Rams tweets … 9/26 – 9/27

Rams' PFF grades show Aaron Donald was outstanding, and the offensive line was, well, not good. Noteboom's pass-blocking grade was 0.0 and Thomas' was 8.6.

More grades available here: https://t.co/FSfh4mNUdK

— Cameron DaSilva (@camdasilva) September 26, 2023

…

[from link above]

• DT Aaron Donald: 92.9

• OLB Byron Young: 85.8

• LB Ernest Jones: 80.7

• CB Derion Kendrick: 72.6

• DT Kobie Turner: 68.2

Donald was unblockable Monday night, recording seven pressures and five stops. He was by far the Rams’ most effective defender.

Young also had a good night, generating five pressures and five stops of his own. He seems to be getting better by the week, which is encouraging for a Rams team that’s lacking edge-rusher talent.

Jones made nine tackles and didn’t miss a single attempt, only allowing two catches on five targets, as well.

Kendrick was picked on often by the Bengals, but he gave up just two catches on five targets for a total of 19 yards with one pass breakup.

Turner had three pressures as an interior defender, a good number for the rookie.

Zooey wrote:

zn wrote:

HoldenCantor@HoldenCantor

Les Snead on the Coach McVay show just now on Noteboom and Alaric: “All the news we got back is good news, now it’s just rest and recovery on a short week and I think we can get that done” Looks like we’re gonna be okay up front

That’s a good thing.

InvaderRam wrote:

that’s great news. rams offense was in deep doo doo when jackson went out. hopefully he comes back healthy. hopefully noteboom. and then next week kupp.

Cowherd had a line I remember when he was first saying after the games 1 and 2 that the Rams are surprisingly ahead of where most expected them to be in 2023. He said they look like they can compete, but they have no depth.

Sounds like what we saw Monday night.

Except also on Monday, in response to some disasters, McV (IMO) brain froze. I put a lot of that game on coaching too. I just think that for all his brilliance, McV is not always nimble tactically, in the moment. He seems more of a Trust the Plan kinda guy, and less of a “well now that we’re in the moment let’s switch things up” kinda guy.

Mike LaFleur shared his take on the Rams abandoning the run on Monday night, saying the Bengals were essentially daring them to throw it.

So, they didn't want to keep banging their head against the wall trying to run it https://t.co/4rnCCKzXGd

— Cameron DaSilva (@camdasilva) September 28, 2023

See, this is what I don’t understand. Every fan and pundit on here was screaming for McVay to slide Joe Noteboom over to left tackle during that game. I agreed. But he didn’t do that. Now he’s saying he should’ve? 🤦‍♂️ This makes me very worried about’s Sean’s in game judgement. https://t.co/Qpl2U0fLbD

— TY (@tbearde) September 28, 2023

InvaderRam wrote:

and then there’s this quote.

So there was a lot of runs called that unfortunately had to get checked out of it into some passes and some of the results were good and some of them weren’t as good.

so some of those runs were checked into some passes. i don’t know. i think either way. rams were screwed when jackson went out. even if the rams ran it every single time in the red zone the loss of jackson and then noteboom would have been difficult to overcome.

Except the chances to run it in the redzone came early in the game when Jackson was still in the game. In the previous 2 weeks the Rams were 2nd in the league in getting TDs in the redzone. They were in the RZ for 2 series early in the 1st half, and came away with 6. As a result this week they are now 13th in the league for TDs when in the redzone. (That stat is here: https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/red-zone-scoring-pct ). So is this just a one game thing? Except for the fact that with only one year as an exception, McV’s entire career with the Rams, they have been mediocre to merely average at best getting TDs in the redzone. So it’s an old thing…and arguably not just one game. This is actually a very old McV issue.

RZ issues aside, among the other tactical things the Rams didn’t do in the heat of the moment was to switch up the blocking schemes to give Thomas help. So it doesn’t reduce to a run/pass thing, although across the years McV has shown that he can abandon the run too easily.

People don’t have to take this as some kind of blanket criticism of McV. His areas still deserving of criticism are very specific. In terms of the “he’s still young argument,” though, for me, 7 years of that is a lot. He has improved in a lot of areas, but some seem to keep showing back up. At the same time if asked, I always rank McV about equal to or just behind DV as the best Rams coach since I started following them. So this is not an issue of “being too hard on McV” or any of that.

I just try to be dialectical about this. The overall picture of McV is a bright one, in lots of different ways. But when a game goes south in ways that directly have to do with longstanding coaching tendencies, I wonder if he is improving in those areas (like tactical, in-game vision)–it’s just a matter (to me) of a balanced picture.