RamView, 8/14/2015: Raiders 18, Rams 3 (Long)

RamView, August 14, 2015
Preseason Game #1: Raiders 18, Rams 3

If the Rams achieved any goals they set for their first preseason game of 2015, they must have been awfully modest ones. They didn’t cross the goal line on offense, didn’t dictate much of anything up front on defense, committed their usual scad of penalties and got a couple of important players injured. History won’t care because it’s preseason, but this game was a pretty big zero.

Position by position:
* QB: After two plays, it looked like Nick Foles (3-5-69) was on his way to a great night. He started the game by hitting Lance Kendricks on that deep corner he was missing at the scrimmage for 26. Tavon Austin then took off with a smoke route for 35. After that, though, no open receivers, and after the opening FG drive, declining pass protection for Foles, taking a sack on his last play though he had enough time to throw the ball away. Case Keenum (12-17-83) caused consternation here at Austin Davis World Fan Club HQ by coming out as QB2. And he may stay there. His deeper passes look like adventures, and he didn’t lead the offense to a TD, but he was still solid. He showed nice accuracy and rhythm in the short passing game, good pocket presence, and read the field well. My favorite play was the out pass he threw to Chris Givens on 3rd-and-6 in the 3rd, lobbing it over the head of a dog blitzer coming unblocked at him. Factor in a couple of big gains nullified by penalty, and a couple of receivers running bad routes to deny good plays, and Keenum made a strong case for the backup job. Davis (1-2-12) didn’t have much of a chance behind the 3rd-string line; of his three dropbacks, he got sacked once and hit on another. He’ll need to make a much better case to have a shot at QB2. Unless he’s already been surpassed as QB3, that is. Sean Mannion (8-13-53) didn’t look bad at all leading the Rams’ final, up-tempo drive across midfield. Out routes had not appeared to be a strength of his game, but he threw a bunch of good ones, standing tall in the pocket and dealing. Watching him run the offense, he looks well ahead of where Davis was as a rookie in reading the field and making adjustments. Heck, he may be ahead of where Davis is now.

* RB: Tre Mason (2-6) did play but not a lot happened for the Rams on the ground. Like Mason, Benny Cunningham (3-15) played for one drive. His failed blitz pickup helped Foles get sacked in the 2nd, though a false start let him off the hook. Isaiah Pead (4 touches-21) had the best lead blocking. He didn’t look as explosive as, forgetting the torn ACL last year, I’d thought he would. Though Trey Watts (7-16) and Malcolm Brown (2-18) both had 12-yard runs, little about the Ram running game looked that explosive. Most of Watts’ night was spent getting blown up in the backfield behind really poor blocking. Justice Cunningham’s lead blocking was a bright spot; he sprung several nice gains with good blocks, especially Pead’s nullified 8-yarder in the 3rd. The Rams passed nearly twice as much as they ran, so it’s fair to say establishing the run wasn’t high on their list for the game, and even fairer to say that won’t be their offensive personality in the regular season once Todd Gurley’s ready to be sprung on the league.

* Receivers: The heart of the WR action tonight was the start of what looks like a very competitive race between Chris Givens (5 touches-52) and Bradley Marquez (4-23) for WR5. Givens turned what looked like a blown-up end-around into a 16-yard gain by cutting it up inside and was a pretty reliable target for Keenum with comebacks and out routes. Marquez’ hands were inconsistent – he had a drop that cost a first down – but I like the football smarts he shows. He tended to be the one getting the rest of his fellow receivers lined up right, and he made a fine play coming back to Mannion to save a sack on the final drive. Damian Williams, who had a 25-yard catch nullified by penalty, should be heard from in this race as well. Lance Kendricks (1-26) opened the festivities with a catch on a deep corner route, then Tavon Austin (1-35) broke away on a play that was exciting and disappointing at the same time. He caught a smoke pass behind a strong block by Kenny Britt (1-8), got half the Oakland defense leaning the wrong way by cutting back inside, but then geared down dramatically while switching the ball to his outside hand and coasted out of bounds in front of what appeared to be the only Raider DB he had left to beat for a TD. On the TV broadcast, Torry Holt, who should know about these things, was a pretty consistent critic of the receivers’ route-running and inability to separate. A pass to Austin failed because he didn’t explode out of his break. A pass to Givens failed because he didn’t run the route full out because he wasn’t expecting the ball. Emory Blake (1-12) didn’t break off a route he was supposed to break off. Isiah Ferguson (1-15) looks hard to bring down but doesn’t look like he can separate from anyone. Not unexpectedly, there’s still a lot of cleaning up to get done here.

