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Rams notebook: Cornerback duo given difficult assignment in Minnesota

RICH HAMMOND

link: http://www.ocregister.com/2017/11/19/rams-notebook-rams-hand-hatfield-and-countess-tough-assignment-in-minnesota/

MINNEAPOLIS — The Rams like Dominique Hatfield and Blake Countess. They’re hard workers and valuable depth players, particularly in practice, but the situation they were put in Sunday was far from ideal.

Injuries to three of the Rams’ top four cornerbacks – Kayvon Webster, Nickell Robey-Coleman and Troy Hill – forced the Rams to turn to Hatfield and Countess, who entered Sunday with a combined total of 23 NFL games and two starts.

Not surprisingly, things didn’t go very well against a Minnesota offense that has two excellent receiving threats in Thielen and Stefon Diggs. The Rams kept their top corner, Trumaine Johnson, on Diggs, who had only four catches for 32 yards, but Thielen had six catches for 123 yards and a touchdown.

“I think (the Vikings have) a great offense, and they do a great job,” Rams coach Sean McVay said. “We expect our guys, if they are asked to step up and step in, we have confidence in those players. You see why they have some good playmakers on the perimeter.”

The status of Webster and Robey-Coleman for next week remains unknown. Webster left the game in the first quarter, then returned, then came out again and was ruled to have suffered a concussion. Robey-Coleman left the game in the second quarter with a thigh injury.

Webster was in the Rams’ locker room after the game, while Robey-Coleman stayed on the sideline for most of the game in uniform. He had to watch as Keenum increasingly picked apart the Rams’ secondary.

The big play came in the fourth quarter, when Hatfield missed a tackle and Thielen scored a 65-yard touchdown. It was a lot to ask of Hatfield, who went undrafted out of Utah this year, and Countess, who has played more than Hatfield but still doesn’t have much NFL experience.

“(The Vikings) did a good job of making plays today,” McVay said, “and certainly it makes it difficult when you lose Nickell and you lose Kayvon, but we’ve got a lot of confidence in some of those younger corners to step up and contribute and compete the right way as well.”

WOODS OUT?

The Rams suffered a potentially huge loss late in the fourth quarter, when Robert Woods injured his shoulder. McVay didn’t have an update immediately after the game, but Woods had to go to the locker room on an electric cart.

Woods once again proved to be the Rams’ best target, as he caught eight passes for 81 yards. With six games left in the season, Woods already has set a career high with 703 yards.

ROOKIE MISTAKE(S)

With the game tied 7-7 late in the second quarter, the Rams had a great chance to take momentum into halftime. Rookie receiver Cooper Kupp caught a pass inside the Vikings’ 5-yard line, but before he reached the goal line, Kupp had the ball stripped by Vikings safety Anthony Harris.

Harris also recovered the fumble, and the Rams’ offense never seemed to recover and didn’t score another point.

“I tried to turn up and poke my head in,” Kupp said. “They just made a great play on it. They raked over the ball and it came out and they were able to cover it. I just have to do a better job of securing the ball.”

Kupp also dropped a fourth-quarter, third-down pass that would have put the Rams, who then trailed 14-7, inside the Vikings’ 25. Instead, the Rams punted.

It’s been an up-and-down season for Kupp, a third-round draft pick this year. On Sunday, he tied his season high with six catches and was second on the team with 64 receiving yards, but unfortunately, Kupp will be remembered most for the plays that weren’t made.

“He’s hard on himself but he’s a great player,” Goff said. “He makes more plays and does more little things that go unnoticed. He can’t be down on himself. It’s a long season and he makes so many plays. I’m not worried about him.”

COVER YOUR EARS

The Rams played in the most hostile environment of the season, in front of more than 66,000 fans in Minnesota’s indoor stadium. For the most part, Goff and the offense seemed to handle the noise well, but it required quite a few in-close meetings on audible plays, and Goff said the crowd made an impact.

“For sure, yeah,” Goff said. “Any time you play in a stadium like here – and there’s a few in the league that are super-loud like that – it can affect that. There were issues at times, for sure.”

WHERE IS HE?

