RamView, 10/19/2014: Rams 28, Seahawks 26 (Long)

RamView, October 19, 2014
From Row HH
(Report and opinions from the game.)
Game #6: Rams 28, Seahawks 26

Finally, the Rams managed (barely) not to blow a lead. Finally, they played and coached like their backs were to the wall. Finally, Robert Quinn sacked a quarterback. Finally, they played a pretty clean game and didn’t kill themselves with penalties and mistakes. Finally, instead of finding ways to lose a game, the Rams found a way to win.

Position by position:
* Strategery: You can analyze trends and try to play Moneyball all you want, but some games, like this one, remind you that football strategy is as much art as it is science. From the Ram 18-yard-line, with 2:55 left in the game and clinging to a 2-point lead, Jeff Fisher took about as crazy a gamble as you could think up, a fake punt. If it fails, Seattle is immediately in game-winning FG position and Fisher is probably burning in effigy Monday morning. But the Rams had reportedly practiced this play all week and Fisher trusted his players. Stedman Bailey motioned in to draw attention away from Benny Cunningham, and Johnny Hekker, the best throwing punter since Danny White, hit him with a perfect pass into the flat that helped win the game.
Another gamble, in the 2nd, got the Rams their 2nd TD, as Brian Schottenheimer appeared to redeem the Shurmur Shovel. Unlike that play in 2010, this version was well-blocked and superior in design, going to a RB (Cunningham again) moving north-south instead of to a TE (Illini Mike) moving east-west. And they caught the defense thinking pass instead of run. The draw to Tre Mason for the first TD was a more impressive call. The Rams were near the goal line and had just taken Lance Kendricks out; has to be a pass, right? Not today. My only admonishment for Schottenheimer is that the personnel packages made it very predictable what the Rams were going to do. Tavon Austin in the backfield? He’s getting the ball. Mason? He’s getting the ball. Cunningham? Probably a pass. Right men for the job, yes, but Schottenheimer will have to mix that up more.
Up 14-3, the team you’d swear never watches tape at all some weeks showed what they learned from watching Seattle’s. Their punt coverage takes its eye off the ball, which the Rams leveraged with a play I’m going to call the River City Miracle. While Tavon Austin got an Emmy nomination, flopping around near the Ram sideline like he’s misplayed the ball, on the other side of the field, Stedman Bailey fielded the actual kick over his shoulder, and with every Seahawk except (I hope) the punter faked into chasing Austin, dashed off with a 90-yard TD, on as clever a play as the Rams have run in 20 years here. Preparation and execution combined to perfection.
Furthermore, the Rams actually appeared to learn lessons from what went wrong in other games. This was probably always more on Davis than on Schottenheimer, but he didn’t get into trouble this week waiting on deep routes. No deep throws this week may have been too far in the other direction, but Davis didn’t get sacked, either. Gregg Williams, who I imagine has no fingerprints left from the number of times he’s burned his hand on the stove blitzing, cut back on it this week, even as it actually managed to produce results, including a sack for Eugene Sims. Apparently Tim Walton has returned to guide the pass coverage schemes, but one thing at a time.
Something I didn’t think about for last week’s preview was how Jeff Fisher loves to get into Pete Carroll’s head and crawl around. Fisher’s always got a little something extra for Carroll, and this week, he had some good sh!t. Not only that, his players played their cleanest game of the season. No turnovers (barely). No sacks. ONLY TWO PENALTIES. Excellent execution on a number of critical plays. Fisher had his players ready this week, and he coached like his back was to the wall (where it’s been for about three weeks). Nothing but applause for Fisher from here. This was his best-coached game as the Rams’ head coach.

* QB: How’s this for reliable? Austin Davis (18-21-152, PR 128.6) completed 86% of his passes. He only threw three balls that hit the ground. You want clutch play? He hit Kenny Britt to convert a third-and-short on the Rams’ first TD drive. On the 2nd TD drive, Davis (as usual) hung tough in the pocket hitting Brian Quick twice for 30+ yards, then down at the goal line, woop! he lets a Seahawk rusher draw in and flips a 5-yard shovel pass to Benny Cunningham for the TD. Davis was most clutch of all in the 4th after Seattle had reduced the Ram lead to 21-19. Play-action comeback to Quick for 18. He scrambled away from pressure to hit Lance Kendricks for 15 more. On a rare incomplete pass a couple of plays later, Davis could have been sacked a couple of times but had the agility to stay out of major trouble. The Rams did not do much deep throwing this week, which helped Davis stay out of some of the trouble he got into against the 49ers, but when they needed a deep throw, bang, there’s a perfect 30-yard deep slant to Chris Givens (!) to put the Rams in scoring range. The Rams really needed a TD out of that drive, and Davis got it for them, beating a blitz and landing the score on one of the offense’s favorite routes, Lance Kendricks in this case dragging across the formation. Johnny Hekker may have thrown the most important pass of the day, but that shouldn’t lessen what Austin Davis accomplished. He’s evolving right in front of us. He continues to show excellent pocket presence and ability to keep plays alive with his feet. He played an impressively smart game, committing no turnovers, taking what the defense gave him, and keep in mind this is with Richard Sherman taking away half the field as usual. This is what? Davis’ 5th career start? And he runs the Ram offense like a regular field general.