* Offensive line: Remember how the main goal of a preseason game is to not get anyone injured? Yeah, maybe just forget that goal when you have Rodger Saffold on your team. Saffold lasted an entire four plays before having to check out with a shoulder injury. Early reports said it’s not serious, though I doubt that lessens the great schadenfreude the Raiders front office gets every time there’s Rodger Saffold injury news. After that, the big news item was at center, where I’d be willing to declare the race over after just one game, with Tim Barnes the winner in a rout. The first reason is that Barnes played with the starting unit and looked good. Mason’s first run went for 5 despite there being only one good block up front, by Barnes, who turned the nose tackle. Cunningham later gained 5 on 3rd-and-short off Barnes throwing an awesome one-armed block, showing he’s gotten stronger like I’ve been begging for him to do here. I haven’t been his biggest fan, but Barnes looked like NFL starting material tonight. Helping Barnes’ cause was the totally rancid egg Barrett Jones laid with the second string. He got whipped off what seemed like every snap, especially in the second half by ham-and-eggers like RICKEY F. LUMPKIN. Half a dozen times, and every time Watts got buried for a loss in the 2nd half, you could point right at Jones getting whipped immediately off the snap as the reason the play blew up (and Watts actually turned one of those fails into a 12-yard gain by bouncing out behind an Andrew Donnal drive block). Jones even got Watts blown up on a screen pass by failing badly on the lead block. I don’t know if it was conditioning, or if Jones ill-advisedly turned his intensity way down against the scrubs, but he looked awful after halftime against people against whom he ideally should have looked a lot better. He did appear to hold up well in pass protection. Rookie starters Rob Havenstein and Jamon Brown appeared to do well, though the Ram offense was pretty left-handed and didn’t test them a lot. Brown looked good in the run game, though Cunningham needed a better pull block from him on his first run. Pass protection problems came more from the left side, especially from Brandon Washington, who replaced Saffold at LG. He gave up the sack of Foles that counted, finding Shelby Harris on a loop but still losing him pretty badly. On that same drive, a play earlier, Greg Robinson, getting eaten up by a speed rush, would have given up a sack AND gotten flagged for a hold, but the Raiders bailed him out with an offsetting hold. He also nearly gave up a sack on the first play of the drive. At the same time, Robinson can definitely maul; on the sack Washington gave up, he had his man pinned to the ground. Andrew Donnal should get called out by the coaches for several good run mauls, though he also committed a hold. I hoped Garrett Reynolds would step up at guard with Saffold out, but he stayed with the twos and nullified a big gain to Damian Williams with a hold. Farther down the depth chart, Isaiah Battle’s run-blocking is well ahead of his pass-blocking. He gave up a sack in the 4th with a lazy reach-block attempt, and he and David Wang got beaten a couple of other times to give up pressures on Mannion. For a first preseason game, I’d say the run blocking was good enough minus the bad work by Jones, and pass protection was solid enough in the first half, with the ones and twos picking up blitzes much better than they did in either practice I saw. The potential and likely absence of Saffold up front is going to prove a problem, though.

* Defensive line: Given the slow start they got off to last regular season, I was all in favor of a preseason preview of the dominating Sack City’s supposedly going to do in 2015, but we got one of their run-of-the-mill, ho-hum, we’re-just-warming-up preseason performances instead. No sacks, not really any pressures, and the first quarter was nearly over before anyone made a play behind the LOS. Robert Quinn nearly got there a couple of times, and Aaron Donald disrupted a couple of plays with his ninja quickness, but Oakland still put together roughly 50, 50 and 80-yard drives their first three possessions. A big problem was Michael Brockers getting pwned by Rodney Hudson. Latavius Murray (6-35) beat a blitz for 16 on a 1st-quarter draw, with Brockers unable to get off his block. Oakland drove deep into Ram territory late in the 1st. Murray drew for 8, with the whole line overrunning it except Brockers, not because he was disciplined, but because he couldn’t budge a double-team. Murray got another 1st down inside the 10 after Quinn misread the play and overran it, and Brockers couldn’t get off a Hudson block. I don’t believe Brockers got off a block all night. William Hayes finally dropped Murray for a loss with about a minute left in the quarter to make Sack City’s first impact play. VERY well-timed, as it was inside the 10 and helped the Rams prevent a score. With the Rams’ twos in, and Matt Longacre accomplishing nothing in run D, I believe Trent Richardson (5-18) matched his yardage total from last season. Oakland schooled the Rams with the ol’ Student Body Right for 16 in the 2nd, with Martin Ifedi getting run over and Nick Fairley overrunning it. Poor tackling and lack of pass rush allowed the feared Matt McGloin to put together a 60-yard FG drive out of halftime to make it 12-3. More of the same to start the 4th, a 62-yard TD drive with no pass rush at all. This was the drive where I went, wait a minute, Ethan Westbrooks has been on the field all this time? Where was the unblockable guy I watched last Friday night? And with the undersized Louis Trinca-Pasat drawing double-teams he isn’t going to beat in a million years, there was no penetration at all up the middle. Now, Westbrooks did blow up three running plays the next time Oakland had the ball. Trinca-Pasat broke one up as well, and I still like his quickness off the ball a lot. Fairley made a couple of plays, including a nifty coverage out of a zone blitz in the 2nd. And Chris Long, though I’m honestly starting to wonder about him, did not play at all. Still, there was little that was “Sack City” about tonight’s defensive performance. At best it was “Mild Skin Irritation City”. If the Rams intend to be more threatening than prickly heat in September, they didn’t build up to it on the field in Oakland tonight, and some momentum in August is in order to revoke the trademark on the Jeff Fisher Slow Start.

