Rams OL vows to rebound & other "OL after the Bears game" bits

Inside Rams’ blocking woes and the frank film review to get back on track

Vincent Bonsignore

https://theathletic.com/711205/2018/12/13/inside-rams-blocking-woes-and-the-frank-film-review-to-get-back-on-track/

To​ illustrate the Rams’​ offensive line struggles​ on​ Sunday night​ in​ Chicago —​ and​ the​ ripple​ effect it caused​ on everything​​ from Jared Goff’s performance to Todd Gurley’s running to the play calling of Sean McVay — we offer Exhibit A.

First of many pic.twitter.com/0oEBvNWh33

— Quan (@RoquanSmith1) December 10, 2018

The Rams had just forced a Bears punt early in the second quarter and faced a first-and-20 at their own 10-yard line after Brandin Cooks was flagged for 10 yards for an illegal block.
The Rams opted to go with an “11” personnel look (one running back, one tight end and three wide receivers) with Gurley lined up in the backfield alongside Goff, tight end Gerald Everett as an H-back just to the right of tackle Rob Havenstein, two wide receivers flanked out to the left and one wide receiver to the right. The Bears countered with a four-man front with three defensive linemen in three-point stances and edge rusher Aaron Lynch in an upright position just off Havenstein’s right shoulder.
What Chicago did next showed how confident it was in getting pressure on Goff with just four pass rushers against five blockers. At the snap of the ball, the Bears dropped seven men into pass coverage — including linebackers Khalil Mack, Roquan Smith and Danny Trevathan — to give them an immediate numbers advantage against what was supposed to be five Rams receivers.
Goff, lined up in the shotgun, initially looked to his right, where Everett was in a seemingly favorable one-on-one matchup against Trevathan, and Josh Reynolds faced cornerback Kyle Fuller. But Trevathan was up to the challenge and ran stride for stride with Everett, while Fuller, with help from safety Adrian Amos Jr., blanketed Reynolds. Meanwhile, Gurley, who was supposed to float to the middle flat, got tripped up trying to get there by defensive linemen Bilal Nichols and Akiem Hicks, negating him as a target.
That forced Goff to turn to his left, where Brandin Cooks ran a pattern up the sideline against cornerback Prince Amukamara and slot receiver Robert Woods worked a 20-yard inside route against Mack and then Smith. Behind them was safety Eddie Jackson.
Basically, it was two receivers against four defenders.
Woods found open space sitting between Smith and Jackson, and Goff immediately recognized him as a viable target. Granted, he needed to drop a perfectly thrown ball just over Smith but with enough zip to get it to Woods before Jackson could swoop in and break it up. But it was a throw Goff has made plenty of times this season.
Only this time, Goff had to work fast due to Lynch and defensive end Jonathan Bullard creating major heat off the edge and Hicks and Nichols pushing hard from the inside. And this proved to be the real key to the play.
The Bears’ four-man rush, as it often did in Chicago’s 15-6 victory, won its battle against the Rams’ five-man offensive line. And just as Goff wound up to throw and release, Bullard pushed left tackle Andrew Whitworth into Goff to knock him off stride. The result was an underthrown floater that fell into the waiting arms of Smith for an easy interception.
In that one play, the Rams’ rough night was essentially summed up.
Their inability to deal with a four-man pass rush allowed the Bears to devote maximum defenders to pass coverage. That created a double whammy for Goff, who had neither the time or the space to work with. And the failure to deal with Chicago’s defensive front in the run game meant little room for Gurley to work with and, as a result, Rams head coach Sean McVay all but abandoned the run as an option.
“Anytime you have a game like that, especially as a unit, you want to get out there and get that taste out of your mouth as fast as possible,” Rams right guard Austin Blythe told The Athletic. “We’re itching to get back out there.”
“Like anything else, we’ll learn from it,” McVay said. “Our guys will respond to it the right way.”

