RamView, 9/20/2015: Redskins 24, Rams 10 (Long)

RamView, September 20, 2015
Game #2: Redskins 24, Rams 10

AND the Rams have hustled their fans again, in a very ugly way this week, a hideous and inexplicably flat loss to a bad-till-just-now Redskins team 24-10. The Rams received a lot of laurels for last week’s win over the Seahawks. They sure did a good job resting on them.

Position by position:
* QB: Not very much Nick Foles magic (17-32-150, PR 76.3) this week. I think we all knew what kind of day this was going to be on the opening series, when Foles took off on 3rd-and-5 and fumbled off his own thigh. He and his receivers weren’t on the same page a lot. In the 1st, he tried to motion Tre Mason to take a wheel route deep; Mason didn’t, and Foles threw away a deep ball. Plays that worked last week failed this week. Play-action got Jared Cook open on a corner route early in the 2nd, but Foles felt pressure and back-footed a bad throw. The Redskins ramped up the pressure and the Rams continued to not score, with Foles forced to fling wild screens and dumpoffs. The last 3:00 of the first half looked like a meltdown. Tavon Austin got wide open on a deep post route but with Ryan Kerrigan lurking, Foles chucked up a throw that wasn’t even close. With a short field after a bad punt, Foles threw a corner for Stedman Bailey, who’d run an out. Then, out of timeouts with little time left, a 14-yard pass over the middle to Jared Cook takes too long for the Rams to spike the ball for a FG attempt. 17-0 at halftime and the Rams were an unmitigated disaster. They cobbled together a mini-comeback in the 3rd. Off a double play-fake, Foles stepped up strong in the pocket and found Kenny Britt with a 39-yard TD rainbow. The Rams had momentum, but gave it back with penalties the next drive, and were never heard from again. Scrambling on 3rd-and-5 in the 4th, Foles pulled up indecisively for a throw, but then had no receiver coming back to him and had to eat it. Washington went on an 8-minute TD drive after that to seal the game. Putting the “offense” in passing offense, the Rams closed with a couple of drops, Foles nearly getting picked off by defensive lineman Preston Smith and then throwing away yet another pass under pressure, this one ON FOURTH DOWN. That’s the signature play showing how far out of sync the Ram passing game was. Foles was under a ton of pressure again, but it didn’t look much worse than last week. Washington had little reason to respect the running game and there wasn’t enough play-action game to get receivers open. The Rams need better from Foles than they got, but he’s nowhere near the top of the list of this week’s problems.

* RB: Jeff Fisher teased starting Todd Gurley this week and maybe should have followed through with his bluff. In his first action in a while after a hamstring injury, Tre Mason (7-26) was not effective. No, he didn’t get a lot of blocking, but he also didn’t have a lot of burst. After Mason tackled Trenton Robinson on a bad blitz pickup for a holding penalty early in the 2nd, it looked like time to bench him for Benny Cunningham, who could have made up for the Rams losing at the LOS by breaking tackles and as a receiver and blitz protector. That didn’t happen, though, leaving Tavon Austin (4-40) the top runner of the week. He was effective on jet sweeps, taking one for 10 in the 2nd and kick-starting the Rams offense in the 3rd with a 16-yard run, the first real burst the Ram offense showed all game. That inspired Mason into a 13-yard cutback run and the Rams drove to a FG. Mason’s 9-yard run the next drive made play-action a threat again on the TD to Britt, but Austin had to leave the game to get fluids, and the comeback faltered. Chris Givens lost four on an end-around Austin would have run the following drive, which deteriorated rapidly. Mason fumbled to stall the next drive after Austin returned and started it with an 11-yard jet sweep. And that was about it. Benny showed the tackle-breaking and receiving play (4-27) in garbage time that maybe should have gotten him in the game more. He may have lost some trust with a couple of drops, but he still offered more than Mason. The best RB in Jeff Fisher’s power running attack this week was 175-pound Austin. I’m pretty sure that’s not how things are designed to go. Start the Todd Gurley Watch, I hope not too soon.

