the big articles on the 9ers game

The Rams are at a crossroads after a loss like this, and the unique timing carried with it.

The vision Sean McVay and others sold in the spring is hard to see, and so is their direction

On what happened Sunday and why, and what happens beyond this: https://t.co/iKRtb0gLpF

— Jourdan Rodrigue (@JourdanRodrigue) October 31, 2022

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[see link above]

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Rams feel all too directionless ahead of crucial crossroads after loss to 49ers

Jourdan Rodrigue

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — It’s pretty clear that the Rams aren’t a “Christian McCaffrey” away from erasing all of their problems. That does little to ease the sting of suffering a 31-14 loss to the 49ers on Sunday, in large part at the hands of McCaffrey’s rushing, receiving and passing touchdowns, after competing with the 49ers to trade for him just two weeks ago.

The Rams are now 0-2 against their hated division opponents (3-4 overall on the season), and because this game was perched precariously on the edge of the Nov. 1 trade deadline, it also feels as though they’re staring at a fork in the road, and mulling which path to take.

In years past, the Rams have been active and aggressive traders at the deadline — either because they were squarely in Super Bowl contention (last year: 7-1), or in the adamant belief of their longer-term vision (their trade for star cornerback Jalen Ramsey in 2019).

It’s hard to tell what they think, at the moment, or where they believe they are. This is a football team with issues that go beyond McCaffrey’s power to alleviate (though no logical person would argue that his presence within a wheezing run game and mercurial passing game wouldn’t have helped). It’s also a team that has a clear window — as oft-debated internally as that concept is — to remain in aggressive contention in alignment with the contracts of its veteran core, and all-world defensive tackle; to capitalize off that core no matter the cost in capital.

Sunday, the Rams could essentially only watch as a 49ers team without stars Deebo Samuel, Kyle Juszczyk or Arik Armstead took a competitive first-half game and broke it wide open in the third and fourth quarters — in large part behind McCaffrey’s 183 scrimmage yards and three touchdowns. San Francisco scored 24 unanswered points after the Rams had a 14-7 lead in the second quarter.

“We got clearly outplayed in the second half,” Rams coach Sean McVay said. “There’s really no way around it. This is one of those deals where you’ve got to be able to look yourself in the mirror, get up and then respond the right way. Said that a handful of times this year, but I’m not afraid to continue to get up here, put everything that we have as players and as coaches out there and try to be able to get the result that we want.”

If the front office is looking externally, they need guys who can flat-out play ball and who will stick around past this year. If they’re looking inward, they need some of the guys they already have to execute, and others to simply get healthy.

If McVay is looking inward, he must ask himself why items proclaimed to be at the top of his list in the offseason — the run game, and his own push for a specific vision in the passing game — aren’t happening.

“This is a different situation, but it doesn’t mean you press the ‘panic’ button,” said McVay. “… To say that you want to have a total change and approach, I’m not saying that. But I’m also saying that this isn’t good enough, and we all have to do a little bit better.”

It doesn’t feel like any one answer, and that in itself is part of the problem for a team that has previously been in strong enough status to be “one player away”.

Welcome to The Pile — let’s start poking around.

Cooper Kupp ankle injury to monitor

Cooper Kupp left the game late in the fourth quarter — when the Rams were clearly in an un-winnable situation — with what McVay later characterized as an ankle injury. Kupp went down amid contact after a catch and later walked off the field under his own power with athletic trainers. While McVay didn’t provide an immediate update on the situation postgame, Kupp said in the locker room that the early indication of the injury seems like he “dodged a bullet.”

McVay expressed regret postgame for not calling a run play in that scenario.

“I’m kicking myself for not running the football again, but I’m hopeful that he’s OK,” McVay said.

“I know he is,” added Kupp. “He cares about his guys and his players and so I know he feels bad about that. At the end of the day, you’re playing a football game, you’re calling plays, it’s third down … I’m obviously not holding anything against him in that regard. It’s a violent, random game. You play as hard as you possibly can until the fourth quarter hits zero. I can respect that and appreciate that.”

My take: You can’t send running back Darrell Henderson on a carry on third-and-16, down 31-14 with 5:35 left to play in the game (a play that Nick Bosa said indicated to him that the Rams had given up), and then also justify keeping the No. 1 producer in your offense on the field that late and then calling a pass play to him.