* RB: In the short space of two weeks, Tre Mason (18-85) has gone from forgotten man on the inactive list to veritable bell cow. The Rams’ quickest RB, Mason scored on his first touch, a 6-yard draw play, and his second touch was the Rams’ longest rush of the season, a 28-yard run around left end late in the 1st. There isn’t another Ram RB with Mason’s speed around the edge, and if he’ll accelerate again on his breakaway runs instead of slowing down for a juke move, he’ll be a threat to score from anywhere on the field. He was much more effective on the edge than up the middle, but he can both bounce plays outside and get yards after contact. The Rams’ most effective middle runner this week was… Tavon Austin (5-16), thanks to his being hard to find. Bennie Cunningham’s most valuable roles were blitz pickup and receiving, where he had 5 catches for 46 and was a reliable release valve for Davis, including a shovel pass TD in the 2nd. With Zac Stacy a healthy scratch, with 2:00 left, Mason got the ball and surged up the middle for 7, then off the left side for a game-sealing 10-yard run. Nothing is easy for these Rams, though, so of course Malcolm Smith caught Mason from behind and popped the ball loose. The Rams got it back, though, and hopefully lesson learned for Mason, because it looks like he’s going to get plenty of chances from here on out, even as it may leave former starter Stacy as encased on the bench as he was two weeks ago.

* WR: No Ram receiver had more than 3 catches, though I don’t think it’s a coincidence that two Ram TD drives started with downfield completions to Brian Quick (2-33). Quick got the final TD drive started, but the big play was by, of all people, Chris Givens, on a 30-yard slant out of the slot. Kenny Britt’s stats (2-4) are those of a receiver who spent the most plays going against Richard Sherman. Britt’s still been a better addition than expected thanks to the leadership role he’s taken. Late in the game, he was the one firing up teammates during timeouts. The Seahawks keyed on Austin (3-6), and the Rams keyed on not throwing at Sherman, so the 3rd-down play before the fake punt was curious: a quick out to Austin out of the slot, covered by Sherman, who broke up the pass, unsurprisingly. They’re really going to need to establish a go-to guy. With Austin Pettis inactive for the game and cut after it, I’d like to see Britt step up as a clutch receiver more than he’s been here to date.

* Tight ends: That go-to guy might actually be Jared Cook (3-25), though he was pretty quiet this week. The blocking TEs made all the noise. Lance Kendricks (2-17) had two catches, including the Rams’ final TD, and had his best blocking game in some time, landing blocks like the seal block on Mason’s 28-yard run. The TD was an excellent play by Kendricks; he was defended well by K.J. Wright and went through him at the goal line for the score. Corey Harkey had his best game of the season, getting outside well on Mason’s long run and leading him into the hole for several other nice gains. And with Mason’s late fumble bouncing around, and the game in the balance, Harkey was the main man falling on it to save the game. Can’t make much more of a clutch play than that.

* Offensive line: Two long-time Ram-killers – Justin Smith and Brandon Mebane – have visited the Dome the past two weeks but left after pretty quiet games, and it can’t be a coincidence that those were also Greg Robinson’s first two games in the lineup. Robinson and Jake Long have formed a pretty nice run-blocking tandem on the left side. To finish off the first TD drive, the two led Austin for an 8-yard gain, then Robinson pulled left and opened a lane for Mason’s draw play TD. That’s not to say the line couldn’t have been better. Rodger Saffold and Joseph Barksdale didn’t establish a lot of push on the right side and Scott Wells got pushed around at times as a lot of middle runs ran into walls. A big help to the run-blocking game was the re-emergence of the blocking TEs’ play of last year. In pass pro, Long and Barksdale each had trouble at times with Michael Bennett’s speed. But between Davis’ footwork and the tempo of the passing game, the Rams didn’t allow a sack. Barksdale had a key blitz pickup on the 30-yard pass to Givens. Davis had solid pockets for both his TD passes. The Rams’ first attempt to grind out the clock did not go as planned. Cunningham got stuffed after Long got knocked back and Wells lost at the snap. Davis was forced to roll right on 2nd down and nearly got sacked. The fake punt seemed to get them over the hump. Harkey led Mason for 7, then they went heavy and got Mason a big hole, sealed off by… Mike Person. Then the ball’s bouncing around, and there’s a scrum, and who’s one of the Rams recovering the loose ball? Person. A former Seahawk. That had to feel good. A fairly uneventful week for the offensive line. I’ll take it.

