Defense Roster Notes – Rodrigue

Rams defense roster notes: Nearly every position facing changes in 2023

Many in the Rams’ facilities and among the fan base might be breathing a sigh of relief: Their long, historically bad post-Super Bowl season is over. Coach Sean McVay has decided he’ll be back in 2023.

But what comes next? McVay is in the process of changing out some personnel and elements of his coaching staff, including the defense. For some coaches, this could mean opportunity: Defensive coordinator Raheem Morris is interviewing for head-coaching jobs in Indianapolis and Denver. McVay is expected to part ways with others, then rehire.

Previously, I explored the offense and specialists. This week, I’m looking at the defense by position, including what could happen in the coming season.

Defensive line

One thing teams couldn’t do most of the year was run the ball on the Rams. Their run defense ranked in the top five ahead of Week 17 in yards per carry allowed and defensive rush EPA/carry despite missing star defensive tackle Aaron Donald since Week 13 and top run-stuffing lineman A’Shawn Robinson since Week 12. Before those injuries, the Rams ranked No. 1 in defensive rush EPA/carry and No. 3 in yards per carry allowed.

In 2023: The Rams have two high-level defensive linemen who are about to become free agents: Robinson and Greg Gaines. They will try to extend one but won’t be able to extend both. Gaines seems like the likelier target for an extension because Robinson should command a competitive market that could price out the Rams, and that will correlate to a higher compensatory pick in the future. Meanwhile, Marquise Copeland, Jonah Williams, recent waiver-wire pickup Larrell Murchison and Bobby Brown have emerged as depth players. Copeland’s and Gaines’ limitations due to injury, plus the absence of Donald and Robinson, factored into the Rams’ season-worst run defense in Week 17 against the Chargers.

Every offseason, Donald’s status with the team will be questioned since he mulled retirement in 2021. But Donald also has openly committed to McVay and playing through his restructured contract. If the Rams decide they’re not in a “rebuild” in 2023 (meaning they’ll fix a few spots, beef up others and swing for the fences one more time with their aging core), that betters Donald’s chances of staying put at least one more year.

Inside linebacker

Everything that could go wrong in every phase of the Rams’ operation did go wrong, except at inside linebacker. They enjoyed a second-team All-Pro season by veteran Bobby Wagner, who racked up a career-high six sacks with two interceptions (both of which came against either his former team or former quarterback), 140 tackles (including just two missed tackles in 1,040 defensive snaps), five pass breakups and 10 quarterback hits and finished third (tied with Roquan Smith) among defensive players in third- or fourth-down stops, per TruMedia. Better still, the Rams have partnered Wagner with second-year inside linebacker Ernest Jones, who already showed huge potential in his rookie season but has continued to develop under Wagner’s mentorship.

In 2023: It’s not assured the Rams will keep Travin Howard, who dealt with a variety of injuries all season. Otherwise, they should not change much about this group.

Wagner, by the way, signed with the Rams believing they’d be a contending team. If I’m the head coach and the front office, I’m doing whatever I can to convince him that better days are ahead considering he was the player they all leaned on the most in a disastrous 2022.

Outside linebacker

The Rams didn’t have good pressure rate all season, and its lack of success was compounded by quarterbacks getting the ball out at top speeds on passing downs. Through the season, they hovered near the bottom of the NFL in pressure rate and finished ranked No. 30.

The Rams need a more effective pass rush to be more aggressive in their coverage, and when they start getting more aggressive in their coverage, they can widen the types of packages they rush with in known passing situations. The two are interconnected, but the way the Rams played this season did not often feel consistently cohesive week to week.

In 2023: Things will get interesting in the spring and, if that doesn’t work out, ahead of the trade deadline. Deja vu, anybody? The Rams need to, and likely will, go after a pass rusher. This could happen in the NFL Draft, but I also expect them to be aggressive in exploring several options in free agency, from premier young rushers to veterans.