The run game (or lack thereof)

This about sums it up: The Rams, who are without once-projected first-string running back Cam Akers as they try to trade him, who started recent practice squad signee Ronnie Rivers and rotated through Rivers, a still-ill Henderson and Malcolm Brown, couldn’t score in six tries at the goal line and had to attempt two low-probability fades until quarterback Matthew Stafford ran the ball in on third down (his first rushing touchdown since 2016).

The Rams run game has been a problem, and it was again Sunday night.

“We didn’t create any sort of movement,” said McVay, referring specifically to the offensive line’s effort to run-block, “we didn’t handle the movement that they presented.”

The “manufactured” run game — screens, especially, and sweeps and motion plays — at least kept the Rams afloat and worked well against different types of pressure in the first half. Safety blitzes that were effective in the last matchup minus that type of run dimension (and against a third-string center in his first snaps) were easily beaten by screens and the quick game. But as McVay noted after the Rams successfully utilized these looks against the Panthers in Week 6, that’s not a world the offense can live in full-time. The 49ers made them pay for it in the second half.

Because the Rams are without a “traditional” run game (i.e., one that operates through their actual running backs) and instead they have to manufacture one without the added dimension of a traditional run game, the 49ers’ halftime adjustments were relatively simple: Sit in Cover 2 over the top of the screen game and match receivers and force (them) to separate or get behind them, then dare the Rams to run the ball with a running back (they could not).

“What happened in the second half there, I think we’ve seen it before; but being able to get into those plays where they’re playing Cover 2 and you’re playing against six-man boxes in some situations, it makes it tough,” Kupp said. “You’ve got to be able to find ways to run the ball efficiently and stay ahead of the sticks.”

Defensive woes compound

This about sums it up: You know you’re having a bad day when Jimmy Garoppolo can successfully execute a scramble drill for a highly improbable 9-yard touchdown in the back corner of the end zone. On full display, other than a pair of sacks notched by outside linebacker Leonard Floyd (one clean, one helped along a bit by a facemask) and one from defensive lineman Greg Gaines, were the personnel woes of the Rams defense — for all their talent and potential.

So, the scramble drill. The Rams’ front — against whom Garoppolo usually favors a quick game because of their previous dominance as a pass rush — couldn’t get to him long after the snap and Garoppolo wiggled around as McCaffrey did the thing he’s very good at, getting open, behind safety Nick Scott.

Scott shouldn’t have lost McCaffrey on the play, but in no world should he or any of the defensive backs be covering that long. Both are true.

“I was playing seam-flat, just trying to play visual off the quarterback,” Scott told me postgame. “I noticed he was looking back side, so tried not to get as much width; after that, it’s just a scramble drill. I gotta find (McCaffrey), plaster (to him) if I can. Try to avoid that play, those plays are tough when you’re playing zone and the quarterback starts running around. Gotta be better. Next time, hopefully, we get him on the ground, but if we don’t I have to do my part (and) plaster.”

Meanwhile, the Rams seemed to be caught in an inability to fully execute the match-zone that is supposed to be their brand of defense (meaning they can get aggressive on routes even if they show the appearance of a cushion at the snap) in part because they have to send some of their defensive backs and inside linebackers to manufacture pressure (twice with Bobby Wagner in the first half; we’ve seen this with Ramsey playing closer to the line of scrimmage instead of covering as well), and in part because of self-inflicted errors, game planning or adjusting to certain situations.

“There (were) a lot of different instances where we’re not playing the right way on the back end, we’re not doing things on the front end, and that was what was reflected in the second half,” McVay said.

This defense works if the defensive backs are able to stay aggressive in matching or even jumping the short and intermediate routes while still containing the explosive pass play, especially if they get to the contact point quickly and/or they prevent yards after catch on the shorter pass plays. But in the case of a misread by rookie cornerback Derion Kendrick that led to a 56-yard passing explosive, Kendrick jumped the wrong route and got out of his role in containing an explosive to do so. Pair that with a quarterback who has time to throw, and the explosive play did what explosive plays statistically are likely to do: Three plays later the 49ers scored again (safety Taylor Rapp was the nearest defender on George Kittle’s end zone grab). Kendrick is starting because he is a good player who can become a very, very good player. That means the Rams will get some errors along the way, as well as some big plays. A stouter pass rush (with four) helps give a young defensive back a little leeway.

