RamView, 12/11/2014: Cardinals 12, Rams 6 (Long)

RamView, December 11, 2014
From Row HH
(Report and opinions from the game.)
Game #14: Cardinals 12, Rams 6

The Ram offense and pass rush take Thursday night off, and guarantee they’ll get the postseason off, again. In a discouraging loss to Arizona, they seemed to remember nothing of what had made them effective in recent weeks. That’s not a sign of progress.

Position by position:
* Strategery: This week’s headline: another rough week for Brian Schottenheimer. The bad trends the Ram offense appeared to have shaken the past few weeks all came flooding back. This isn’t the first time Schottenheimer has struggled against a blitz-heavy defense. A tactic that failed for almost three quarters was sending the running backs out into the pattern. If you’re going to do that, you need to throw to those backs, but the Rams hardly did. Benny Cunningham popped a screen for 20 early and should have popped another but screwed it up. Those were about all the tries the RBs got as receivers. That wasn’t enough to get press coverage off the WRs, and the amount of zero protect Shaun Hill got exposed to wasn’t worth the investment. Would have been best had Schottenheimer just kept the RBs back in blitz protect all of the time, where they did strong work, especially Cunningham, who was terrific.

Schottenheimer adjusted for that in the 3rd, but for probably the 13th time in 14 games this season, the Ram offense was dreadful out of halftime, with five ugly three-and-outs. Schottenheimer’s inability to counter the blitz otherwise demanded the Rams establish the run, but here, he continued his nagging pattern of not letting his players do what they do best. Three times in the quarter, Tre Mason ran left for 6 or 7 yards behind Greg Robinson, and yet, the Rams still did not manage a first down, as Schottenheimer continues to insist on running the small Mason into the teeth of the defense behind Davin Joseph and Scott Wells, the line’s worst blockers. Early in the 3rd he even shifted Joseph Barksdale into a jumbo left formation outside Robinson… and ran right behind Joseph. A big loss there should have surprised no one. Greg Robinson was born to run block. Feel free to run behind him!

That wasn’t Schottenheimer’s only failure to exercise the Rams’ speed, another old pattern he slipped back into. Austin got a touch on the Rams’ opening play and didn’t get another on offense until the fourth quarter. You need to get him and Mason out to the edge to spread the Arizona defense out. A nice play sequence in the 4th helped set up the Rams’ 2nd FG. Austin ran an end-around that set up a reverse to Bailey the next play. 20 yards, just like that. As good as those plays were, the Rams needed significantly more of them, significantly earlier.

Rams Nation is livid about the 3rd-and-goal play from the 1 at the end of that drive. On its own, the call is actually pretty likeable. Both teams have all 11 men in the box. The Rams have a fullback and three tight ends, including Barnes eligible; it’s obviously a run, right? If Hill had rolled out of this formation like he did and hit a TE for a TD, we’d have all been jumping in glee. This play always works! It’s everything they didn’t do on the game-losing play in San Diego. They ran play-action, they had a blocker back for Hill, they were deceptive, they didn’t force a bad throw into the middle of the field. But Arizona was all over it. They went into the play thinking, stop the run but don’t forget they might pass. Todd Bowles has got a heck of a well-coached defense. Feel free to blame Schottenheimer if you feel Arizona was all over the play because the Rams run it down on the goal line too often. I’m not sure any run was going to work down there. Maybe if they had gone behind Robinson. Which they rarely do.

Bottom line is that the Rams lost to a better-coached team forced into playing a lot of second- and third-stringers. As deep as we are into the Fisher era, Bruce Arians has been in Arizona two years and they have passed us up like we’re a Ford Fiesta on the Autobahn, even though they’ve had a rash of injuries that would excuse any team having a bad season, let alone a bad night. Jeff Fisher has made a big difference over what the Rams had with Linehan and Spagnuolo, no doubt whatsoever. But the Ram coaches need to be a difference against the coaches they actually compete against. Schottenheimer’s been failing at the same kind of things as an OC for a long time now. He’s more of a hurdle than a help. The Rams don’t need to change their system. They need to call plays better. They can keep trying to jump the hurdle, and racking themselves, or they can remove the hurdle.

