Rams tweets etc. … 12/15 – 12/16

People talk about how tough Detroit is.

Well…the Bills just put up 48 points against them.

They could only put up 42 against the Rams.

So there.

The Los Angeles Rams are in first place in the NFC West after starting the season 1-4. pic.twitter.com/kVvaORgfZC

— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) December 16, 2024

As it stands right now in the NFC Playoff Picture pic.twitter.com/yegDDxq3e2

— JAKE ELLENBOGEN (@JKBOGEN) December 16, 2024

From Albert Breer: https://www.si.com/nfl/week-15-nfl-takeaways-sirianni-eagles-bumpy-week-bills-rebound#_r2u4986ha

Buffalo Bills

Last week’s loss to the Los Angeles Rams stuck with the Buffalo Bills—in a good way. The NFL season is long. It’s hard for a team to bring its best every week. And if every team is going to hit a ditch or two at some point over the course of the year, the Bills sped right into theirs last Sunday in Los Angeles.

On paper, it was understandable. The Bills beat the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs in Week 11, had their bye in Week 12, then throttled the other Super Bowl team, the San Francisco 49ers, in Week 13.

But that doesn’t mean Buffalo was going to accept how it played in Week 14.

“We’ve had tight teams before, Albert, but this team is, I would say, extra tight,” coach Sean McDermott said, leaving Ford Field on Sunday night. “I mean, they really enjoy playing, and they really enjoy playing with one another, from a teammate standpoint. And they also realized that we probably didn’t have the focus that we needed a week ago. And the leaders took over and led by example this week.”

The result: a 48–42 win in Detroit against a Lions team that came in 12–1.

The Bills showed plenty in the win. Josh Allen played like the MVP of the league, and he may well be named that, officially, a couple of months from now. The Bills rushed for 197 yards on 34 carries. Nine different skill guys caught passes. The defense did allow 42 points and nearly 500 yards through the air, but rendered the Lions one-dimensional on offense and allowed a lot of that yardage, and scoring, while Detroit played catch-up, and with a secondary that’s pretty banged up right now.

What you, and everyone else, will remember is James Cook’s 41-yard touchdown run; Allen exploiting a depleted Lions linebacker group by throwing to running back Ty Johnson; and Allen’s strikes downfield to Keon Coleman, Dalton Kincaid and Dawson Knox. You’ll remember Greg Rousseau and Ed Oliver getting after Jared Goff, and the Bills jumping up 14–0, 21–7 and 35–14 on their stunned hosts and in front of a stunned crowd.

McDermott, though, is going to remember, like he said, how one week affected the next.

Even now, he can’t explain exactly what went wrong early on in L.A. But the way the Bills reacted, even in the moment, made him feel a lot better about it. Buffalo was down 38–21 going into the fourth quarter, and the Rams might not have survived had the fourth quarter been 16 minutes instead of 15.

When I asked McDermott what happened at the end of that third quarter, he joked, “Uh … Josh Allen?” And there was a ton of truth in that—Allen was a force of nature that could only be stopped by the expiration of the clock at SoFi. But there’s more to it, too.

That includes what he saw during the week leading up to Sunday’s showdown in Detroit, after, McDermott says, “I probably didn’t have them prepared the way I needed to” for the game against the Rams. And it really came alive, from his own standpoint, in how much he was looking forward to going back to work with the guys.

“We’ve all been there, where you’re like, hey, you’re kind of just trudging through the snow, the wet snow, and it’s like, ‘Hey, we’re good.’ But every week’s a headache, you got guys late, you know how it goes,” McDermott says. “Not that we were perfect and everybody’s an angel. But they want to win and they’re willing to put the work in. And I’m saying, I feel like—-as across the board as it could be—-it’s almost like they don’t want to let each other down.”

And that, McDermott continues, is, and was, especially true with Allen, who’s embraced the leadership role he’s moved into as some of the Bills’ old cornerstone captains left the building in the offseason.

“It’s staying after to work with receivers for an extra five to 10 minutes to make sure they have the detail, the timing down, in order to execute at a high level in some of those moments,” McDermott says. “I mean, that’s just one example I would say that happens during the week. And then just coming in a way of [being] ready to work. Again, I don’t want to sound like he hasn’t done this in the past, but there’s a difference.”

As a result, there’s a difference in these Bills too—-because the group is more tightly knit, more focused and with an increasingly maniacal quarterback.

It showed Sunday, in the lessons they took from the week before.

“Every lion picks up a scar along the way. And we picked up a scar,” McDermott says. “Now, that scar has got to stay with us.”

If these Bills truly are as different as McDermott thinks they are, there’s no doubt it will.

zn wrote:

McDermott says, “I probably didn’t have them prepared the way I needed to” for the game against the Rams.

etc.

So the upshot of all that blah blah blah is that the Bills think they lost because they took the Rams lightly.

Los Angeles Rams PR@TheLARamsPR
Last week the Rams had multiple players (S Quentin Lake, S Kam Curl and CB Ahkello Witherspoon) with two-or-more passes defended in a game. It was the first time the Rams have had three players with multiple passes defended dating back to Week 13 of 2007 vs Atlanta.

what happens to a white/bone jersey when you "mud" (prep) a football and a running back carries it pressed to his chest throughout the game? pic.twitter.com/po5doslzYB

— roberto clemente (@rclemente2121) December 17, 2024