* Defensive line: I once thought Aaron Donald’s size would limit him to being a pass-rush specialist. He’s the best run defender on the team. He stuffed Marshawn Lynch at least three times, including a big play in the red zone before halftime that held Seattle to a FG. The Rams held Seattle RBs to 65 yards and Lynch to just 53 on 18 carries. Donald also shot the “A” gap and got #SackCity back on the map with his, and the team’s, second sack of the season. Then a really unusual thing happened – a second Rams sack in one game. Eugene Sims beat Justin Britt to the inside, and a double-DB blitz trapped Wilson in the pocket for Sims to take down. That forced a punt that became a remarkable play that put the Rams up 21-3, and then something even stranger happened. Robert Quinn beat a double-team, trucking the tight end, running by Russell Okung and sacking Wilson for the Rams’ third sack in five plays! What kind of nutty day is it when even Robert Quinn can get a sack? The Quinn Report: he drew a lot of double-teams and continued to rely almost exclusively on outside speed rush moves. Even in 4-DE alignments, he rarely lined up anywhere besides RDE, and stunt is apparently a 4-letter word to Gregg Williams. Pass rush was still markedly improved in the 1st half. Quinn beat a double-team and pressured Wilson into a throwaway to force a FG on their first drive. Sims and William Hayes got into Wilson’s face to force bad throws. We can hope his first sack ignites the rest of the season for Quinn. The whole defense needed a fire lit under its butts in the 2nd half. Instead they failed miserably to keep Wilson in the pocket, let him set a league record for offense and let the Seahawks back into the game with 80, 82 and 91-yard scoring drives. On the first TD drive, Hayes let Wilson get outside for 11 and the whole line got wiped out on his 21-yard TD run. On 3rd-and-9 early in the 4th, Lynch wiped Quinn out to set up a huge lane for a 52-yard Wilson run, helped greatly by Kendall Langford’s terrible missed tackle in the backfield. Good pressure by Sims and Donald prevented Wilson from tying the game at 21 with a 2-point conversion, but with 5:30 left, the defense was right back to the ineffective play it’s plagued us with all season, failing to collapse the pocket, letting Wilson scramble, tackling poorly, poorly timing blitzes… Fisher was right to gamble on the fake punt. If Seattle had gotten the ball back, these guys weren’t going to stop them. As well as the Ram defense started the game, and as well as they defended Lynch, they are still far off from playing a complete game.

* Linebackers: Ecch, what a bad game this group had, especially Alec Ogletree, who gave up a number of big plays. 3rd-and-10 in the 1st, his terrible blown tackle at midfield let Doug Baldwin get away for 48 of his million receiving yards and set up a FG. Baldwin topped that late in the game by running through Ogletree’s terrible tackle attempt to score Seattle’s last TD. With no help behind Ogletree in the 3rd, Russell Wilson’s read option faked him inside, and he was off-balance when Wilson kept the ball and escaped around right end for an easy 21-yard TD. As a spy, Ogletree was more Maxwell Smart than James Bond, seen again in the 4th when Wilson took off around left end for 52 more yards. Ogletree was drafted to keep the running QBs in the division in check, but his failure at containing Wilson this week rivals the CDC’s with Ebola. Wilson became the first QB in NFL HISTORY with 100 rushing and 300 passing yards in the same game; he should at least leave Ogletree some Hall of Fame passes for all he did(n’t do) to get him there. That was one of the worst games a Ram LB has played in years. I’m also struggling to figure out how a middle linebacker can play an entire NFL game and end up with only 3 tackles. The LBs left a lot of the tackling up to the secondary this week. Gotta go to work, guys.