If the Rams do, it will go a long way toward proving Sunday night’s loss was a one-game blip against a very good defense executing a brilliant game plan while being spurred on by a frenzied home crowd at Soldier Field. If they don’t, Chicago may have created a blueprint on how to severely slow down the Rams’ high-powered offense.
We can talk all we want about Goff laboring through his worst game under McVay while completing just 20 of 44 passes for 180 yards and a season-high four interceptions. And we can point the same harsh finger McVay directed at himself for straying from the run too quickly to essentially render his Rams a one-dimensional offense and for putting his offense in unfavorable positions with his play calling. While we’re at it, we can place some of the blame on the receivers for not winning their one-on-one battles often enough to make themselves better targets in the passing game.
All are valid explanations for the Rams going through an entire game without scoring a touchdown for the first time since the last game of the 2016 season.
“It’s really about all 11 and we got to do a good job. Starting with the coaches, putting our players in positions, giving them clarity, asking them – making sure that they know exactly how we want to get the things done that we’re trying to execute,” McVay said. “And then it’s about everybody playing within the timing, the rhythm of whatever that specific play is and the ball coming out and guys separating in that time.”
All true.
But above all else, the Rams’ troubles on Sunday night — and really the last two games if you count their sluggish offensive performance against the Detroit Lions a week before — are the result of a two-week slippage by an offensive line that was grading out as one of the best in the NFL up until two weeks ago. The dismal performance in Chicago saw the O-line, on Goff’s 43 pass drops, allow 23 pressures, 17 quarterback hurries, four quarterback hits and two of the Bears’ three sacks.
It was a nightmare performance. And the Rams had to re-live it on Wednesday during a frank and enlightening film review conducted by offensive line coach Aaron Kromer. The rough start to the offensive line’s work week was necessary for the unit to move forward.
“If you asked a guy individually, I guarantee they’d tell you, ‘We learned a lot coming out of that game,’ ” Kromer said. “I think it’s going to help us in the long run. It’s going to make us stronger. It’s going to make us play better in these games to come.”
And as his players re-watched the horror, two things became obvious.
“It’s never as good as you think and it’s never as bad as you think,” Rams left guard Rodger Saffold told The Athletic.
“(The Bears) are a fantastc (defensive) front, one of the best fronts in the league,” Blythe told The Athletic. “But at the end of the day, as an offensive lineman, you fall back on your technique and fundamentals, and I don’t think we did a great job at that as a unit. That was a huge focus in film: concentrating on what we can control as far as technique and fundamentals go and we’ll be all right.”
According to some of the players who were present in the film review, Kromer made it a point to highlight the positive as well as the negative. There were lessons to be gleaned from both ends of that spectrum.
“The good thing about coach Kromer is that he looks at the good and the bad,” Saffold told The Athletic. “So he also pointed out the great things that we did and that made people feel a little better about the film.”
Upon reviewing the tape, it was obvious to Kromer — and his linemen — that players were getting consumed with the moment and trying to do too much to deal with it.
“When you’re in the heat of a game, especially emotionally, you do extra to try and make things happen and you put yourself in bad situations,” Saffold said.
Among them: Staying on a block too long and not recognizing or switching off quickly enough onto a rusher you are responsible for blocking. Also, getting out of position while in your stance trying to brace for the speed of a rusher, only to get caught leaning and losing leverage.
“Which will get you beat,” Saffold added.
“I think what you learned is, when adversity hits at times, to go back to your fundamentals and techniques and not try to do something that’s out of the ordinary,” Kromer said. “Any time you get in a big game, it always comes back to staying calm and understanding exactly what you want to get done.”
The Rams offensive line didn’t do that on Sunday against a Bears defensive front as good as any in the NFL and by far the best it has seen all year. Dealing with that front was always going to be difficult even if the Rams played the perfect game. But they sabotaged themselves by getting caught up in the moment.
And as they reconvened on Wednesday in preparation for the Philadelphia Eagles, the focus was on getting back to their roots.
“Just know that we’ve been taught the right way and to fall back on your technique and fundamentals,” Blythe said. “We’ll focus on that this week in practice and things will work out as they have for us playing as a unit and playing together. It’ll be all right.”
McVay won’t allow the Rams to dwell on Sunday night’s mishaps.
“We want to be solution-oriented and if we do that, then we can have an eyes up, moving forward mentality,” McVay said. “We don’t want to allow previous things that didn’t work out in our manner, to affect our ability to respond, be in the
present and focus on getting better. That’s one of the things I think is important. We talk about it all the time, not allowing the past to hijack your ability to move forward, but you don’t want to avoid it.
“We’re not going to make excuses, but sometimes these setbacks, like we said, are great opportunities to respond. You can
really show a lot more when you do go through some adversity than when everything always works out in your favor.”
The Rams could face Chicago again in the playoffs. And every other potential postseason opponent now has access to the same exact film the Rams reviewed on Wednesday.
That could be a problem.