* Receivers: The rare times the Ram receivers were open came off play-action, and with that not working, they looked an unfocused mess. Kenny Britt (2-44) was the only WR with more than one catch; it was a big one, though, as play action got him open behind the Redskin secondary for a 39-yard TD. Britt followed that with typical Kenny Britt discipline, drawing a taunting penalty. Austin (1-6) was wide open for a deep throw before halftime, but the throw was a mile off. Receivers seemed to be on the same page as Foles about as often as aardvark and (Ed.: insert page break here) zwieback. Stedman Bailey (1-0) recovered Mason’s fumble but ran a wrong route that helped kill a drive before halftime and had a late drop. A pretty emblematic play in the 4th: Foles broke the pocket, pulled up, looked downfield and had to eat the ball when no receiver came back to him. The Redskin secondary appeared to be giving up plenty of cushion, but no one in a Ram jersey or polo took advantage. Those weren’t the ’84 Raider DBs back there, but it was unmistakably the underachieving, out-of-sync (pick a year since 2007) Ram receivers.

* Tight ends: The Ram offense tends to go as Jared Cook (5-47) goes, which explains a lot of ups and downs. Cook had his moments as a blocker – he sprung a couple of Austin’s jet sweeps – but on a big 3rd-and-2 to open the 2nd, Perry Riley blew him up, giving Benny nowhere to go and no gain on an attempted sweep. On a screen designed to go to Cook later, he barely blocked the safety, who pressured Foles into a wild throw. Cook let a 3rd-down pass go through his hands to kill a drive before halftime. While Cook got positive comments about his catching radius on TV, we watched him fail to grab balls thrown slightly high or slightly behind him. And he killed the Rams’ comeback attempt with a facemask penalty that put them in a 1st-and-25 hole they’d never get out of. From the lack of clutch play to the badly-timed penalties and inconsistent fundamentals, if you distilled the Ram roster into one player, you’d probably get Cook.

* Offensive line: The right side of the Ram line was overwhelmed almost from the start. Rob Havenstein’s struggles with Ryan Kerrigan were no surprise, but Rodger Saffold’s inability to block Jason Hatcher at all was a deciding factor in the LOS battle. Hatcher flushed Foles to kill the Rams’ 2nd drive, and Saffold, Havenstein and Greg Robinson all got beat to flush Foles and kill the next drive. Run-blocking didn’t go any better. Jamon Brown whiffed on the MLB to blow up a Mason run. Ricky Jean-Francois beat Saffold from the back side to stuff Mason later. Kerrigan beat Havenstein with an inside move, with Saffold continuing to not block Hatcher, to blow up a screen in the 2nd. Foles BADLY missed a bomb to Austin before halftime, influenced by Kerrigan running over the Ram RT as Nick was launching. They couldn’t even slow a 3-man rush, with somebody called Chris Baker ragdolling Robinson to panic Foles into a wild pitch. Corey Harkey sprang Austin for 16, and the right side sprang Mason for 13, to get the comeback rolling. The Rams’ best blocker this week, Harkey made a clutch block in the pocket to allow Foles to unload his TD pass to Britt. Momentum was fleeting. Cook’s facemask penalty in the 3rd was a killer and then Saffold chipped in a false start as the Rams went from 1st-and-5 to 2nd-and-30 in a blink. To start the 4th, the Rams failed to react to a Redskin jumping into the neutral zone. He got back and Kerrigan whipped Havenstein and forced a Mason fumble. Trent Murphy then embarrassed Robinson with a quick rip move to flush Foles and the Rams wouldn’t see the ball again until the final 2:00. Kerrigan kept beating Havenstein, Hatcher kept beating Saffold and Baker stunted past Robinson to force an embarrassing, game-ending 4th-down throwaway. The o-line didn’t get a ton of help from the TEs and sure didn’t get any from Mason, but the key breakdown was Saffold. He can’t help Havenstein when he can’t block his own man. I’d say that makes max-protect necessary, but as ever in Fisherball, the offensive line hasn’t proven it can control the LOS enough to establish the power-running game the offense is designed around anyway. Not without somebody coughGURLEYcough breaking a lot of tackles.

