press and others review the 9ers game

Lindsey Thiry@LindseyThiry
Rams LT Andrew Whitworth says this game is an easy one to pick themselves up from because they can look in the mirror and say they beat themselves, and those are things they can clean up.

Actually thought this was refreshing for McVay to actually put some blame on the players, instead of taking it all on himself.

Jourdan Rodrigue@JourdanRodrigue
Jared Goff says of tonight’s game, “clearly wasn’t my best. Just some uncharacteristic stuff. Something that I’ve never done in my life, and don’t expect to ever repeat.”
He also adds that any receiver miscues are on him, takes ownership of being out of sync.

Aaron Donald and Sean McVay both unprompted, cited that early gain by Deebo Samuel as a momentum-builder as they all thought he was down; then added missed tackles in the first half was especially a killer. Donald: “It’s just about wrapping and bringing a guy to the ground.”

SJD says he takes responsibility for this play because he was the lead tackler and he didn’t know someone was under Samuel that kept his knee from hitting the ground.

“It’s on me. That play is specifically on me.”

SJD is being a leader but no way, Brockers yapping at ref—play to the whistle, Kiser and otehrs, toom

in fact, play to the echo of the whistle pic.twitter.com/cqKiQfxD6a

— 𝐏𝐫𝐨 𝐅𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥🏈 (@NFL_Journal) October 19, 2020

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5 takeaways from the Rams’ crushing Week 6 loss to San Francisco
Steve Rebeiro

5 takeaways from the Rams’ crushing Week 6 loss to San Francisco

The Rams’ style is apparent, but the substance is lacking in defeat: The Pile

Jourdan Rodrigue

https://theathletic.com/2146147/2020/10/19/rams-loss-defense-jared-goff-sean-mcvay/?source=emp_shared_article

It’s 2020, and I’m less of a roller-coaster woman these days. I already had the chase-me-red car with the turbo engine. I failed the Atkins diet. I whiffed on the air-puffed peas in ranch seasoning trend.

Give me a national park, not an amusement park. I’ll take a four-door with good gas mileage and some steak and potatoes while you’re at it. I want to see some damn substance.

The Rams have such style, you know? Flashy new uniforms, the hottest young coaches in football, Monopoly money under a dozen mattresses, the best football player on the planet and a host of stars on offense and defense. They truly have unlimited potential, and every single person in the organization would say the same.

They also might say that all of that style means bo-diddley if they can’t back it up with substance, like tackling a guy to the ground or executing their own bread-and-butter plays on offense.

In Sunday night’s 24-16 loss at San Francisco, 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo completed only two passes past the line of scrimmage in the first half, as the 49ers went up 21-6. He didn’t have to do more than that, really. He was gifted, as 226 of his 268 passing yards were accumulated after the catch by his running backs and receivers. That directly points the finger at the Rams’ defense, which could not tackle. And a soft zone, in which the Rams spent much of their time, works as a “bend, don’t break” concept if the pass catcher is brought down on first contact — or, upon initial contact, if multiple players swarm and contain. Such coverage depends on limiting plays that create extra yards after a catch because of the initial cushion allowed, and the Rams were unable to do so.

Even Garoppolo’s longest play of the first half, a 44-yard touchdown to tight end George Kittle, was the product of a Rams’ self-own. They ran a Cover-0 blitz on an obvious passing fourth down, in which they did not have a safety floating in center field, and then missed Kittle on the initial contact. Thirty-three of Kittle’s 44 yards came after the catch.

“We just didn’t play good today,” said defensive tackle Aaron Donald, who played his 100th career regular-season game but was held without a sack and had the team’s only two quarterback pressures.

“We have to practice it, we have to do better. When you play like that, you’re inconsistent (and) you’re missing tackles, you’re not playing at your best, you tend to lose games. And that’s what we did today. … It’s just wrapping up and taking a guy down, that’s all it comes down to. Guys know how to do that. It’s just … we just didn’t play good. Y’all saw it, we know it. We have to do better.”

