Plays that shaped Rams' season: No. 4

Even after that group started playing up to its potential, it still had a knack for giving up a big play or two that could change the game. Jenkins was often on the wrong end of those big plays though he was far from the only culprit.

Yep.

This is the thing with this defense.

It has all the talent it needs to be near-elite or better.

But it is not solidly, consistently competitive. It gives up plays that kill games.

For whatever reason.

Next year, we may or may not improve our talent on D. Maybe some depth. But I promise you something:

No matter who we get in FA or the draft, I will personally refuse to get excited. The issue for our defense is NOT about talent upgrades.

It’s about whether they can learn to defend consistently and with discipline, to drastically reduce the number of gifts they give to the opposition. They have to become STINGY in yielding yards and points. They have to force the opposition to beat them on its own merits, not through our blunders and largesse.

This is what a winning defense does. And it doesn’t even have to be statistically elite.

I don’t like a defense that starts the year as a bottom feeder, gets better, shuts out 2 teams in a row … and then falls apart down the stretch.

I’d rather have a defense that is steady through the year. Maybe not elite. But a defense which gets a lot of stops, averages, say, 18 points yielded, and virtually NEVER cheaply gives up big plays.

For you old school Rams fans …

Remember how the the Viking defense would beat us the 40s? We’d run and pass well on them all day. But we wouldn’t get in the end zone and we couldn’t break through.

Consistent, competitive discipline. That’s what I ask for. With our current talent level on defense at least, THAT is what we need far more than we need personnel upgrades. That is the factor that will determine how far we can rise next year.

And we will not, cannot know if we are getting somewhere on this until the games begin.

zn wrote:

rfl wrote:
The issue for our defense is NOT about talent upgrades.

Unless of course what needs to be upgraded is Jenkins. Precisely because of the mistakes.

For example, Ogletree was a bit of a mess early on and then settled down. Jenkins never did.

And in fact if you go through the season, the game-killing mistakes on defense aren’t coming from everybody. They are coming from a specific set of guys (mostly Jenkins and McCleod).

So maybe it is personnel. And maybe those 2 will either improve or it turns out they can’t play in this defense.

Well, see, I am not just talking about a couple of deep balls.

I am also talking about the schizophrenic fluctuations of our run defense, which looks like a HS d-front one minute and like BALT in its heyday the next. Something which is not a problem for Jenkins who, I think, supports the run well for a corner.

I’m talking about soft coverages that give up effortless 3rd down conversions.

I’m talking about wildly gyrating levels of competitiveness across the board.

And, by the way, Ogletree was himself wildly up and down this year. He had horrible games and then games where he played like an All Pro.

The UNIT as a whole is profoundly inconsistent. That has to change.

What

wv wrote:

True, rfl, but its also true that there was a trajectory on defense.
It got better. There were still some awful mistakes in the second half
of the season, but i dont see you acknowledging that there WAS
a trajectory of improvement. Which might lead to optimism. Yes?

w
v

LOL. My friend, I agree. We need to see all sides of the situation. I guess I feel that’s what I am trying to do.

Let’s just look briefly at the question of a trajectory of improvement. Was it there?

Well, yes. It would be foolish to deny that the defense wasn’t playing better in that shutout streak than it was weeks 1-5.

But then recall that the trajectory slipped and eroded again in the last few games. AZ came in with a beat up offense and we let them run steadily enough to outscore us. I thought that we slipped in that game. Then, the NYG game was a reversion to our worst habits. And the SEA game again featured, if I recall, a late collapse.

As I say, ALL of it counts.

And by the way, there are trajectories and there are trajectories. They were still playing lousy defense IN WEEK 5! There was little indication of anything more than a month into the season.

Then, a few weeks later they are playing at historical levels.

In my view, that is not a normal trajectory of improvement. That’s weird.

And, it has to be in context. It was the 2nd year in a row in which essentially the same guys started out horrible, got better, and then faded out again down the stretch. If we are going to assess the organization, we need to look at why a defense expected to be very good in ’13 started poorly, recovered, looked to be great in ’14, AGAIN started poorly, improved, then AGAIN fell off late.

Is that “trajectory” one to build optimism on? Well, optimism is a subjective state, and each guy chooses for himself.

For me, I try to look at it all. And what I see gives me hope and lingering concern.

Of course, it is great to see flashes of greatness in the unit. As a fan I HOPE that this becomes the norm for our defense.

But right now, it isn’t for me an EXPECTATION. Because, as the talent has risen, the two constants have been inconsistency and competitive slackness. Apart from a few games, I have not seen a MONEY defense over 2 seasons. As the article says, this has been true in wins as well as in losses.