* Defensive line: The Ram defense came out of the gates like quarter horses but quickly found the Redskins were running the Belmont Stakes this week. Aaron Donald beat the guard and the center and Chris Long bull-rushed Morgan Moses for an early drive-ending sack. But Washington ran over the Rams for a TD the next drive. Michael Brockers took out a double-team, but James Laurinaitis got taken out by rookie Brandon Scherff to let Alfred Morris (18-59) loose for 35, followed quickly by Matt Freaking Jones (19-123) humiliating them with a 39-yard TD run. Donald whiffed in the backfield. Lamarcus Joyner got BURIED by Shaun Lauvao trying to blitz. Chris Long, doing some moonlighting at RDE with Eugene Sims out, got turned by the TE (nothing new about that) and Laurinaitis couldn’t get around the center to close the gap. Nothing new about that, either. The pass rush died off as Washington marched to a FG and punished the Rams again in the 2nd with another TD drive. Remember Gregg Williams telling the world the Rams were going to be ready for cut blocks this week? TE Jordan Reed started the drive by cutting Quinn down, which allowed Kirk Cousins to roll out with no one within five yards of him, and then Reed gets back up for a 9-yard catch. Morris rumbled for 7 and another 1st with Quinn about getting driven to the sideline and Scherff mauling Laurinaitis again. With no pass rush at all, Jones leaked out for an easy 17-yard catch. Laurinaitis got completely turned around and blindly ran deep, while Long and Nick Fairley were stood up and stopped dead at the LOS. Then Jones took off for another 25, with Moses dominating Will Hayes on the edge and Reed completely taking out Mark Barron. Jones continued to rumble with Long getting stuffed at RDE and Donald getting cut-blocked en route to a Pierre Garcon TD. The Redskins ran for 132 in just the first half, which may have shamed the Rams into better play out of the break. Donald’s run-stuff keyed a 3-and-out, then Quinn bludgeoned a fumble away from Jones to set up a Ram TD. Quinn stuffed Morris to spur another 3-and-out. But the Rams were out of gas by the 4th, letting Washington seal the deal with an 8:00 TD drive. And it even started with a sack! Ethan Westbrooks burned Lauvao and forced Cousins to step up into Fairley and Long. But on 3rd-13, Westbrooks jumped offside, and then on 3rd-and-8, Cousins, who completed 85% of his throws (23-27-203) and was pressured in Washington about as much as Hillary is by the press corps, found Chris Thompson for 9. 3rd-and-5, no pass rush again and 12-time Pro Bowler Reed burns Alec Ogletree inside and Cousins hits him in stride for 29. The Rams forced another 3rd-and-long despite Quinn and Ogletree throwing a facemask party, but Quinn got sealed by the TE to allow Jones to barrel down inside the 5, and he scored again two plays later. Quinn got sealed again, by TE Derek Carrier, allowing Lauvao, whom Laurinaitis was never going to get around, to pull out and lead Jones to an easy TD. With their light-at-best pass pressure and awful performance at setting the edge, the Ram DEs had a pretty disgraceful game this week. The inconsistency is baffling. They say you have to stop the run before you can pass rush? The Rams did neither. Maybe they should start saying you need to play well, oh, let’s say three weeks in a row before you can give yourselves a catchy new marketable nickname.

* Linebackers: Rough day for Laurinaitis. The DEs repeatedly losing the edge left him in a number of bad spots, but Brockers cleared nice holes for him that he didn’t get to, beaten to the spot by Scherff. Laurinaitis was a liability in coverage. Reed got behind him for 21 on the Redskins’ first play. He got completely turned around by Jones in the 2nd and got caught too deep and gave up a critical 3rd-down catch to Chris Thompson in the 4th. Ogletree stood out with 16 tackles, making a number of good plays on the edge to shut down screens and sweeps. He spoiled a fine game in the 4th, though, getting burned by Jordan Reed (6-82) for 29 and a big first down, and following that with a facemask penalty. The LBs did not get enough help up front, but they’ve got enough to fix of their own before they can do any finger-pointing.

* Secondary: The Ram secondary showed it is capable of very textbook work. Perfect coverage of trips formation by T.J. McDonald, Lamarcus Joyner and Marcus Roberson forced Cousins to eat the ball for an early sack. McDonald was excellent in run support, with several run stuffs just in the first quarter. Janoris Jenkins, though, didn’t have his finest game. Somebody named Ryan Grant burned him straight out of the slot for 35 after he bit hard on a fake quick screen. Jenkins’ excellent close on a Pierre Garcon drag route held Washington to a yard and a FG, but the big gain got them there in the first place. Later in the 2nd, Trumaine Johnson had a certain INT clang off his hands. You HAVE to catch that! Jenkins gave up the 2nd Redskin TD on a short pass to Garcon on a later drive. Garcon pushed off, but he didn’t have to push very hard because Jenkins was playing him to go to the corner and got caught on his back foot. The DBs regrouped after halftime. Jenkins and Joyner blew up short passes to score the Rams’ first 3-and-out. McDonald recovered a fumble that set up a TD. The secondary did a great job closing on short routes and tackled well, but the Rams didn’t play well enough at all up front for their mostly-good play to matter.