* QB: OK, I promise to be shorter with the other sections. Shaun Hill’s play wasn’t great, but it was better than his numbers (20-39-229, PR 58.6) may look. Despite heavy pressure in his face most of the game, he made a number of nice throws. He came out beating the Cardinal blitz with a lob over a LB to Tavon Austin and a screen to Benny Cunningham for 20. He made a nice pass to Corey Harkey down the left seam between two defenders for 20 to set up the opening FG. The only problem: Lance Kendricks had several steps on his man down the right seam and would have had a TD. That didn’t seem like a game-changer at the time, but the Rams struggled with the Arizona pass rush the rest of the game. Hill finally got them back to midfield before halftime with a nice sideline pass to Kendricks, 15 more to Stedman Bailey on a crossing route and then scrambling for 9 himself. The last two plays of the half, though, he probably held the ball too long, got sacked once and pummeled from behind another. Timing problems in the passing game really flared up in the 2nd half. Hill and Kenny Britt missed connections a number of times. Hill would have to try to beat a blitz by throwing deep but Britt either couldn’t get there because of coverage or didn’t get there because he’d broken off his route. That and Hill having to throw passes away under pressure hurt his numbers. There was a little bit of a deep game. In the 4th, Hill got a duck of a pass off to Bailey for 38 to set up the Rams’ 2nd FG. He got the Rams back out to midfield in the final 2:00 with a 22-yarder to Britt. The one time all night Hill had an open receiver and made a bad throw was the wrong time. From the Arizona 43, he had Bailey wide open in the slot. Hit him in stride and he is going a long way. No, Hill’s throw was high and behind Bailey and he couldn’t haul it in. Hill’s Hail Mary pass at the end of the game was laughable. Fisher should have put Johnny Hekker in; he would neither punt nor throw a ball that ugly. It looked end over end as Patrick Peterson fair-caught it to damage Hill’s passer rating. So no, it’s not like the Rams’ poor protection and play-calling is holding back the next Aaron Rodgers here or anything. We’d like it if he moved better in the pocket, showed better awareness, didn’t get so many passes knocked down for a man of 6’3” and didn’t throw deep passes that look like they’ve been shot right after they come out of his hand. But except for the two big missed plays with Bailey and Kendricks, Hill took what he could get without turning the ball over. I won’t hang much of this loss on him.

* RB: The Ram RBs had a more difficult night. Lousy blocking got Tre Mason (13-33) buried for a loss of 5 on his first carry, and it was an uphill climb even from there. He had a nice gain going on a wrap play in the 1st until future Hall of Famer Frostee Rucker dived and hacked him on the arm to force a fumble deep in Ram territory. That gave away a FG in a game where every scoring opportunity was big. This may remind Mason to carry the ball tighter to his body. The RBs also need a reminder that they’re not Barry Sanders. Benny Cunningham (2-4, 3-23 recv) took off with a well-setup screen for 20 early in the game, but given a similar splendid opportunity late in the half, he danced, tried to cut it inside instead of taking the easy 10+ he would have gotten outside and got two. Mason got some good gains behind Greg Robinson and Rodger Saffold in the 2nd half but the Ram staff seems to much prefer futile slams into backed-up blocking in the middle of the field. The Rams only ran twice near the goal line but neither time went well. Cunningham got stuffed on 3rd-and-1 in the 1st when, yep, Joseph and Wells got pushed backward on an off-tackle dive. Calais Campbell blew up a Mason run at the 7 late in the game. While Zac Stacy stayed quarantined on the bench, the Rams showed no power running game, to the point they wouldn’t even run needing a yard to score at the end of the game and settled for FGs. The Rams don’t field a RB who can move a pile right now but they sure call a lot of plays thinking they have one. It’s as bad a fit as hiring Adriana Lima to model biohazard suits. The results just aren’t that sexy.