* Secondary: Between the big lead and the seeming return of Tim Walton, the Rams played so much soft coverage this week I’m not sure the DBs will be in the picture on the coaches’ tape. If they are, it’ll have to be on running plays. Janoris Jenkins (9 tkl) tripped up Lynch on a sweep in the 2nd to stop a big play brewing. E.J. Gaines (6 tkl) stopped a potential big run in the 3rd, taking Lynch down in the open field after Lynch’s cutback left James Laurinaitis behind. T.J. McDonald stuffed Robert Turbin a couple of times in the 4th. Heck, the back 4 did a better job containing Wilson than the front 7 did. Lamarcus Joyner (7 tkl) prevented him from breaking loose a couple of times, stopping a scramble near the goal line in the 2nd and holding Seattle to a FG. Unfortunately, and even though Jenkins, Gaines and Rodney McLeod all had sweet pass breakups in the 1st, they had more trouble containing Seattle’s aggressively mediocre pack of receivers. Seattle feasted on soft coverage. I don’t know how you make Doug F. Baldwin (7-123), the Chinese water torture of NFL receivers, an unstoppable force, but the Rams did. He burned bad tackling for 48 on 3rd-and-10 to set up a FG. On 3rd-AND-17 in the 3rd, the Rams began enabling the Seattle comeback, leaving Baldwin wide open in the middle of the field, with McDonald blowing a tackle 2 yards short of the marker. Baldwin added Seattle’s last TD on a simple quick hitch where Ogletree and Gaines couldn’t tackle him. How soft was the Rams’ coverage this week? Baldwin’s TD was set up by a simple pass to Jermaine F. Kearse out of the slot that covered 29 yards because no one was within 15 yards of him at the snap! Pete Carroll had tighter coverage on that play than any Ram DB. Soft coverage was a tide that lifted ALL boats. THIRD-string tight end F. Cooper F. Helfet had a couple of catches for about 35 yards to set up Seattle’s 2nd FG, largely because he too was left wide open in the middle of the field. No one will ever see him there! Helfet proved not even to need the help when he pulled down Seattle’s 3rd TD despite tough coverage by McDonald. That said, the secondary did a lot of its job, supporting the run well, containing Wilson better than most of the front 7, and glory be, no major blown assignments or epically-long TDs allowed. Considering where this secondary’s been, I guess it’s a start.

* Special teams: A lot to discuss on special teams even without the fakery. Cunningham set up the Rams’ first TD with a 75-yard kick return, and it was mostly him. He shouldn’t have gotten past the 10 thanks to a woeful whiff by Mason, but he juked out of trouble, danced up the sideline, got a crucial backside block from Cody Davis and a strong block downfield from Daren Bates. Meanwhile, Greg Zuerlein is starting to make me worry my old “never draft a kicker” wisdom is still right. His 51-yard attempt was straight as an arrow, and right of the uprights. Where are you aiming? Some of his tries have been from silly lengths, but he’s still 5 for his last 14 tries beyond 50.  Somewhere in America there’s a college kid with a big leg nicknaming himself Optoemus Prime and figuring he’s got a shot at taking Legatron down if this continues.

* Upon further review: For the second straight week, the Rams drew a rookie referee, Brad Allen, but this time around worked out a lot better than the last. For the first time all year, an NFL official was willing to call blatant holds on a Rams opponent. Lynch was sprung twice for big runs because a Ram got dragged down, and glory be, Allen caught Seattle both times. Another excellent call was on a hit McLeod got on a sliding Wilson in the 4th. Most referees would have called that a late hit, but the no-call was absolutely correct because Wilson slid late and after McLeod had committed himself. Kudos to Allen for nailing those calls. The Rams were only flagged twice, and the personal foul on Quick was kind of bull; that should have been an offsetting foul. The Rams got away with 12 in the huddle at the end of their final TD drive. Not like I’m reporting that to the league. There are a lot of veteran referees who could stand to call games as well as the rookie Allen did this week. Grade: A-minus

* Cheers: Say what you will about Rams fans, but we don’t give up. The crowd, probably in the mid-40K’s, cheered for the 1-4 Rams like they were 4-1. Noise levels stayed high even as the Rams attempted to blow another big lead. The sound came across really well on TV, and nobody left early. There was a disgraceful number of Seattle fans in the lower deck, though. On the Fox broadcast, credit to Kenny Albert for being one of the few in the stadium not faked out on the Bailey punt return TD. And did I hear Albert correctly on Hekker’s pass? “Oh God, fake!” That would be classic. Mike Pereira kind of threw referee Brad Allen under the bus incorrectly claiming that the end-of-game Mason fumble had not been reviewed, but analyzed correctly that no conclusive evidence would come from a replay. Not the ones we saw at home, at least.

* Who’s next?: So, Rams-hater who makes the NFL schedule, what’s next? How about a three-game road trip that starts with an opponent the franchise hasn’t beaten in TWENTY YEARS? In their last win over Kansas City, in September 1994, Jerome Bettis ran for 132 yards and Keith Lyle and Roman Phifer had interceptions as the Los Angeles, yes, LOS ANGELES Rams shut out Joe Montana’s Chiefs, 16-0. Even the Greatest Show couldn’t beat the Chiefs, so history is really not on the Rams’ side Sunday. Neither is acoustics; Chiefs fans, not Seahawks fans, currently hold the record, set earlier this month, for loudest outdoor stadium.(They’ll be sure to be at their loudest, too, with the most prestigious cup in sports, the Governor’s Cup, on the line.)