It’s been a while since receiver Tavon Austin was a part of the Rams’ passing attack, but on Sunday, he also vanished from the run game.

Austin, who essentially is Todd Gurley’s backup at running back, did not have a carry against the Vikings. The Rams, against Minnesota’s stout run defense, called only 15 run plays (all for Gurley) compared to 41 pass plays. Austin also wasn’t targeted on any passes for a third consecutive game.

“Really, it was just tough to get in any sort of rhythm,” McVay said. “With our inability to sustain drives, it was tough to get him going, but he’s a player we have to do a good job with. I’ve got to get him involved in the game, and it starts with just getting more opportunities, which we really didn’t get, which was a credit to their defense.”

Case Keenum shows former Rams teammates his best side

RICH HAMMOND

Case Keenum shows former Rams teammates his best side

The Rams patted Case Keenum on the back last November and told him: Thanks for everything, but it’s time to move on. They wanted the best for him, but they didn’t want this.

Exactly 52 weeks after Keenum lost his job, as the Rams’ starting quarterback to Jared Goff, Keenum got a chance for revenge. He didn’t put it that way, because that’s not his nature, but some combination of coincidence and fate allowed Keenum to face the Rams on Sunday, and he clearly enjoyed it.

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Keenum, who signed with Minnesota as a backup but inherited the starting job because of injury, passed for 280 yards and one touchdown in the Vikings’ 24-7 victory over the Rams.

“I talked earlier in the week about circling the game, looking forward to it,” Keenum said. “Later in the week, I went more toward, ‘This is just another game, another team, another really good football team.’ … I wanted to be here, talking to (media) after a big win. That was my approach.”

It worked. Keenum was everything the Rams remembered, starting in 2014, when they signed him to their practice squad, through last season, when Keenum led some bad Rams teams to a 7-7 record as starter.

Never the fastest, never the strongest, Keenum is a wily quarterback who can escape pressure and find open targets. Never was that more on display than late in the first quarter Sunday.

The Vikings faced a second-and-10 play from the Rams’ 30. Keenum dropped back and evaded pressure from Rams linebacker Robert Quinn, but that led him directly into the path of linebacker Connor Barwin. Keenum somehow ducked and rose as Barwin couldn’t bring him down, and Keenum then completed a 12-yard pass to receiver Adam Thielen. The Vikings later scored a game-tying touchdown.

“He’s the same Case,” Rams defensive lineman Aaron Donald said. “He was running around the pocket. We were winning our one-on-ones and we were in the backfield. They did things to try to slow us down with the rush, with different counts and trying to slow us down. He just did a good job of moving around and protecting his offensive line from getting beat.”

Donald recorded three hits on Keenum but the Rams didn’t sack him, and really, other than Donald, the Rams didn’t get much pressure on Keenum or an impressive Minnesota offensive line.

Keenum completed passes to nine different targets, and did a good job of getting rid of the ball quickly and utilizing his tight ends and running backs on short routes.

“He played his tail off today,” Goff said. “He played really well. I was sitting on the sideline, like, ‘Come on, throw it to us, throw it to us,’ and he wouldn’t do it. He played really, really well. He deserves everything coming to him.”

Including a full-time starting job? Keenum is playing for Sam Bradford, who is out with back problems, but former Vikings starter Teddy Bridgewater is ready to play, and this week, Coach Mike Zimmer didn’t announce until Wednesday that Keenum would start against the Rams.

Keenum is now 6-2 as a Vikings starter this season, and gave a refreshingly honest postgame answer when asked if his play warranted Zimmer naming him the full-time starter.

“If it is not broke, don’t fix it,” Keenum said. “Let’s keep doing what we’re doing. If we do, however, and Coach Zimmer does whatever he does, he’s the coach. It’s his decision. I’m here to play.”

Before the game, Keenum exchanged greetings with Goff, who he helped mentor last season, and after the game, Keenum even shared an on-field laugh with Rams linebacker Alec Ogletree.

Keenum did his best, in the interview room, to downplay the revenge factor, and his top receiver indicated it might not have been an act.

“If I put myself in that situation, I would think it was a big game,” Thielen said. “But at the same time, we get the same Case every week, a guy that just prepares and busts his tail and is in the quarterback room before everybody is probably even waking up.”