* Receivers: Wish I had more to say here. I was surprised to see either Kenny Britt (5-65) or Stedman Bailey (5-74) had as many as five catches. Britt had a couple of catches over 20 yards, including a tough one while getting thumped by two guys late in the game, but it felt like he spent most of the night unable to get to deep balls Hill threw because Patrick Peterson had jammed him at the line. I like Britt and that he’ll make some tough, physical catches, but the Rams need a better deep threat than he is. Bailey helped spark them to their 2nd FG; he got behind Jarraud Powers and caught a 38-yard duck from Hill, then zipped down inside the 10 later on a reverse. A couple of plays later from the AZ7, though, it’s a Jeff Fisher WR playing Kevin Dyson, as Bailey caught a slant on 2nd-and-goal but got twisted down inside the 1. Barely a factor, Tavon Austin’s game (2-14, 1-8 rush) was disappointing compared to his last two. Same for Jared Cook, 3-22. Oh, Cook’s been able to get some separation lately; unfortunately it’s with two-handed shoves that draw flags from 40 yards away. Missed opportunities, one early for Kendricks, one for Bailey late, loom big. This receiving corps doesn’t have the talent to make up for those.

* Offensive line: The Rams need significant upgrades at right tackle and center and they’re welcome to start looking right now if they want to. Davin Joseph does not get the job done in any aspect of the blocking game, and Wells doesn’t appear to have it any more as a run-blocker. On the first run of the damn game, Joseph’s beaten badly by Frostee Rucker to dump Mason for a huge loss. In the red zone they tried to run behind him again. Nothing. 3rd-and-1 at the 7, they tried to run behind Rodger Saffold but Wells and Joseph got pushed into the hole faster than Cunningham could hit it. Send in the FG unit. The issue became almost comical in the 3rd. Greg Robinson and Saffold would lead Mason out for a nice gain one play, then the next, the Rams would run behind Joseph, who’d get knocked backward and get Mason stuffed. The ugliness spread into the passing game and across the line. In the 2nd, Joseph and Wells double-teamed Dan Williams and he still knocked down a pass. In the 3rd, with the Ram left side double-teaming Calais Campbell, Larry Foote looped around an unsuspecting Robinson for Arizona’s first sack. On 3rd-and-3 the next drive, they couldn’t even handle a 3-man rush; Wells got beat to flush Hill, who only picked up 2 on the scramble. Later, Joseph completely whiffed on Reggie White, ER, Frostee Rucker, and Mason failed in blitz pickup, to get Hill dropped for an especially ugly 13-yard loss. That was it for sacks but not giving up ground. Wells got beat by Tommy Kelly to get Hill creamed. The Rams used reverses and warded off rare straight-up rushes to get down to the 7 in the 4th, but run-blocking failed epically again. Mason immediately ended up with a lot of traffic at his feet in the form of Joseph Barksdale diving at Campbell blowing up the play. Two plays later, they decided they couldn’t trust their run blocking from a yard out. If they were thinking about running right, they were more than likely correct. Send in the FG unit. In full pass mode at the end of the game, what’s the first thing Wells does? Turn around, look at Hill lined up in shotgun, and still snap the ball halfway to him. Hill still got them to midfield, then had to fire incomplete after Joseph again completely whiffed a block. The Rams’ last three plays, Arizona blitzed a DB off RT THREE PLAYS IN A ROW and he was not blocked a single time, leading to Powers’ pass deflection that essentially ended the game. Fortunately for Hill, Arizona’s game-long blitz pressure is reflected much more in incomplete passes than it is in sacks. But Davin Joseph does nothing that helps this team, and if he’s still starting the last two meaningless weeks of the season, if the Rams don’t have another guard who’s even worth a look as opposed to this failure of a RG, they should cut all their guards except Saffold after the season and start over. Wells still gets out well ahead of screens, but he’s also starting to look like he’s on his last legs. Time to get Barrett Jones in there. The Rams cannot get worse play out of that part of the line than they got this week. Time for an extreme makeover.

