training and preparation process last spring in hopes he could break through, and then blossom.

“I came to the realization of, ‘Hey, I can’t negotiate with myself if I really want to be great,” Young said. “I bought into having a great camp. I think we all competed our butts off. And I think … the momentum from that is why we’re having some great team success. It’s not a gimmick, but I took every day in training camp and OTAs to just get better. I think it’s paying off. I love my coaches. They believe in me, and they let me do my thing. They let me go lead.”

“He’s an important part to this defense, and he knows that,” Donald added. “That’s one of the things we had to talk to him about last week, and we’ve been talking to him this week about it. … To see him come back out and play at a high level, flying around and making a lot of plays, that’s why he’s out there. That’s why he’s a playmaker for us.”

It’s how Kupp, who finished the game Sunday with nine catches for 96 yards and two touchdowns (his fourth and fifth of the season), has started talking about the Rams’ offense as a pliable thing, something that’s alive, something that grows and can be evolved as the season goes. It’s how his face changes when he talks about it.

“Our job as an offense is to not just be stuck doing the same thing over and over again, but to have answers off of it, to be able to make things look the same but be different,” Kupp said after the game. “That’s something that we continue to do, continue to grow, continue to adapt — let the offense be pliable, and movable … it’s a lot of fun building it, working together and collaborating on it.”

We see it happening in real time. Last week, the Rams’ offense scored a touchdown off a beautifully designed play in which Kupp came out of the backfield, beat his safety and caught Stafford’s pass in the end zone seam. This week, knowing the Bucs had seen that play on tape, the Rams again aligned Kupp in the backfield on third down at Tampa Bay’s 6-yard-line. Kupp ran a motion pre-snap, and a player traveled with him, and that opened the sliver of space tight end Tyler Higbee needed to catch and run in Stafford’s pass, which happened on the opposite side of Kupp. These types of setups can be expected all season, as the playbook between McVay and Stafford and a group of smart, versatile receivers expands. It’s hard to quantify what that ultimately produces. We have some stats to throw around, absolutely — such as, Stafford is completing passes at a 70.2 percent rate, he’s averaging a touchdown on 9.6 percent of his passes (second in the NFL), he’s throwing the ball 15 yards or farther on 15.4 percent of his pass attempts (top 10) and is averaging 10.2 yards per pass attempt with 470 of his 930 passing yards through three games coming after the catch, by his receivers. The Rams entered Sunday’s game ranked No. 5 in offensive DVOA and they’re not going to drop after this week’s win.

“I don’t know where we can necessarily get to,” Kupp said, “but that’s the beauty of just continuing to build, to not being stuck doing one thing, being able to add and build blocks and as long as we (can) execute … there is no telling where it can go.”

What is that feeling called? We don’t have words for just yet, and maybe that’s OK. We don’t have to label it. They all feel it. Right now, the Rams’ players and coaches radiate it.

When everybody wanted a definitive statement from the Rams, they showed us instead that it can mean more to not know just yet what is fully possible.

Zooey wrote:

wv wrote:

I dont know that the media ever loved
the St Louis Rams.

Well, to be fair, they never played anybody.

Seth Galina@pff_seth
Against the Bucs, Sean McVay called the least amount of play action dropbacks in any game as Rams head coach. Just three. He doesn’t care anymore. He has a quarterback and he’s slinging it.

we have 12 of them charted last year but on 51 dropbacks

Working more out of the gun this year. Less playaction opportunities.

Jacob Nierob@jnierob7
In Shotgun 42% last year, 66% this week. Stafford unlocked the next level.

Jourdan Rodrigue@JourdanRodrigue
When receivers and coaches start talking about the Rams’ offense as a “pliable”, evolving thing under Matthew Stafford, it commands attention. And so far, it’s not just the stats that illustrate notable changes.