Rams say loss to Vikings can be a long-term benefit

Alden Gonzalez

http://www.espn.com/blog/los-angeles-rams/post/_/id/36460/rams-say-loss-to-vikings-can-be-a-long-term-benefit

MINNEAPOLIS — Most of the Los Angeles Rams’ players couldn’t see it. Their 24-7 loss to the Minnesota Vikings was still too fresh, the avoidable mistakes that plagued them still too raw. They couldn’t sense the impact that experiences like these can have on what comes next, on who they might become.

But Andrew Whitworth could.

The Rams’ 35-year-old left tackle has played in 12 NFL seasons and has been on six different playoff teams, an experience level that provides him with a firm grasp on the bigger picture. He verbalized some of it Sunday afternoon, in the middle of a silenced visitors locker room at U.S. Bank Stadium.

“The reality is we needed this,” Whitworth said. “We needed some adversity. It’s not to say that we didn’t need to come back and win that game, but you know what, some of the adverse situations in that game — on the road, in a really hard place to play, against probably one of the best defenses in the league — to play the kind of game that we were in, and for this team to be in the game we were in, I think it shows you that we’re legit and we’re the real deal.”

The Rams — the NFL’s highest-scoring team when Week 11 began — were held in check by a sound, well-rounded Vikings team that is now 8-2. They played in one of the NFL’s loudest environments, in a late-season game that seemed to bring with it a playoff-like level of intensity. And they got a sense of what it’s like to navigate through a slim margin for error, the type they hardly experienced while outscoring teams by 103 points during a four-game winning streak.

It’s something they should start getting used to.

Sunday’s game marked the beginning of a seven-game stretch that makes up the NFL’s second-hardest remaining schedule. The Rams’ next contest, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, will come against the 8-2 New Orleans Saints. They’ll also host the first-place Philadelphia Eagles and travel to face the division-rival Seattle Seahawks before their season comes to an end.

“We knew the challenge we were going up against,” Rams running back Todd Gurley said. “These next couple of games are the teams above .500 and looking to be in the playoffs. Hopefully we see these guys again. We definitely don’t want to lose to them twice.”

Gurley was limited to 56 scrimmage yards, 31 of which came on the opening drive. After that initial touchdown, the Rams were held to 179 yards, 10 first downs and zero points. They were hurt by the early injury-related departures of two cornerbacks, Kayvon Webster and Nickell Robey-Coleman. But two key mistakes by Cooper Kupp, a fumble at the 1-yard line and a drop on third down, loomed largest.

“I think we’re a better team than what we were out there,” Kupp said. “I think I’m a better player than what I showed out there.”

The Rams entered this season as the NFL’s second-youngest team, behind only the winless Cleveland Browns. The Rams’ only players with postseason experience were six of the veteran players they added over the offseason — Connor Barwin, Lance Dunbar, John Sullivan, Tyrunn Walker, Webster and Whitworth.

Aaron Donald, mired in lackluster Rams seasons over the past three years, agreed with Whitworth’s claim that this team needed a little bit more adversity.

“But I still wish we would’ve pulled out a win,” he said, “because losing sucks.”

U.S. Bank Stadium was predictably deafening, forcing the Rams to burn a couple of early timeouts and prompting a delay of game penalty.

Adam Thielen, Stefon Diggs and Kyle Rudolph combined to haul in 15 of 22 targets for 213 yards, taking their turns picking on a Rams secondary that had to cut into its depth like never before. Case Keenum went 27-of-38 for 280 yards and zero turnovers, continuously avoiding sacks by slithering his way out of the pocket. And the Vikings’ defense was as aggressive and ferocious as advertised, creating constant pressure for Jared Goff while limiting him to 1-for-7 on 15-plus-yard attempts.

Whitworth called that defense “the best we’ve played.”

He thinks it’ll help the Rams moving forward.

“If we get this opportunity again in the playoffs, if we get a chance to get in, we’ll be prepared for it,” Whitworth said. “And that’s the kind of games you’re going to play. If you want to play after the regular season, if you want to play late in the year in big games, this is the atmosphere you’ll have to learn how to play in and win.”