Hoping to give K.C. fans something to shout about, and join legendary Chiefs QBs like Elvis Grbac, TRENT GREEN, Damon Huard and Matt Cassel in beating the Rams, will be old friend Alex Smith. Alex is still who we think he is, which has pluses and minuses for the Ram D. Even if he liked to try to stretch the field, which he doesn’t, the Chiefs’ ponderously slow receiving corps wouldn’t be a threat to do so. With another old friend, Donnie Avery, out due to a hernia, two of K.C.’s top three receivers are their TEs, Travis Kelce and Anthony Fasano. It’s about the least dynamic passing offense you can imagine. It is distinctly a possession passing game. The Chiefs love their multiple TE sets, though, and Kelce in particular is emerging as a goal line weapon. These guys are very coverable and the Rams be able to keep them in check; those are the pluses. The minuses: Smith is the ideal QB for Andy Reid’s offense. He gets the ball out quickly, which could limit the Ram pass rush. He’s an accurate thrower and has always been better on the move than he gets credit for. Plus the Chiefs have someone else the Rams will definitely be pre-occupied with – the most dangerous RB in the league, Jamaal Charles. Some of the cutback lanes Lynch had this week would have been 75-yard TDs for the dynamic Charles. He’s a unique combination of small and quick, yet able to take a pounding. Again, without a big pass play threat, the Rams will have to key on Charles, keep him from getting outside, where he’s also a dangerous receiver, and maintain their gap integrity and not give up huge cutback lanes. The Chiefs have an effective RB rotation, with Knile Davis and with DeAnthony Thomas a threat at some of the plays the Rams didn’t have to worry about Percy Harvin pulling off this week. In the trenches, Quinn will be matched up on former #1 overall pick Eric Fisher, who’s capable of hanging with him athletically. Former Bronco Ryan Harris, an elite pass protector when he’s been healthy, mans RT, and we’re set up for some epic battles inside with Donald or Brockers against center Rodney Hudson, a RamView favorite about four Senior Bowls ago. The Chief o-line has rebounded pretty well from offseason and injury losses, so if the Seattle game marks the week the Ram d-line finally broke loose, it’s a good thing; they’ll need the momentum.

K.C.’s defense lost two starters opening day and has been down as many as five starters at times this season, but has still been effective: #6 right now in scoring, #5 in pass defense, #14 overall. Justin Houston leads Bob Sutton’s 3-4 D with 6 sacks. If Jake Long and Joseph Barksdale are not better than they have been lately against speed rushers, Houston and Tamba Hali will be set up to dominate the Rams the way Hali did here back in 2010. I’ve only gotten to “scout” the Chiefs in their loss to the 49ers; K.C. did not blitz a lot but were effective when they did. If their pass rush is their bad news, their run defense (#24 right now, 127 ypg) is good news. Hali and Houston look like rush-the-passer-first defenders. The 49ers worked the edges very hard in their running game and weren’t afraid to run at either guy. Hali especially looked prone to overpursuing running plays. Mason looks like a RB who could make that a dangerous habit. The 49ers were pretty dominant against K.C. in the middle, too. Dontari Poe looks like he should hold up stronger in the running game, but Daniel Kilgore pushed him around. We’ll see what Scott Wells can do. The secondary is a big question mark. Eric Berry has been out with foot and ankle problems. Marcus Cooper was picked on the first four weeks and graded out as the worst corner in the league. The 49ers then went after Sean Smith all of their game. Like Cooper, Smith has excellent size, but he didn’t show much else. The Chiefs only had 2 INTs through 5 games. If the Rams give Davis time, he’ll be able to throw on the Chiefs.

I’m not sure much has changed in Kansas City in 20 years, other than they have a decent baseball team for once. Seems like they’ve always played a classic field position and time of possession (they had the ball almost 40 minutes Sunday in San Diego) game. Seems like they’ve always taken care of the ball and capitalized on opponent turnovers. This will be a what-have-we-learned? game for the Rams. They won’t have the emotional advantage, not when they’re on the road and the Chiefs are coming off just as big a win this week. The Rams are going to have to come right back with another clean game. The Rams and Chiefs obviously are both from Missouri, but the Rams are the team that may have to answer “Show Me” in the affirmative next week.

— Mike
Game stats from espn.com