* Linebackers: The LBs did little to outshine the front four, with the exception of Akeem Ayers, whom I’m really starting to warm up to. He was the best Ram defender with the ones. He closed nicely to hold Amari Cooper to 3 on a quick hitch. He helped end the drive later by getting in Derek Carr’s face on a blitz and forcing him to rush a screen pass incomplete that probably would have been a TD had Carr had an extra beat. James Laurinaitis didn’t accomplish much on an edge blitz and got stuffed by the fullback on Murray’s 16-yard run. Daren Bates flew in all alone and then completely blew the Rams’ best opportunity for a sack in the 2nd. (Jo-Lonn Dunbar would have cost him the sack with a holding penalty anyway.) On the next play, Bates got DESTROYED in the hole by a block on a Trent Richardson run that may have ended his season. Bryce Hager had several “teaching moments”. He had Clive Walford blanketed down the middle in the 2nd, but was never aware the ball was coming and still gave up a big 22-yard catch. That set up a TD the next play, where Hager screened Lamarcus Joyner while trying to pick up a back in motion. He also blew tackles on quick screens a couple of times to give up big gains and make that a MUCH too lethal weapon for the Raider offense. If Bates’ season is indeed already over, it may be incumbent upon Hager to learn quickly.

* Secondary: The good news out of the game: my map is starting to show a suburb developing on the outskirts of Sack City. It’s called Pick City, and Trumaine Johnson is the mayor. TruJo’s rarely played better in a Rams uniform, and I very much hope tonight was more than a “playing in my hometown” (which he was) occasion. He made a pretty pass breakup in deep man coverage to end Oakland’s opening drive. On the 2nd drive, after Janoris Jenkins blew a tackle to let Michael F. Crabtree get away for 16, TruJo ruined his own excellent play on a pass to Amari Cooper with a facemask penalty that put the Raiders in the red zone. He more than atoned for that with a goal-line interception of Carr a few plays later, perfectly jumping Cooper’s route. Lamarcus Joyner gave up a short Andre Holmes TD from Christian Ponder, but Hager getting in the way had something to do with that. If any DB struggled this week, it was Maurice Alexander. He blew a tackle on a 21-yard quick screen to Chris Durham and fell in coverage when Brice Butler pivoted back on his TD-scoring route in the 4th. Starters like T.J. McDonald and Mark Barron did a good job of keeping Oakland’s many short throws in front of them and holding them to short gains. Cody Davis also did that on a quick pass to Roberts, and he bailed out Trovon Reed in the 3rd by breaking up a pass at the goal line after Reed had gotten undressed by the WR off the line. THAT is safety help. Top to bottom, the Ram secondary has started 2015 playing with a lot of confidence, and is showing nice improvement so far.

* Special teams: It happened while he was at linebacker, but the other key injury of the game may have taken away one of the Rams’ very best players on special teams, Daren Bates. Initial reports about his knee injury did not sound encouraging; I think we’re bracing for ACL news over the weekend. Maybe rookie free agent Cameron Lynch will step up; he made a sweet strip/tackle that nearly got the Rams the ball off the 2nd-half kickoff. Punt coverage was much too slow getting downfield. Trindon Holliday had ten yards of free space when he returned a punt for 22 in the 1st. Johnny Hekker put a punt inside the 10 in the 2nd, and though it hit very hard anyway, there was still no Ram in the vicinity to stop it from barreling into the end zone. Hekker also shanked a punt for 28; well, let’s get those out of the way in August. Greg Zuerlein did all the Rams’ scoring with a 31-yard FG in the 1st; Michael Palardy missed from 47 in the 3rd kicking from the infield dirt in Oakland’s detestable dump of a stadium. With the kicking mistakes, punt coverage that didn’t get downfield and the possible loss of a leader for the season, this was not the start the Rams wanted to have on special teams.