I could also see some manipulation with starting outside linebacker Leonard Floyd’s contract. He played through a bad knee injury and ankle injuries for about half of the 2022 season and, per Over the Cap, has cap numbers of $22.5 million over the next two seasons, though none of that is guaranteed. Floyd finished the season with nine sacks, with all of his production coming when he started feeling healthier after the bye week.

In a purely rotational and versatile role, Michael Hoecht showed potential to earn future snaps. But the bottom line is that for this defense to function at its best, it needs two above-average pass rushers bookending its line.

Defensive backs

The Rams finished the season ranked No. 3 in the NFL in limiting explosive plays, which are defined by advanced metrics as pass plays of 16-plus yards and run plays of 12-plus yards. That is the intended effect of the defense they play and directly correlates to scoring, as just one explosive play on a drive triples scoring rate. However, this defense also regressed dramatically in this phase late in the season. From Weeks 13 through 18, the Rams allowed 44 explosive plays, which tied for the sixth worst through that span. Forty-five percent of their season total in explosives (96) came in just those six games. Thirty of those were explosive passing plays.

The Rams’ secondary finished the season No. 24 in passing DVOA and, despite a spurt of takeaways in Weeks 15 through 18, did not consistently take the ball away. This means it is not functioning as intended in its match zone, and yes, much of that has to do with lacking a consistent pass rush and frequently rotating personnel, mostly at cornerback. The Rams swapped out rookie Derion Kendrick and veteran David Long Jr. several times throughout the season with mixed results.

This defense is supposed to function as an aggressive mixed-coverage match zone in which zone players can press down on routes in a “man”-like way. This is dependent on those players, on detail and concept commitment by players and staff, on not having to be overly conservative to support an offense that can’t score points, and on a successful pass rush.

Small adjustments to counter deficiencies the Rams had in 2022 — such as playing more zone on third down than any other defense, according to TruMedia — can have significant effects on the overall outcome of drives. If quarterbacks know what they will get on that key passing down, they can get the ball out quicker to predetermined spots underneath that coverage. If Morris decides to send a blitz to make the quarterback uncomfortable — the Rams blitzed at the ninth-highest rate in the NFL, in part because they aren’t rushing consistently with four players, but it did not move the needle in terms of their overall pressure rate — the quarterback can still get the ball out quick to beat it and also has more voids in that coverage available to him. Again, matching routes more aggressively underneath that general shell (such as the concepts the team successfully deployed with cornerback Troy Hill at times this season and believes it can with rookie Cobie Durant) means a consistent and quarterback-affecting pass rush is needed to help their overall concept flourish.

In 2023: Change in this room will probably be more reflective of departures than additions. The Rams need to get more aggressive in their coverages, within their overall scheme and defensive ethos. As we know, this match zone can get aggressive with the correct personnel in the rush and the coverage, and that is where it functions at its best.

Safeties Taylor Rapp and Nick Scott are free agents. People with knowledge of the Rams’ offseason plans have previously expressed interest in retaining Scott, but it will be dependent on his market as they will not do high-dollar deals for safeties. Cornerbacks Long and Hill are also free agents. The Rams found some success, especially in Week 16, with the combination of Jalen Ramsey, Durant and Hill — all players with position versatility who can make plays on the ball, and Hill and Ramsey especially are most experienced in advanced iterations of the scheme. Their versatility and skill sets can help make a match zone more effective in how it presses down on top of routes and can help diversify coverage concepts within that scheme.

Hill has publicly said he’d love to be a “Ram for life” so could come to a mutually agreeable deal. The Rams need second-year cornerback Robert Rochell to show he can be more than a contributor on special teams, and they need Kendrick to take a step forward in the next year. They also have two promising rookie safeties in Russ Yeast and Quentin Lake, who played increasing snaps in recent weeks. Veteran Jordan Fuller expects to finally be healthy in 2023, after a variety of setbacks in 2022.

Ramsey is part of the team’s core group of leaders/contracts. But his is also the only contract they have not touched recently. That appeals to teams that might be interested in trading for the standout cornerback, and his possible movement — though at the moment entirely speculative — is something to watch.