* Special teams: No special teams magic this week, either. Redskin punter Tress Way took ten yards off his season average with the unique strategy to shank every punt short of Austin. Johnny Hekker awed by punting 10 times without his leg falling off. Thanks to Rams penalties, he had to punt three plays in a row in the 3rd, which usually doesn’t go well for the punting team, but all three kicks were well-aimed 50 yarders. I just wish that hadn’t been one of the day’s highlights. The lowlight was the Rams blowing a timeout and getting a penalty (for Benny coming on late) just trying to line up for punts. That’s how sharp this team was this week. Bailey and Bradley Marquez did good work in coverage, and Greg Zuerlein got over last year’s FedEx heebie-jeebies with a perfect 52-yard bomb to put the Rams on the board. They may have been the Rams’ best unit this week, but only for being not quite as sloppy as the offense or defense.

* Strategery: Fortunately, RamView only had time the past week to get blueprints drawn up for my Frank Cignetti shrine, which hit the shredder at halftime and saved me a lot of money on Carrara marble. What confounds me this week, from what I can tell from TV, is that Cignetti got the soft coverages all game that some amateur clown in a weekly clown Rams recap column SAID he was going to get, and he almost never took advantage of it. With the Redskins happily giving up the short stuff, Cignetti settled for even shorter stuff. 3rd-2 to start the 2nd, while a sweep to Mason gets blown up, they’re ten yards off Austin split right. A quick slant is an automatic first down. Next drive, Foles throws a wild screen while the DBs are 10 yards off both wideouts and 5 off Austin in the slot. Between Austin’s quickness, Bailey’s route-running and Britt’s size, they should have been able to turn quick downfield passes into bread-and-butter plays. I appreciate the ability of the wide screens and sweeps to spread the field, but the Redskins had that locked down, and Cignetti didn’t take what they gave him. He needed to be more vertical, less horizontal. The passing game is obviously going to rely heavily on play-action, which the running game did not make credible. I think that was a personnel mistake and that Benny should have started. Mason showed little burst or yards after contact the way Benny did last week. Another mistake was calling the end-around for Givens while Austin was out getting an IV. You need Austin or even Bailey running that; Givens lacks their elusiveness. The TD play was a beauty, and Austin was used effectively, but overall Cignetti missed opportunities.

Gregg Williams’ gameplan was inexplicable. The mad blitz doctor showed up this week as Doctor DoLittle, relying almost exclusively on 4-man rushes and soft coverages, and I have no idea for the life of me why. Kirk Cousins had the highest INT rate of any NFL QB; heaven forbid we would want to defend WRs tightly and put pressure on him to try to force him into mistakes. It was a mincing, fraidy-cat joke of a gameplan that seemed intended to stop an elite deep threat (Washington had none) and a mobile QB (Washington also had none). I don’t know what the hell Williams was thinking, or watching, as the pass rush continued to get nowhere all game while he continued to not blitz.

It was gone a week and we didn’t miss it, but Fisherball is back, baby. The consistency to lose to a 4-12 team from last year the week after you beat the NFC champs. The discipline to get flags (among yesterday’s nine) for taunting, and for three facemasks, including two on the SAME PLAY. The inability to control the LOS on either side of the ball the way you claim to have built the team to do. Game plans that make it look like nobody watched tape all week, and a terminally flat team that should have learned by now that you can’t just show up and win games in the NFL. That’s OK, I’m guilty of lessons not learned myself. Like expecting this team to play well two weeks in a row. Guilty as charged! Fisherball! It’s FAN-tastic!

* Upon further review: With Ed Hochuli on the field, the Rams wasted one of the few times this year they’ll get a ref who sometimes knows what he’s doing. He didn’t fall for the punter taking a (unintentional) dive in the first like you just know Jeff Triplette would have. A big Cousins scramble in the 4th came off the board after Donald got held and refs actually caught it. The (correct) facemask calls just make me madder about Foles getting facemasked last week without a call. Ogletree’s came for grabbing under the back of Morris’ helmet, which I’ve seen happen to Rams players many times without a call. The controversial no-call was on Garcon’s TD. Oh, he definitely pushed off, but the no-call seemed pretty consistent with how that’s called around the league. I wouldn’t have called it, otherwise I’d kill Hochuli’s grade. B-minus

* Cheers: Better job than I expected from the veteran (as in World War I) Dick Stockton for Fox. Oh, he misidentified players and missed spots as always, and humorously missed several Fox primetime promos he was supposed to read. But he also had the line of the day, ragging on Britt for taunting while his team was losing. David Diehl helped Stockton out with good analysis, keeping the spotlight on the underachieving play of the Ram d-line and questioning hard Williams’ passive gameplan. He also questioned the 3rd-2 Cunningham run that got blown up in the 2nd. He didn’t say it in so many words, but off-mike, he sounded like he wanted to say, Why the hell are they running behind Cook there? Why indeed.

