Miami game…tweets, plays, articles

Jared Verse’s effort on the sack-fumble. Just absolutely relentless pic.twitter.com/hU9RPPgQSP

— Stu Jackson (@StuJRams) November 12, 2024

a super play by Byron Young.

Think he sees it right away, keeps outside leverage forces play inside, 5-yard loss. textbook. Even if he misses tackle he has a lot of help coming because he turned it inside pic.twitter.com/M6OLYfVUEI

— Jim Youngblood 53 (@53_jim70721) November 12, 2024

wv wrote:

I dont like it when teams have their best game of the year against the Rams. I maintain that is a bad thing.
Cards, Bears, Dolphins.

w
v

True. It’s not right. It goes against what is true and just and fair.

Plus, it’s hubris of the kind the football gods abhor.

Overthinking Rams offense is learning too many tough lessons too late

Jourdan Rodrigue

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5916674/2024/11/12/rams-offense-problems-loss-dolphins/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nfltw&source=nfltw

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — If Monday night’s 23-15 loss to the Miami Dolphins was a lesson for the Los Angeles Rams in “the importance of continuity” as head coach Sean McVay indicated in his postgame comments, then it should also be a lesson in the importance of not overthinking the simple things.

Rookie sixth-round draft pick Beaux Limmer was playing well at center, for example, in place of either guard/center Steve Avila or guard/center Jonah Jackson (and don’t even get me started on the flip-flopping between positions for the latter two players since the spring). Was it ideal for Limmer to be thrown into the fire after a shoulder injury sidelined Jackson since Week 1? No. Did he pick things up bit by bit, until he started playing downright solid football into Weeks 7 and 8? Yes.

But Limmer was swapped out for a now-healthy Jackson. Don’t misinterpret me here: Jackson is a good to very, very good football player. It’s not on him that the Rams decided he’d play center with about two weeks left in training camp, moving Avila back to left guard where he excelled during his 2023 rookie season. Then Jackson got hurt, missed about nine weeks of football, and returned to center this week. How many practices has he had at the position, maybe 15? Avila also returned to the lineup for the first time since Week 1. The only player missing from the embattled position group this week was veteran right tackle Rob Havenstein, but veteran Joe Noteboom is supposed to be stable depth at a variety of positions, including tackle.

Yet the Dolphins’ defensive line and linebackers ran vicious circles around the Rams’ offensive line Monday night. Quarterback Matthew Stafford was pressured 15 times (and at a 30 percent rate according to TruMedia), sacked four times and hit six times. He and Jackson botched a snap out of the pistol formation and instead of falling on the ball Stafford tried to salvage the play, which ultimately was a 13-yard loss. While Miami ran simulated pressure at times (showing the appearance pre-snap that they would send extra rushers, but dropping them into coverage instead and only actually blitzed at an 18.4 percent rate per TruMedia), when they did send three extra rushers near the end of the third quarter only one was (barely) accounted for and Stafford got drilled. Usually pressure pickups like that are a matter of communication between first and foremost the quarterback to the offense, and between the center and the quarterback, and then a matter of execution.

“It didn’t seem very … it seemed like, you know, I want to be able to look at the tape,” McVay said postgame when asked how he thought the offensive line played — starting his answer and then stopping it. “But there was a lot of things that were not in alignment with what we’re looking for. That’s why you hear us talk about the importance of continuity. Got a lot of respect for that defense, they did a nice job, but there (were) too many things that just seemed like we were off and never gave ourselves a chance and it’s not exclusively on the line.”

OK, but continuity in that group was the very point lauded by McVay and others when the Rams went on their recent three-game win streak. I asked McVay, to that point, what went into the decision to put Jackson back in the lineup?

“Both Steve and Jonah were ready to go,” said McVay, “you know, wanted to be able to see what that looked like. You never know, exactly. But we always try to do what we think is best. This will be some good film to be able to look at and see, ‘What do we think is the best way to put guys in the right spots to give them a chance to be successful — and ultimately, our offense?’ ”

Again, don’t mistake me here: Jackson overall has the resume and the qualifications to merit the swap. The Rams’ front office also signed him to a three-year, $51 million contract this spring and it wasn’t to back up a rookie. Yet if it’s true that continuity was a key quality to the improvement of the line play the last few weeks, why the sudden discontinuity?

The offensive line also struggled to prevent batted passes. That teaching point shouldn’t be overthought, either: Dolphins defensive end Calais Campbell is a redwood tree of a human being, towering above all others at 6-foot-9. He got his long arms free to bat away two passes, including one that was intercepted. Defensive tackle Zach Sieler also batted a Stafford pass later in the game. He’s 6-foot-7.