So, here are my keys looking forward. You can decide whether they add up to optimism or not.

* The talent is fine. Exciting. Good enough for an elite defense.
* We need to stop or at least contain the run 90% of the time, as good defenses do. Teams cannot game plan to run on us because we are so vulnerable to cutbacks and big plays.
* The schemes have to stop blitzing recklessly and playing soft coverage. Conceding the chains does far more damage than a few long passes.
* The unit needs to get more stops and get off the field.
* We need to concede fewer than 20 points in all but a very, very few games. (I know–scores of turnovers count there!)
* The defense needs to prove that it can consistently get stops with the game on the line.
* None of the above is a matter of getting a couple guys at positions X, Y, and Z.
* We need to start playing consistently tough football, whatever our talent level.
* And we need to do so on the freaking field in league games that count.

When I see us doing the above–all of which, by the way, is frequently accomplished by limited but tough defenses not as talented as ours–THEN I will become genuinely optimistic.

To this point, the improvement I’ve seen adds up to a competitive minus. Sadly.

joemad wrote:

The bogus offensive Pass Interference call on Dane Cook in the 2nd qtr was a huge momentum turner in that game……Rams should have had 1st and 10 just outside the redzone with about 3 minutes before half that could have extended the 14-3 lead………. , instead, the Rams were forced to punt that set up JJ’s brain freeze on the Niner’s TD right before halftime….

Well, sure. We’ve seen a lot of lousy officiating. Losing teams always do.

But here’s the thing. To earn beneficial officiating a team has to … start winning. And it has to do that BEFORE it starts getting good calls. This is a universal principle of sports. To be winners, a team must overcome bad officiating. Hell, even winners get bad calls.

This is the thing about our lack of competitiveness. When we get a bad break, we fold. We just collapse. You know, these big plays against us on D–they didn’t decide the game. They just faced us with adversity which we have consistently proved unable to overcome. You know that feeling we all get–one play and we feel it slide away? We feel that because it keeps happening. Indeed, the fact that one could say that a bad break in the 2nd Q could cause us to lose … that whole idea rests on the assumption that we would be unable to overcome it in a whole half of football. A correct assumption, BTW.

See, winners don’t think that way. They absorb blows, limit the damage, and figure how to win. That’s what it means to be a winner. You don’t let bad calls in the 2nd Q crush you.

joemad wrote:

To earn beneficial officiating a team has to … start winning. And it has to do that BEFORE it starts getting good calls. This is a universal principle of sports. To be winners, a team must overcome bad officiating. Hell, even winners get bad calls.</P>
<P>This is the thing about our lack of competitiveness. When we get a bad break, we fold. We just collapse. You know, these big plays against us on D–they didn’t decide the game. They just faced us with adversity which we have consistently proved unable to overcome. You know that feeling we all get–one play and we feel it slide away? We feel that because it keeps happening. Indeed, the fact that one could say that a bad break in the 2nd Q could cause us to lose … that whole idea rests on the assumption that we would be unable to overcome it in a whole half of football. A correct assumption, BTW.</P>
<P>See, winners don’t think that way. They absorb blows, limit the damage, and figure how to win. That’s what it means to be a winner. You don’t let bad calls in the 2nd Q crush you. </P>

yes, I understand about the need of overcoming adversity and bad officiating…. But it’s tough to do with a 3rd string QB or a QB that has been a journeyman back up most of his career…(not to mention with the youngest roster in the league) There is a reason why those guys are 3rd string or journeyman back ups,,…..You can’t necessarily blame that on coaching, because based on the data the RAMS had in preseason, they chose the most optimal route.

1) You had a ROY QB coming off his best season before he got hurt in Carolina in 2013…. A QB that also played well in 2012….
what did you want the Rams to do to prep for a 2nd ACL injury on their starting QB in 2014 that would have prevented this?…sign Mark Sanchez instead of Hill? Draft Manziel? what would you have done different?

If you think they couldn’t overcome adversity this season, they did a few weeks later in Santa Clara against this same SF team…..

You can’t say that a team playing with 2nd stringer and 3rd QBs while missing Chris Long that defeated Denver, Seattle, and SF, lacks competitiveness…..they certainly didn’t win those games based on talent, but maybe it was coaching.

Well, as i’ve said before,
the 2014 Rams were the “weirdest”
Ram team, I’ve seen in my 40+ years
of watching’em.

I mean, pick an adjective.
Any adjective, and it’ll be true
in some sense, of the team last season.
They were all kinds of stuff.
A mixed bag of weird stuff.

w
v