* Who’s next?: The Pittsburgh Steelers visit the Rams in St. Louis for only the second time next week. They have long been the NFL’s model franchise, and yours truly has spent many years rooting for teams that can’t beat them. Heck, it’s been eight years since the Rams scored against Pittsburgh, thanks to a dreary 27-0 loss in 2011. The Rams are 1-3 vs. the six-time Super Bowl champions in the St. Louis era, and as soon as I saw this game on the 2015 schedule, I said, well, there’s a definite loss.

I’m probably still right, though the Steelers looked awful opening week against the Patriots, not at all like your father’s Steelers. Even without Le’Veon Bell and Martavis Bryant, former DC Dick LeBeau looked like the man they missed the most. They laid a mile off receivers and gave up wide-open sideline routes all night long, tackled terribly and couldn’t get even blitz pressure on a Patriot o-line starting THREE rookies. Their secondary was a mess. 30-year-old William Gay couldn’t get around a rub to save his life. Antwon Blake was overmatched in the slot. If Cignetti watches any tape this week, he should be able to get Austin open every play. Pittsburgh was sure ready for the 49ers this week, though, whipping them 43-18. They sacked Colin Kaepernick five times. Rookie Bud Dupree already has two this season and will stress the Rams’ lumbering tackles and iffy blitz protection. Ryan Shazier is developing quickly into a Bobby Wagner-quality ILB, except he may be even quicker. The Rams will have to get a hat on him, and Cignetti has to wield his play-action offense the way he did against Seattle. This week’s results have me wondering how much that is to ask. The Rams are a lot more like the 49ers on offense than the Patriots. With or without Gurley, unless the Rams can stress Pittsburgh’s D with quickness they’ll be about as successful on the ground as Carlos Hyde (43 yards) was and Foles will spend the day on the run again.

The Ram defense’s chances don’t look good with the NFL’s latest version of “The Triplets” on the way in. Ben Roethlisberger led the Steelers up and down the field opening night and was a brilliant 21-27-369 against the 49ers, with 3 TDs and 5 deep completions. Ben gets a lot of credit for his size, arm strength and ability to improvise, deservedly so, but not enough for his accuracy. He throws some lasers, many to the NFL’s top wideout, Antonio Brown, who already has 300 yards receiving this season. The league has yet to figure out how to defend Brown and I’m not expecting any answers from Gregg Williams. The Steelers love to take deep shots, and the Rams first have to respect Brown’s deep speed while staying alert to the back-shoulder throw. They’re going to have to bracket Brown with a safety full time. Brown’s dominance allowed OC Todd Haley to use a lot of max-protect against the 49ers, can the Rams get pressure on Ben with the 4-man rushes that generally failed this week? Donald has the best matchup, on backup center Cody Wallace, who should be no match for his quickness. But the Rams HAVE to get some edges set by their DEs, and that frankly doesn’t look good. Heath Miller’s a premier blocking TE and is likely to dominate either Long or Quinn and send negative ripples on down the line. And just in time to punish a defense that got run over by Matt Freaking Jones, here comes Le’Veon Bell, the league’s best all-around RB, off a two-week suspension. Bell and Jones are similar in size and I’d say running style, but end the similarities there. Bell doesn’t fumble and he is as effective out of the backfield as we’ve seen in some years. Ogletree and Ayers have to be pre-occupied with Bell, and the Steeler running game is already so effective, DeAngelo Williams got 200 yards and 3 TDs in two games and is about to get demoted. I can only see the Rams pulling this off if they are as successful at bend-but-don’t-break as the Patriots were. Maybe Williams can pull off some surprises in the red zone and get Josh Scobey to come in to shank some more FG attempts.

Rob Schneider put it best in the cinematic classic Waterboy when he proclaimed “Oh no! We suck again!” I liked the Rams’ chances in this game. Last week. Now I see the kind of high-powered offense Fisher/Williams defenses have gotten rolled by, and a Rams team I can’t trust from week to week. The Rams who lost to Washington will get whipped by Pittsburgh. The Rams who beat Seattle may not even be good enough. I guess we’ll find out this week which team the Rams really are. For a week. Viva Fisherball.

— Mike
Game stats from espn.com