* Defensive line: The Rams may not have allowed a TD for three games now, but this wasn’t a satisfying performance up front. It’s a battle to decide what was more disappointing: pass rush (only 1 sack) or run defense (143 yards to complete scrubs). Somebody named Stepfan Taylor gashed them for 17 on the opening play after Michael Brockers got double-teamed out of the hole and Mark Barron couldn’t fill it after getting crunched by Larry Fitzgerald. They held Arizona to 3 after the Mason fumble, but Robert Quinn started badly overpursuing at this point, giving up a couple of big holes, one that who? Ask Kerwynn Williams took for 10. A good run stop by Kendall Langford at the 5 helped save the Rams points. Pass rush died off in the 2nd. No one got close to Drew Stanton to prevent a 49-yard bomb to set up the 2nd Arizona FG. Quinn got pushed five yards past him. Stanton threw three times from the Ram 26 and wasn’t pressured at all on two of them, but the Rams got help from John Brown dropping a wide open pass. The front four continued to accomplish little in the 2nd while the secondary got the Cardinals off the field. They did prove able to get gashed by who? Ask Kerwynn Williams some more, though, once for 8 through a huge gap they left on purpose so Chris Long could get wide-9 leverage. No amount of leverage was helping the very quiet Long in this one. Lack of pass rush continued to kill the Rams in the 3rd. No one close to Stanton again as Michael Floyd drew a long DPI. They did sack Arizona out of FG range there. Aaron Donald and Eugene Sims stunted, and Donald not only got there for the sack, for the second time this season, the Rams knocked out Arizona’s starting QB. So what happens the next play? No rush at all, and somebody named Ryan Lindley hits Floyd to get Arizona back in FG range and then up 9-3. The Rams needed to stop the run to win the field position battle in the 2nd half but lost badly. Arizona opened one drive by trucking William Hayes and Alec Ogletree inside to blow open a 19-yard run for who? Ask Kerwynn Williams again. He opened the next drive with a 12-yard run. This consistently let Arizona get far enough downfield to pin the Ram offense deep with punts. Ottis Anderson, ER, Taylor, set up Arizona’s last FG with a 21-yard run. A stunt took Quinn right to him and he still whiffed. It was as bad a game as Quinn’s had all year. He got close to the QB maybe twice and overran a lot of plays. Long, who’ll I’ll grant is coming off a long-term injury, contributed little. Donald had several nice run-stuffs but Arizona still ran successfully double-teaming Brockers. The Rams lost this game big on both sides of the line.

* Linebackers: The LBs made some good plays but not enough to help the struggling front four. The Ram blitz was not especially effective, and that’s mostly James Laurinaitis, Alec Ogletree and Mark Barron, who we might as well call a LB for this game. Barron blitzed and Fitzgerald wiped him out in the hole to spring Williams for 19 on the opening play, but Laurinaitis flushed Stanton on an A-gap blitz to shut down that drive. With Williams on the verge of catching a pass near the goal line in the 2nd, little doubt that Laurinaitis’ footsteps prevented the completion and forced a FG. Laurinaitis had some iffy run plays. Rob Housler deked him on a gimmicky pitch to keep a FG drive alive, and Williams ran through him (and T.J. McDonald and Rodney McLeod) for 6 to burn precious time off the clock at the end of the game. Alec Ogletree had some run fails of his own, getting blocked out of three of Arizona’s big second half runs, Williams’ 19 and 12 and Taylor’s 21. He did kill a drive in the 2nd with a good open-field stop of Fitzgerald and a play that should just be called an “Ogletree” because he does it so often, batting a pass down on a blitz. Ogletree was in on the Rams’ only sack, and run-blitzed Taylor for a big loss right before that, but it wasn’t enough to save the Rams another FG. Barron probably pressured Lindley when Jenkins nearly picked him off in the 3rd, but the bottom line is the LBs didn’t produce enough on the blitz and gave up too many big runs.

* Secondary: Where have we heard this before? Janoris Jenkins gets burned deep twice and the Rams lose the game. In the 2nd, Michael Floyd just ran by him, and Rodney McLeod was well late to show up as usual, to burn the Rams for 49 and set up a precious FG. Jenkins helped give up another FG in the 3rd, getting beaten deep again by Floyd and contacting him well before looking back for the ball for a 36-yard penalty. Jenkins getting burned deep has become one of this season’s themes. I’ll just say I’m in no hurry to re-up his contract. Sadly for Jenkins, he had several near-misses trying to make up for those plays. In the 2nd, Stanton stared down Larry Fitzgerald and Jenkins jumped the route perfectly. A catch would have been a pick-six but he couldn’t make it. He nearly made a diving pick of a terrible Lindley overthrow in the 3rd but the ball came out ever so briefly. Late in the 4th, Jenkins even forced a Williams fumble that would have teed the Rams up for the winning TD but he whiffed on the recovery. The shame is that if you could take away the big plays, Jenkins had an excellent game and the Ram secondary had a brilliant game. They were all over every quick screen to Fitzgerald and held the admittedly-injured WR to a harmless 30 yards, probably the best game they’ve ever had against him. E.J. Gaines, Trumaine Johnson and Jenkins stuffed him on various plays. TruJo also tipped away a TD pass attempt in the 4th. Gaines did some hitting: he flipped Jaron Brown head over heels on an early crossing route and back body-dropped Taylor after a short gain in the 3rd. My favorite play of the night might have been when Stanton went into the end zone for Fitzgerald but he was stymied by not one, not two but THREE defenders. For once the Rams had a plan to stop Larry Fitzgerald, and executed it, and it was a major reason Arizona threw for only 139 yards and couldn’t dent the end zone. They got everything right but two plays. It’s a shame the rest of the team couldn’t provide them a larger margin of error.

* Special teams: The punters were the stars of this show. Johnny Hekker (50.5) launched a bunch of near-60-yard blasts but tended to outkick coverage, which hurt when Ted Ginn returned one 41 yards in the 3rd. Will Herring saved a TD after Chase Reynolds and Daren Bates got wiped out by ONE blocker and Ginn embarrassed Cunningham in the open field. The good news is Arizona didn’t score off that. Drew Butler’s average was meager (36.5) in comparison, but he got so much hang time on his punts that he rendered Austin useless as a returner and repeatedly pinned the Rams deep in their end. I think Greg Zuerlein has his head (and leg) screwed back on straight, though the FGs he hit were glorified extra points. Keep crossing your fingers when he’s kicking from beyond 30.

* Upon further review: Walt Coleman and crew got several calls right that the crowd booed very hard, but that doesn’t mean we got a well-called game. They called Barron offside on the opening series when he’d clearly gotten back, so the crowd went nuts in the 2nd when a Cardinal appeared to jump into the neutral zone without a call. We weren’t alone – Hill thought he had a free play and chucked a deep ball on 3rd down. I’ll be darned, though, if TV didn’t show the Cardinal stopping a fraction short of the line. Downfield OPI calls against Britt and Cook were unpopular but right, as was the long DPI on Jenkins. But Coleman let Arizona slide on a couple of calls you KNOW the Rams would get hammered on. They wasted time before the half reviewing whether Hill had thrown or fumble after getting whacked by Powers on 3rd down, but the detail of Powers striking Hill on the helmet went completely by everyone. Put the Rams in long FG range at the end of the half and this game feels a lot different. On the final punt return, Austin got CLOBBERED on the ground WELL after he was down with no call. That’s another 15 yards that would have made a big difference in the end game. Grade: C-minus

* Cheers: The crowd was not bad for a stupid Thursday night game, around 50,000, and for once, I didn’t notice a ton of fans of the road team in the stands. We came across good and loud on TV but couldn’t draw more than one false start. The crowd’s hottest reactions were to some of Coleman’s calls, which turned out to be right, so that may not have left us looking like the world’s savviest fans. Phil Simms’ playing experience really shone through analyzing Hill’s play. I’m not a big fan, but we rarely if ever hear him do a Rams game, and it sounded like he really knew what he was talking about. And I beat Jim Nantz to the Kevin Dyson reference on Bailey’s goal line catch, so I’m keeping it. I think I may have mentioned before that I hate Thursday night games, but it was great to watch the Rams game again (artist suffering for art, remember?) with prime time production values like great camera angles and plentiful replays. I wonder how much prime time exposure we should expect for the Rams next year.

* Who’s next?: Can it really be here already? Time has flown, and the next game up is the final home game of the season, and the Rams’ lease agreement, a throwback game against the New York Giants. You have to throw back a ways to the last time the Rams beat the Giants, too – 2001. The Rams may be 2-2 lifetime against Peyton Manning, but they’re 0-3 against brother Eli, who’s thrown 9 TDs in those games. The Giants have won the last five meetings.

Rams fans still having nightmares of Plaxico Burress cruising through the Ram secondary may be forced to re-live them in the form of rookie wideout Odell Beckham Jr. Beckham has gone nuts the past six weeks, with 4 100-yard games and none under 90. The Giants are doing everything possible to get the ball in Beckham’s hands: end-arounds, quick screens, quick outs, comebacks, deep balls, punt returns, letting him throw… the Giant offense is bending for Beckham. Beckham has almost all the Giants’ offensive speed. That’s not to say they’re not balanced; Rashad Jennings gives them a good running game. 29 but without heavy mileage, Jennings is a smart, patient runner who will break a lot of tackles. The offensive line has struggled with injuries and inexperience all season, but may have gotten its act together the past couple of games. They look like a well-coached unit right now and they run-block well. They established Jennings early against Jacksonville, and with the Jagwires playing very vanilla soft zone defense in the first half, Eli Manning pitch-and-catched and play-actioned them to death on the way to a 21-3 lead. The Giants played like that for all four quarters in a blowout win at Tennessee, where the o-line was fantastic run-blocking and pass-protecting. The Giants convert 70% of their 3rd-and-short situations; this is an offense that can sustain drives. Eli’s still as accurate a passer as ever, he’s clicking with Beckham as well as he has clicked with any receiver and he is running things quite efficiently. The Giants will use a lot of no-huddle and quick, short-range passing, just the kind of attack that gives the Rams fits. Eli’s bugaboo has been turnovers; he has 20 this season. It will be imperative for the Rams to get in his face or get him running, which shoots the likelihood of a dumb play by Eli way up. Jacksonville got to him in the 2nd half of their game, which the Jagwires won, by press-covering Beckham and getting creative up front with stunts, twists, blitzes and unusual alignments. The Ram defense will be a big step up in competition, especially with Gregg Williams plotting schemes to confuse the Giants up front.

The Giants have EIGHTEEN players on I.R., including two defensive ends, but that hasn’t kept them from getting after the passer; they’ve still got team sack leader Jason Pierre-Paul (7) and Damontre Moore (5), a very thunder-and-lightning combination. The Quinn-like Pierre-Paul has elite cornering speed and lean. He’ll line up just about anywhere and is a bad matchup for either Ram tackle. He’s hard enough to get hands on, then the Giants will line him up wide-nine and also make him hard to find with stunts. Moore plays like a force at times. He’s a strong bull-rusher and is good at knocking down passes. The Rams also need to keep a hat on LB Devon Kennard. He has four sacks the past two weeks, two of them coming completely unblocked on blitzes. Safety Stevie Brown is also an effective blitzer from out of a very hard-hitting secondary, though there’s a big drop-off at corner after Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. The Giants’ weakness is run D, where they’re 30th in the NFL. Their LBs don’t make a ton of plays. Watching Denard Robinson run on them a couple of weeks ago makes me think they will be very worried about the speed of Tre Mason and Tavon Austin. At the same time, Pierre-Paul and budding star DT Jonathan Hankins have been solid on their side of the line, and Moore has been a pretty undisciplined run defender, which means the Rams will want to run… right. If that continues to mean Davin Joseph, so help me…

So, welcome to the Better Than Their Record Bowl. The Giants have looked a lot better than 4-9 lately. The Rams looked better than 6-8 up to Thursday night. Concerns about Joseph aside, it’s up to Sack City to prove they’re better than 6-8 after this week. Will they run over the Giant o-line like they should, or will they let Eli pick them apart? The Rams are built around their pass rush winning them games. This one’s up to them to win.

— Mike
Game stats from espn.com