“I mean, when you have somebody that’s 6-9, and 6-7, you try and get those hands down,” said Jackson, who to his credit along with the rest of his position group stayed in the locker room to answer reporters’ questions instead of ducking out early. “They wanted to throw the kitchen sink at us, and they know what we’re capable of when (we) play a clean game and we can do whatever we want. They wanted to see what we were made of, and (sent) different looks that we probably haven’t seen on film before from them. Next time we’ll be ready for it.”

Limmer didn’t escape the game unscathed, by the way. He had a false start penalty while on the field goal unit that nullified a 52-yard kick by Joshua Karty, then backed Karty up to 57 yards. He missed that attempt.

Karty was responsible for all of the Rams’ points on Monday night, however. The offense also failed to score in the first quarter for the fifth time this season, and didn’t have a first-quarter touchdown for the eighth time in nine games. They couldn’t score a touchdown from their 49-yard line courtesy of a Dolphins penalty, from the Miami 43-yard line courtesy of a defensive takeaway, or from the Miami 36-yard line courtesy of another takeaway. In fact, they coughed up the ball one snap after inside linebacker Christian Rozeboom intercepted Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa (a Kyren Williams fumble), and rookie outside linebacker Jared Verse’s strip-sack and fumble recovery bailed them out for another try. They couldn’t even push the ball into the end zone from Miami’s 4-yard line with 6:34 left in the fourth quarter, usually a period reserved for Stafford’s heroics, and settled for a white flag of a field goal after an incomplete pass on third-and-4 (Yes, readers, I know it was still an eight-point game on the north side of the two-minute warning and the Rams had their timeouts … show some guts. Show some sort of identity other than repeatedly leaving everything you need to do to win a football game, plus some luck, for its final few minutes and seconds — the margins within which no team on the planet can sustainably exist). The next Rams field goal — right before an onside kick attempt the entire world knew was coming even if it weren’t now a league rule to declare in advance — came on third-and-10. From the Miami 12-yard line.

How would McVay describe his offense — even with almost its entire lineup back from injury? His answer was clipped.

“Inconsistent.”

The last time this team was held without a touchdown was in 2023 against the Green Bay Packers, when backup quarterback Brett Rypien and the offense hit rock bottom as an injured Stafford could only watch. Rypien was cut after the game. Stafford got back in the lineup the next week. The Rams started rolling. What is the solution now, when the quarterback isn’t necessarily the problem but also isn’t able (for any number of reasons, including pressure and his own errors) to drag the unit out of the quicksand?

On the converse, this was a defense that actually came into the game thinking less and playing fast and free, and aside from a couple of explosive plays due to missed tackles (including three plays of 15-plus yards on third down) it showed. Let me explain: Because the Dolphins’ offense specifically with Tagovailoa is predicated off speed and the precise timing of concepts, such as layered routes that distribute receivers to exact places on the field at an exact time, the Rams’ defense pared down its language to a few “pitches” (making their own plays on the ball based off of pre-studied looks and tendencies) but largely played Tagovailoa’s receiver landmarks on the field.

“I think for us, (the plan this week) was maybe a little bit simpler as far as getting to your spots, have your eyes on, and then going to make a play,” Rozeboom said. “I think we were in that maybe more than we normally are. We always have certain calls that it’s like that, but this week with their speed you really wanted to hit those pitches and they have plays that they liked that we saw, that we thought we could maybe hit our pitches on.”

That led to a few key plays, including Rozeboom’s pick (a combination of playing a landmark and disguising his own read of the play, flipping his hips late as Tagovailoa released his throw and then jumping across the route). Another, Byron Young’s sack for a 15-yard loss in the second quarter, was set up by outside linebacker Michael Hoecht’s faux-innocent disruption of the crossing route Tagovailoa would have targeted (and that receiver would have been open, too, had Hoecht not placed himself, facing Tagovailoa, into the route path). Hoecht’s body positioning disguised that disruption to look incidental and avoided a flag — Tagovailoa held onto the ball, eventually moving to evade incoming pressure until Young brought him down.

The Rams’ defense overall has played (and statistically has measured out) like a top-10 unit over the last few games. It’s strange and uncharacteristic of most of McVay’s teams to feel how leaden the offense is, how it is weighing down the entire team instead of lifting it. It feels like a group that is overthinking the simple things, creating its own errors and adversity and is trapped deep in its own head.

What happened to the free-spirited and feisty team of 2023? They’re showing up on defense, I suppose. Offense aficionados, avert your eyes.

“It’s got to be a lot better,” McVay said. “We’ve got to evaluate everything, and we’ve got to be a lot better.”