* Strategery: Well, guess what’s not going to change again this season? Marshall Faulk put the not-too-fine point on it during the broadcast by mentioning, Wait a minute, the Rams are out-penaltying the Raiders! And they did, and then some, 10-75 to just 2-22. Of the Rams’ 14 total penalties, seven were by starters or veterans who are locks to make the team. Four were pre-snap offensive penalties, three delays of game and a false start. This Fisher garbage is simply never going to end.

Many more three-point games may end his OC career quickly, but Frank Cignetti’s game plan had plenty to like. The Rams aren’t likely to pass twice as much as they run in the regular season (well, they better not be), but I didn’t mind the departure from the usual bland preseason gameplan. It took two plays to get the ball to Austin in space, not the two months it used to take. Givens got a couple of what should be Austin plays, an end-around for 15 and an against-the-grain quick hitch for 8 that went for 20 at the scrimmage Friday. The confidence-building drive for Mannion at the end of the game was an excellent move. There wasn’t much done to stretch the field but there also weren’t any why-the-hell-did-he-call-that? plays. The very best call was the play-action pass to Zach Laskey on 4th-and-1 in the 3rd. If Cignetti keeps pulling off calls like that, he’ll have a fan for life.

Gregg Williams also showed good rhythm calling plays at DC that I hope he’ll carry into the regular season. Other than Murray’s long run of 16, he didn’t really get burned on a blitz. And though those blitzes once again produced zero sacks, a red zone run blitz in the 3rd was perfectly timed and forced Oakland to take a FG. I wish soft coverage were always as uncommon as it was this game, but that probably had a lot to do with Oakland’s short-passing attack. As the Sack City planner, Williams has to get much better pass rush generated than the Rams did here, and he also needs to get to enforcing the old “you have to stop the run before you can pass rush” rule up front. Targets to meet this preseason and definitely beyond.

* Upon further review: The Tony Corrente crew didn’t bring their A game. They missed an easy-to-spot false start on Cory Harkey at fullback. They called a hold on Rodney McLeod on the first punt, but not the obvious hold of Cody Davis during the return. A drive died at midfield in the 2nd because they didn’t call DPI when Damian Williams got grabbed before the ball arrived. Westbrooks got his helmet ripped off during Oakland’s 2nd 2-point attempt without a flag. Cliche Alert: it’s preseason for the referees, too. Grade: C

* Cheers: A bizarre decision by NFL Network to use the Oakland broadcast for this game, when St. Louis’ had two of its employees, Andrew Siciliano and Marshall Faulk, along with Torry Holt. Marshall was always considered the smartest member of the Greatest Show, but here, Torry was the one breaking down how routes were run and linemen’s footwork and generally giving a football clinic from the booth. In the course of the Rams’ 20 years here, their preseason games have gone from all-but unwatchable to, thanks to Faulk and Holt’s knowledge and enthusiasm and Siciliano’s eye for detail, the best broadcast team you’ll hear this preseason. NFL needs to find a way to put this crew on regular-season games.

* Waiver bait: You’d think differently, but this game didn’t produce any candidates for easy cuts. Snead/Fisher will have many difficult decisions ahead. Jacob Hagen blew a tackle badly to turn a dumpoff into a big gain in the 4th. Not to be confused with Bryce Hager, who had a couple of bad misses. Recent pickup Marcus Forston was a non-factor at DT to the point that Oakland didn’t pay for double-teaming Louis Trinca-Pasat. Longacre looks neither like a run defender nor a legitimate second-unit player on this defense (not that he couldn’t be on other teams). The Turk doesn’t have much of a list yet.

* Who’s next?: For some reason, CBS and the NFL have decided Jeff Fisher’s return to Tennessee is worthy of a national broadcast, so the Rams will be in Nashville next Sunday night to play Marcus Mariota and the Titans. The Ram offense should have an opportunity to break loose against a Titan defense that gave up 24 first-half points in a 31-24 loss to Atlanta. With a tweak in intensity, Sack City can entice the rookie Titan QB into turnovers; he had two against the Falcons. Much like the Ram d-line, though, Tennessee has invested highly in its offensive line, with both dollars and high draft picks. National TV, coach’s old team, pretty flat performance so far this summer… it’s time for a statement game from the Rams. I will hope that statement will be something besides “we don’t care about preseason games”.

— Mike
Game stats from nfl.com