Finally, McVay said that at times, the Rams defense was supposed to “get under the sift and close out the C-gap”, and the ball ended up moving into some open creases for bigger gains, especially out of some misdirection looks that got the defense flowing to the front sides of the play.

“It’s really designed to wind back in that gap that we were jumping out of,” he said.

This last point certainly wasn’t the only issue, but it does run counter (no pun intended) to some defensive players’ and defensive coordinator Raheem Morris’ comments through the week about preparing for specific C-gap wrinkles in the 49ers rushing attack. By the end of the game, San Francisco had 111 rushing yards and was averaging 4.8 yards per rush.

“They definitely came with a different wrinkle, but we have to watch the film to see what happened,” Wagner said.

Three major moments
… that each were deciding factors in the game:

No. 1: The Rams/Ramsey forced a McCaffrey fumble that bounced directly into the hands of receiver Ray-Ray McCloud in the third quarter. They scored their go-ahead touchdown (the scramble drill on third down) a few plays later.

No. 2: The Rams offense went three-and-out on the other side of that sequence; Stafford was sacked for a 9-yard loss on third down.

“We had a chance to make a couple of plays, we didn’t make it,” McVay said. “They ended up making plays offensively, sustaining possession and then coming away with points in the red area, and then your margin for error gets that much smaller.”

No. 3: Tyler Higbee dropped a pass on third-and-3 in the fourth quarter, on a play that possibly would never have been needed had receiver Allen Robinson not been flagged for “taunting” earlier in the series (he pointed the first-down conversion after a first-down catch; taunting is a dumb penalty regardless of the team it’s called against). The play was well-designed and Higbee had nothing but open field in front of him for yards and yards, but he dropped the pass. Stafford took the blame for it postgame, saying he should have led Higbee with the ball, but Higbee pointed back at himself.

“Didn’t make the play,” he told me. “Got to make that play, and I did not.”

Bottom of The Pile

• Bad luck continues … Ramsey broke up two passes, both near-interceptions (one a batted ball near the line of scrimmage), and the second of which could have potentially gone for a touchdown the other way.

• Overall sentiment from Scott: “To be honest, we didn’t play good enough to beat any team today. We just played bad ball all around. So, that’s the result you’re gonna get.”

• Higbee also suffered what the team said was a neck injury in the first half, and had to leave the game for a few series before returning. Postgame, he told me he was OK.

• Defensive lineman Michael Hoecht, who returned a 22-yard kick earlier this year, declared as an offensive player and laid a heck of a block on the edge as a “tight end” in the third quarter.

The Rams are full of neat ideas like this (or Ben Skowronek in the I-formation, which has worked with great effect in the past but was only used once on a misdirection play Sunday), or a doubled-up backfield featuring a receiver and a running back. But the lack of cohesion overall is burying the “cool”. A candle doesn’t pretty up a rotting Jack-O-lantern.

• The trade deadline is Tuesday afternoon. To reiterate, the Rams are more than one player away from staying in contention. They are not a McCaffrey away. They are not an Odell Beckham Jr. away. They aren’t one offensive lineman away. They aren’t one running back away (although the right running back, whom it seems the Rams have struggled to find for years at this point, would certainly help), they aren’t one pass rusher away (though my goodness, they need one). They have some pieces and some creative answers. But, they’re currently lacking the fundamental substance underneath to help all of that function in the first place.

The question is, do they push in the capital to acquire some of those players, and work to figure out the rest of it as they go? They’re 0-2 in the regular season against a 49ers team that looks like a contender. Do they try to problem-solve with the guys they have and see where it gets them in a very weird, parity-doldrums league in 2022, and hoard their chips for some big moves in the offseason and beyond? Or do they act quickly and aggressively to bring in external answers in an effort to keep the team in contention, and perhaps sacrifice what is left of their post-Aaron-Donald-era capital in the process?

Problem is, after a loss like this neither answer feels correct.