RamView, 9/27/2015: Steelers 12, Rams 6 (Take Two)

Sorry for the double-post. Please ignore and/or delete my first post. That was an incomplete version. Hopefully with no curse words in it. –Mike

RamView, September 20, 2015
Game #3: Steelers 12, Rams 6

Opening week looks a long time ago, with the Rams getting back to what they do best under Jeff Fisher, finding ways to lose, and failing to take an unexpectedly winnable game from the Steelers that establishes the other thing they do best under Fisher – start seasons slowly. