RamView, 12/28/2014: Seahawks 20, Rams 6 (Long)

RamView, December 28, 2014
From The Couch
(Report and opinions on the game.)
Game #16: Seahawks 20, Rams 6

The Rams do what they do best, find a way to lose, and get a lesson how to win a game with defense, in an inevitable 20-6 loss at Seattle. The Rams so excelled at finding ways to lose this season, they lost more games than either of Jeff Fisher’s previous seasons. So we’ve got that going for us in Rams Nation. Which is NOT nice.

Position by position:
* QB: Pretty typical Shaun Hill performance (26-37-243, 65.5 PR): generally competent but not good enough to win you a game, while committing that one forehead-smacking, what-the-hell-are-you-doing play that helps lose it. Hill looked pretty crisp to start a 1st-quarter FG drive, hitting Kenny Britt for 10 on a rollout and threading a nice pass to Jared Cook on an arrow route on 3rd-and-4 to keep the drive alive. In the red zone, Hill appeared to have the whole right side of the field to himself on a naked bootleg, but with Kurt Warner’s foot speed, had no running option and had to chuck a pass away under pressure. On 3rd down, he threw Benny Cunningham a pretty bad screen pass that could have gotten more than the 5 yards it got and the Rams settled for 3. Pressure from the right side affected a lot of Hill’s game, as did the almost-complete lack of a running game. I think he missed out on a TD in the 2nd, though. A big blitz didn’t give him much time to throw, but he had Cook open down the seam. Throw to his outside shoulder, it’s a big gain. Throw it inside and Kam Chancellor is in the way. Incomplete. But that’s Shaun Hill. He manages the offense and gives you neither the big play nor the big mistake. Until the first play of the 4th quarter, that is. Hill got the offense clicking late in the 3rd, with up-tempo passing. 12 to Britt. 6 to Chris Givens. 12 to Cook on a quick slant. The offense is hopping and they’re in FG position late in a tie game. But, bookending a frustrating play from week 1, Hill failed again at something that seems simple – throwing away the damn ball. I don’t think he saw DT Jordan Hill and didn’t fire a screen pass he wanted to abort low enough to keep Hill from making a play on it. Of course it’s an INT and of course the Ram defense deflates and gives up a TD about a minute later. Fair or not, that was the ball game right there and Hill’s screwup was what got the dominoes tumbling. Hill moved the offense with Seattle calling off the dogs, as he should be able to, but two more crushing turnovers, neither his fault, cemented this game and this season in the L column. (Though he once again had Cook open for a late TD and overthrew him. That’s three in two weeks.) When it’s all said and done, the entire Ram offense is like Shaun Hill. They make some plays, but none of them are good enough to win you a game, and they’re all good for that one mistake or two that puts the team in its losing bind. The Rams need a quarterback next season that can elevate them past finding ways to lose. Unfortunately, I don’t think one’s on the roster, and the Rams don’t have a realistic way to get one.

* RB: A great run defense like Seattle’s is not going to give up a lot of running room, and this week was no exception. Even when Tre Mason (11-28) got a decent hole at the first level, he couldn’t get more than 1 or 2 yards because the LBs shut down the running lane at the second level. Another factor that did not help a bit was yet another week of the Ram running game going mostly straight up the middle. Blocking breakdowns sure didn’t help, either. Mason lost 4 in the 1st after Lance Kendricks ran right past a completely-unblocked Bobby Wagner. He lost another 4 in the 2nd after Michael Bennett got through the line too quickly for Rodger Saffold to get a downblock on him. He lost 2 later on a play where Saffold shoved Wagner right into him. The Rams kept ramming their heads into the middle of the Seattle wall, whether with Mason, Zac Stacy (2-3), Benny Cunningham (4-10), or most stupidly, Tavon Austin (2-1). Mason finally got something going late in the 3rd. He got 13 behind Joseph Barksdale and Davin Joseph on the right side, then nearly popped for a TD off the left side, settling for 8 after a clutch grab by K.J. Wright. That was about it for Mason, though, as that drive and the next ended in turnovers. Cunningham spoiled a good day in blitz pickup and as the Rams’ leading receiver (7-57) with a crucial fumble at the goal line with 6 minutes left. Wide open in the flat at the 7, he dived and tried to reach the ball across the goal line, but Earl Thomas flashed in and hacked him on the arm. An obvious foul in basketball, but a great play in football, as Cunningham lost the ball and it rolled across the goal line and out of bounds for a damn touchback. For all their respectable effort and talent, the Ram RBs are like Hill, like the rest of this offense. They can’t consistently hit the big play when it’s there and they don’t have margin of error for mistakes like goal-line fumbles. The Rams can’t grow out of these tendencies at QB, but with a young, promising nucleus, there’s hope they can at RB.

* Receivers: Running backs had half the Rams’ 26 receptions; the WRs and TEs were non-factors as they’ve been most of the season, though Hill did appear to miss a couple of TD opportunities to Jared Cook. Cook (3-37) and Kenny Britt (4-38) had key receptions on the 1st-quarter FG drive. The whole offense was really in quicksand for about three quarters. Britt got them going late in the 3rd with a diving 12-yard catch, then Cook converted a 3rd down on a quick slant for another 12. Stedman Bailey killed their momentum with a holding penalty on a bubble screen, though, and Hill threw his awful pick the next play. Bailey’s play (1-17) has regressed after a late-season surge. Tavon Austin (2-13) didn’t contribute much at WR or RB. The Rams still looked like they had something left down 13-6 in the 4th. Lance Kendricks (1-17) got them out of a hole with a catch, and appeared to have another one to get them across midfield, but here’s Bobby Wagner again, reaching in to not only keep Kendricks from putting the ball away, but popping it out and over to Bruce Irvin for a life-draining pick-six. The story of the offense’s not changing here at WR, another group that can’t consistently deliver big plays but can often find a way to make a key mistake.

* Offensive line: The Seahawk run defense was like the mightiest tree in the forest, and the Ram offensive line was trying to chop it down with a herring. (No, not Will, or even Kim.) On Mason’s first carry, Davin Joseph pull-blocked and couldn’t budge (I think) Kevin Williams, even with a head of steam! No gain. There were times they could get a crack open for Mason, but that would usually just get filled by a LB. Or, plays like at the end of the 1st, where Bobby Wagner and Lance Kendricks passed one another in the hole like ships in the night. Of course, that’s only good for Wagner, not Kendricks, and definitely not Zac Stacy, who lost a yard. An injury to Greg Robinson in the 2nd briefly moved Rodger Saffold to LT and Mike Person to LG, and the line fared even worse. Michael Bennett bolted ahead of Saffold’s downblock to bury Mason for -4. Cliff Avril then steamrolled Joseph Barksdale for Seattle’s first sack. Robinson missed only that series, but the Rams still went nowhere. Saffold pushed Wagner into Mason for a loss, Barksdale chipped in with a false start, and the Rams could only get a FG out of Alec Ogletree’s forced fumble. The Rams couldn’t even block the we-give-up runs at the end of the half, and came out for the 3rd quarter reeling. Williams came in completely unblocked for a sack while Robinson did little but stand around. Bennett blew up Joseph to stuff a handoff to Austin. Irvin smoked Robinson to force a hasty dumpoff. That completed a string of four series where the Rams netted six total yards. Late in the 3rd, Barksdale got injured after he and Joseph sprung Mason for 13, moving Saffold out to RT. Mason then nearly popped a run for a TD behind a great lead block by Kendricks and general mauling by Person and Robinson. And I don’t think it was a coincidence the Rams got their best pass protection of the game with Barksdale on the sideline. Hill had nothing but ironclad pockets and good blitz pickup, driving the Rams into FG position with really good rhythm until completely screwing up with the INT. Even with Barksdale back, Hill got a solid pocket in the 4th to hit Kendricks for 17, thanks in large part to a Robinson pancake block. That drive and the next failed, though, and with Seattle in tee-off mode late in the game, Robinson had the final meltdown of his up-and-down season, getting whipped twice for sacks, unable to handle the outside speed of O’Brien Schofield or Irvin. Barksdale didn’t help on the last one, getting beaten badly by Bennett. And, cue the broken record, except the o-line’s not up even to the meager standard of the rest of the offense. They gave Hill some solid pockets, but struggled mightily with outside speed, and basically failed this season as a run-blocking line. There just weren’t many games where they could dictate with the running game, especially not this week. The offseason needs to bring interior improvements, run-scheme changes and, hopefully with coached-up young tackles, the Rams will be able to do what they’re supposedly designed to do on offense in 2015.

* Defensive line: My advice to Jets coach Rex Ryan, who made a veiled complaint this week that Aaron Donald does not belong in the Pro Bowl, is to suck it. Or, just watch this game tape. You’re about to have plenty of time on your hands to do it. Donald absolutely dominated the first half of this game. Here’s his first three plays. He whips James Carpenter and stuffs Marshawn Lynch in the backfield. Then he trucks Carpenter, puts him on his butt and hits Russell Wilson to force an incomplete pass. On 3rd down, he pushes a double team back into the pocket, allowing Chris Long to flush Wilson to Mark Barron for the Rams’ first sack and a 3-and-out. The perfect start didn’t hold. Long struggled way too much against rookie RT Justin F. Britt. He got knocked down on a 5-yard Robert Turbin run and pushed inside with pathetic ease to let Turbin crack off 14 yards on the “wrap” play the Rams never solved all game even though they see it every day in practice. That drive bogged down, though, thanks to William Hayes stringing out a sweep and Long and Kendall Langford crushing the pocket on Wilson on 2nd-and-long. Turbin opened the 2nd busting a wrap play for 13, thanks to Long again completely misplaying read option and Langford getting yanked down by J.R. Sweezy, but Langford got revenge a couple of plays later, putting Sweezy on the ground and dropping Lynch for a big loss. Donald followed up by completely blowing up a play-action pass, going through Sweezy and a blocking TE like they were nothing. Two plays later, a blitz and a huge hit on Wilson by Robert Quinn set up an interception. The Rams continued to be mystified by the wrap play late in the half, but Langford did a great job shedding a block to stuff Turbin and Long helped blow up a read option play for a fumble. Donald ended a dominant half to remember with the Rams’ 2nd sack. Quinn trucked Carpenter, whom they abused all game, and Donald hooked the center and forged by for a sack/fumble that had Seattle’s awesome fans booing their defending Super Bowl champions and repeat #1 playoff seed. Out of halftime, though, Seattle quickened the pace of their passing game and tied the game with two quick FGs. On a big completion to Tony Moeaki, Long let Wilson step up by getting blocked clear over to the right side of the field. A blitz sack forced Seattle to settle for their 2nd FG, but the Hill INT in the 4th appeared to take the steam out of the whole team. Seattle drove an easy 54 yards, finished off with an easy TD run for Lynch through a misaligned d-line leaving him a massive gap. Donald got in one last run stuff but turnovers had completely done the Rams in by then. Sack City wasn’t all that consistent itself this year. The pass rush had about an 8-week run where it dominated the league and about 8 others where it barely showed up. Run-stopping was also pretty up-and-down. The Ram defense obviously has worked on a higher plateau than the offense but didn’t live up to this year’s billing as a consistently dominating force. Donald’s play makes that look very tantalizing for next season, though.

* Linebackers: The loss wasted one of the best games of the year by the Ram LBs. Alec Ogletree (11 tkl) was pretty much everywhere and James Laurinaitis (13 tkl) stopped a lot of runs. Ogletree stopped a couple himself on Seattle’s long 1st-quarter drive, but Laurinaitis stopped that drive with pass defense. He helped collapse the pocket on Wilson on 2nd down and stopped Luke Willson half a yard short on a 4th-and-5 pass. Ogletree forced a fumble to help the Rams get a FG in the 2nd. Lynch made him miss after catching a screen, but Alec tracked him down from behind and ripped the ball out. He helped create a fumble the next possession, too, as he and Long played a read option perfectly the one time all day and Wilson muffed the exchange. Ogletree got run through a couple of times, but he also assisted Quinn on a manly stop of Lynch on a sweep in the 3rd. All the run stopping in the world, though, or Laurinaitis blowing up the pocket pretty consistently when he blitzed, wasn’t enough to overcome more major breakdowns in the secondary. Still, the Ogletree-Laurinaitis combo really seemed to be clicking by the end of the season; if it clicks like this to start next season, the defense shouldn’t spin its wheels like it did in September.

* Secondary: The refrain has become far too familiar, but Janoris Jenkins gave up big plays AGAIN that lost the game. Even better, both plays were by rookies who haven’t gotten the ball much. The secondary had to make several big plays to get out of trouble Jenkins got them into. Marcus Roberson’s INT in the 2nd greatly eased the sting of Jenkins’ wussy failed tackle of Lynch that let Seattle convert on 3rd-and-10 with a screen pass. A pathetic, awful whiff of an arm tackle that Jenkins did not attempt to square up at all. Funny how all these guys who wanted to put Odell Beckham in the hospital last week looked like they wanted to have nothing to do with Beast Mode this week. Roberson’s pick was aided by some of this week’s very effective DB blitzing, with both Mark Barron and Lamarcus Joyner getting free runs on Wilson. Wilson had trouble finding receivers in the first half, but in the 2nd, Jenkins flashed his Pro Bowl-alternate form. First he got beat for 32 by Paul Richardson; Jenkins thought he was playing for an INT himself but Richardson went up and over him. Thanks to Rodney McLeod getting a great jump on a bubble screen later and Luke Willson brutally dropping a pass after Trumaine Johnson left him wide open, that damage was limited to 3 points. No such luck after the Hill INT in the 4th, with Jenkins completely botching coverage on THIRD AND EIGHT and giving up 31 yards to Kevin F. Norwood. No one has any clue what Jenkins thought he was doing on the play, probably least of all him. He broke inside on Doug Baldwin (who did not go all Jerry Rice on the Rams for a change), even though Baldwin was accounted for, and he kind of had a receiver in his own damn area to worry about. All the good secondary play in the world means nothing with Jenkins committing multiple major breakdowns nearly every week. This unit is crying to be taken over by a veteran leader who has his head on straight.

* Special teams: Quiet week on special teams. The highlight was probably Greg Zuerlein drilling a 52-yard FG outdoors; glad he appears to be fixed and ended the season on a good note. Chase Reynolds made a couple of good stops on returns and wins the special teams tackling crown. Seattle prevented Austin or Cunningham from doing much returning. Special teams might be the part of the team where it’s clearest to see a lot of young talent coming together, from Zuerlein and Johnny Hekker to the returners to guys like Reynolds and Daren Bates. I’ll buy in to this unit’s prospects for next season and beyond.

* Strategery: Make it stop, Brian Schottenheimer. JUST MAKE IT STOP. Quit calling runs straight up the middle when there has been nothing there all day. All year. Please? How many times do the Rams have to get stuffed straight up the middle before Schottenheimer will EVER try to run ANYWHERE ELSE? 30? 40? Mason’s first three runs, all up the middle. He gets stuffed up the middle for a loss to make the Rams settle for their 2nd FG. At the end of the half, a minute left, the Rams can’t even run down the clock successfully, with Cunningham getting stuffed twice up the middle. Oh, this hammer didn’t fix the light bulb, let’s try a different one! After a sack on the Rams’ first play in the third, brilliantly, TAVON AUSTIN UP THE MIDDLE! Just stop it! Just freaking make it stop. Schottenheimer took three quarters catching on. He finally got the Rams moving with the quick-passing offense many opponents have beaten our heads in with this season. I think last week’s preview mentioned Seattle would leave receivers open in the flat, and Schottenheimer finally managed to use that. Just in time for the Rams to roll craps with turnovers. Brian Schottenheimer in a nutshell: 4th-and-35 at the end of the game. No, no one has a sheet of plays to call on 4th-and-35. I probably would have punted. The only other option is to have Hill throw it as far as he can and hope a DB slips or commits DPI while probably Austin or Givens is trying to run under it. No, we’re dumping off to Cunningham. What was the point of that? Maybe Schottenheimer was also voting for a punt. I don’t blame him. The way he calls a running game, the punter gets to be a pretty damn familiar sight.

Amazingly, Gregg Williams got away with calling just as many weak zone coverages as he did last week without really getting burned by it. He also deserves credit for a very productive blitzing day, especially the double DB blitzes off each end, even though he didn’t lean as hard on blitzing this week as he’s known to. Those DB blitzes produced at least the interception along with a sack in the 3rd that forced a FG. Blitzing Ogletree and Barron out of a 3-4 look produced a sack/fumble at the end of the half. There’s still plenty I didn’t understand. After Donald dominated the opening drive from LDT, Langford stepped in there and Donald wasn’t near as effective at RDT. Not that Langford had a bad game, but if that’s the rotation, it’s wrong. Then there was the failure at defending wrap plays out of read option. Williams repeatedly had guys running at Wilson, whether Long, Hayes, Ogletree or T.J. McDonald, only to have the RB take off right past them for a big gain. This was reminiscent of the Rams in Carolina last season, just using read option handoffs as an excuse to hit Cam Newton. It didn’t work, and in a division where Wilson and Colin Kaepernick are going to be around a while, it might be best to get that play defended.

Lynch’s TD was a multiple failure. The d-line was horribly misaligned, with 3 linemen right of center and a yawning chasm in front of the RG and the RT. Little surprise Lynch strolled right through there for a simple stand-up TD. If that alignment was intended, it was foolish on Williams’ part. I don’t think it was. The Rams needed to call a timeout and get it corrected. But they didn’t get a realignment or a timeout from Laurinaitis, (who I’ve never seen call one), and they didn’t get one from Jeff Fisher on the sideline. Fisher has had many opportunities, and I believe this was a fair one, to get the Rams out of a bad play with a timeout in his time here, and I don’t know that he ever has. When you are leaving a three-man-wide gap in the line inside your own 10, coach, something is probably very wrong. Burn the damn timeout. It’s one of the clearest ways you have to help your players and win games from the sideline. Plays like that, or the Rams’ constant failure to get beneficial refereeing calls even though Fisher’s on the rules committee, make me wonder what his value on the sideline even is sometimes.

* Upon further review: There were some dumb penalty calls by Ron Torbert (for some reason the Rams got stuck with each first-year referee TWICE this season) and crew, but not enough to give them a failing grade, even if Torbert tried to face the wrong way for his announcements half the time. Let’s first give Torbert a delay of game penalty for letting the Rams run an entire play in the 1st before flagging them for delay of game. Sharp. Chris Long got an offside at the end of the half when he wasn’t. Chris Givens got a B.S. OPI call late in the game not because he did anything but because Richard Sherman complained. I show no holding penalties on Seattle even though J.R. Sweezy yanked Langford to the ground to “spring” one of Turbin’s long runs. That’s been pretty typical all season. Credit to them for getting difficult calls right on the Lynch and Cunningham fumbles, though. Grade: C-

* Cheers: Seeing Gus Johnson and Charles Davis on this game had me thinking we’d be in for a good broadcast. Johnson can give rec-league flag football a big-game feel, and Davis is as well-scouted and as good an X’s and O’s commentator as there is. Normally. This week they were just kind of there. Enjoyed Johnson’s callback to his soccer gig when he announced the Rams were up “three-nil,” but he also identified Austin as “Trayvon” and for some reason said Cook “is having a terrific season.” I don’t know why Davis thought Laurinaitis’ 4th-down stop in the 1st was a close play or why he said Seattle “created a tunnel” for Lynch’s TD. The Rams built the tunnel; Seattle almost didn’t have to do anything. To their credit, though, they hornswoggled me. They still sounded like a pretty polished NFL crew, but this I think this is the only NFL game they’ll do this season. This game was a trial run for a college bowl game they’ll work for Fox. Just like the refereeing, nothing but the best for the Rams this season.

* What now?: I know, every year I get to this point and say next year will be the biggest year in Rams history, but really, wow. Two of the biggest parts of an NFL team’s identity – where it plays and who’s playing QB – and the uncertainty around them will dominate football talk in St. Louis in the offseason.

The plan right now appears to be to bring Sam Bradford back as the starting QB next year, a plan for which RamView has little enthusiasm. QB is the most important position on the team to improve, and Bradford is capable of coming back and playing well, but with his checkered injury history, he’s no long-term fix, and he’ll cost far too much to be anything less. However, because the team made little effort this year to draft a QB of the future, and Austin Davis is at best the backup QB of the future, Bradford appears to be Plans A, B and C. Bradford may defy the odds, play more than six games and get the team over the hump in 2015. I’m kind of done counting on it (especially the former). On the other hand, free agency’s going to have little to offer at QB and the Rams won’t pick high enough to draft a blue-chipper. They’ve painted themselves into a corner at QB where Bradford is, for better or worse, their best/only option for 2015. Watch out that Sam doesn’t slip on that wet paint, blow another ACL, fall down and blow out his shoulder, too. The Rams have significant work to do on the offensive line to get Bradford past September. (Hell, August.) They need to upgrade at right guard and center, and may have to make a move at right tackle if Joseph Barksdale leaves. With a number of young players on the verge of breaking out, especially Tre Mason, Brian Quick and Stedman Bailey, the offense could be fun to watch if Bradford can stick around a while. And if the Rams have any competent play-calling. That doesn’t appear to be tabbed for change, either. Year 4 of Schottyball. That’ll really get the season tickets flying off the shelves.

Defensively, the main thing the Rams need to change is to not flounder around the first 4-5 weeks of the season. We’re told this was because: 1) Chris Long got hurt early and William Hayes was coming off too much offseason surgery to be as effective right away as he was in 2013; 2) the tackles changed roles from left/right to true nose/3-technique and needed time to adjust; 3) Alec Ogletree showed up for camp out of shape and wasn’t in shape until well into the season. As poor as those last two excuses are, there is absolutely no reason to expect or excuse Sack City to do another five-week Hanna Barbera bongo jog in 2015. They could use a tweak here and there, but will probably return all 11 starters from a defense that should, and better be, potent. The second half of this season showed the Rams’ potential as a 65-70 sack defense; if the offense can aspire to be merely average, think of how well the team could finish.

The theme of each of Jeff Fisher’s first three seasons at Rams Park seemingly has been, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. Rams Nation needs better than that in 2015. The Rams can’t start next season 1-3 waiting for the offense to click, like 2013, or start 1-4 waiting for the defense to gel like 2014. September 6, 2015, this team needs to be ready to dictate to their opponent on both sides of the ball. Young players? Not an excuse. New coordinators? New systems? Not an excuse. Injuries? Sorry. Not an excuse. No excuses, no apologies, no settling for less, no lowered expectations. 2015 is the year for Jeff Fisher to get the Rams over the top.

Yeah, I know, just in time to move back to Los Angeles. Until then, though, let’s start breaking out those draft guides and have a great new year.

— Mike
Game stats from espn.com