On offense, nothing worked except second-year running back Darrell Henderson, and even he got pulled — a little confusingly, at times, given that he was averaging over six yards per carry. Quarterback Jared Goff missed his receivers on several occasions, both on underthrows and overthrows. His top two targets, Cooper Kupp and Robert Woods, also each had a crucial drop. Kupp’s came in the end zone on third down, and Woods’ may have been a score. The Rams were so discombobulated in the first half, in fact, that they held the ball only eight minutes, 38 seconds, compared to the 49ers’ 21:22. They trailed 21-6 at halftime.

“Clearly wasn’t my best (game),” Goff said. “Just some uncharacteristic stuff, missing some (open) guys early. Something that I’ve never done in my life, and don’t ever expect to repeat. Just have to be a little bit better there, be a little bit more accurate — that’s probably what I do best, is accuracy — and would have put us in a little bit better of a situation and given us a better chance to win.”

The Rams’ defense only allowed three second-half points, and especially with 49ers slasher-back Raheem Mostert missing from the game with an ankle injury, the Rams found a little footing. But because the adjustments came at halftime, they came too late and without any complement from the offense.

“They gave us every opportunity to get back in that game,” said McVay, who repeated that the Rams just did not play “up to their capabilities.”

From McVay to Goff to Donald to Andrew Whitworth, the word of the evening was “uncharacteristic.” An “uncharacteristic” loss, “uncharacteristic” mistakes, miscues, misreads and missed tackles.

“As a whole, just too many things that we’re not accustomed to doing,” McVay said. “You give credit to the 49ers, they did a nice job, but we (did) a lot of uncharacteristic things. We had a lot of our players that we count on that didn’t come through in some situations that they typically do.”

The problem is, if fixable items like missed tackles happen often enough into late October and November, they stop being “out of character” and turn into an identity.

The Rams are 4-2, having dropped their first NFC West matchup. Welcome to The Pile — let’s start poking around:

An early backbreaker

On the 49ers’ first drive, a freak situational play turned an exploratory drive into a scoring drive.

Receiver Deebo Samuel caught a short pass over the middle from Garoppolo and was enveloped by nose tackle Sebastian Joseph-Day, who thought he had successfully brought Samuel to the ground. But Samuel never felt his knee touch, and the referees did not blow the play dead. So Samuel wrestled free and took off downfield as several Rams and even his own teammates watched in bewilderment.

“I thought he was down,” Joseph-Day said. “I tackled him, and I guess someone was under him, which, I didn’t know someone was under him. I tackled him down and I guess his knees didn’t touch the ground. I thought he was on the ground because I was fighting off a block, got off a block and made the tackle. Obviously, he was not down. … That is my fault, and I take responsibility for that.”

The play was not, of course, the singular issue in the game, but it was an early gash that kept the Rams on their heels and ultimately set up a touchdown, creating an early deficit that changed their game plan.

And it certainly set an early tone in terms of how the Rams went about their business of tackling. Samuel got them again on a third-down catch-and-run in the fourth quarter to ice the game.

“I thought he was down (on the early play), so there will be a lot of things we can learn about just wrapping up, finishing,” McVay said. “We certainly want to tackle consistently and bring guys down on first contact. But you do give credit to the other guys for doing a nice job of creating those broken tackles.”

Goff’s terrible day

Sunday was only the second time this season that the Rams did not score on their opening drive, and Goff started 1-for-6 for just 17 yards.

“Really, we came out and tried to throw it some early,” Whitworth said, “and, you know, just didn’t seem to be on the same page in the sense that normally we are a little crisper than that. Some of those completions, we have to have.”

Goff entered the game looking pretty solid even under pressure, but he simply could not find his mechanics when his pocket broke down. He was not sacked but missed throws both under and over his receivers, and he had a couple of issues with drops by his two most-trusted pass-catchers, Woods and Kupp. In fact, one of Goff’s best plays of the night was a near-sack in which he avoided pressure well and unfurled a great ball downfield to Woods, but it slipped through his arms.

“Just a little bit out of sync,” said McVay of the weirdly absent connection between Goff and his top two receivers. “I do believe that those two are guys who will connect on a lot of those opportunities when we get them, moving forward, but tonight was kind of one of those nights for us.”

Goff finished 19-of-38 for 198 yards, two touchdowns and an interception. He was picked off by reserve cornerback Jason Verrett in the end zone on fourth down, with the Rams trailing 21-9 in the third quarter, after Verrett had previously forced Goff to go 0-for-4 when throwing his way, according to Next Gen Stats.

“That was a great play by him,” Goff said. “He fell off his coverage and fell up underneath the ball …

“We had our shot down low in the red zone a couple of times there and weren’t able to cap them off. Again, that’s a reflection of how we played tonight. We gotta finish drives, we gotta make better decisions and throw and catch the ball better, and we will. We usually do. I know we will coming out next week.”

Bottom of The Pile

• Where was rookie running back Cam Akers? McVay said Akers’ snaps would increase now that he’s back from a ribs injury. Clearly, there was a smokescreen and an adjusted game plan after the Rams faced an early deficit. McVay said that game flow and the inability to execute into situations they wanted Akers to be in explained why he hardly saw the field. Henderson could have been the lead back for the entire game, as he was averaging over six yards per carry, but he was swapped for Malcolm Brown at times in the second half. I am among those still attempting to discern why the Rams swap backs when they do. Brown’s ability, as a physical runner to loosen a front, as well as his pass-protection prowess, are the reasons I can come up with for now.

• Pressure is rolling in for Samuel Sloman, thicker than the coastline marine layer. Sloman made a 42-yard field goal, but the rookie kicker is still struggling to get height on his point-after attempts and had his second one of the season blocked after the Rams’ first touchdown. Sloman is the first Rams kicker to miss three PATs in a season since 1988. While I understand the need to adjust to the NFL and its various stressors, it is not acceptable for an NFL kicker to lack the proper height on a kick, so much so that it’s blocked with little effort. One tactic the Rams could try to light a little fire under him? Bringing in some kickers for a Tuesday workout (though that might not be as realistic with COVID-19 protocols in place).

• Speaking of pressure, the Rams struggled to get much on Garoppolo. Joseph-Day said that the 49ers’ misdirection plays and sweeps hurt the Rams’ ability to get to Garoppolo, as well as outside zone runs that were wider than expected. Ironically, those are many of the ways in which the Rams’ offense shakes off opposing pressure.

• How bad was the Rams’ pass rush? According to Next Gen Stats, the defensive line recorded only two pressures on Garoppolo, and both came from Donald. It was one of the worst pressure-rate games for the Rams since 2017’s Week 17 matchup against the 49ers, a game in which the Rams rested most of their starters. Garoppolo averaged 2.68 seconds before each throw, and because he mostly threw behind the line of scrimmage, he didn’t even need that time.

• I don’t want the loss to take away from the stellar job that veteran outside linebacker Leonard Floyd is doing in run support. As the Rams’ defense began to adjust in the third quarter, Floyd helped force a second consecutive three-and-out with a total effort play on Samuel, shaking a block and diving for the receiver, scrambling forward after catching the towel around his waist and finishing the play for a loss of six yards.

• I think Nsimba Webster should be returning kicks and punts full time, after watching the confidence with which he brought the ball out on Sunday. Bafflingly, they switched back to Kupp late in the game.

• McVay probably would have liked to have had an extra timeout late in the fourth quarter, especially after he had to use his last one just before the two-minute warning. He watched helplessly as the seconds ticked away after a third-down conversion by the 49ers on a — you guessed it — catch-and-run play to Samuel that converted a third down right after the two-minute mark.

• The loss was the Rams’ third consecutive against San Francisco, and the sting only deepens.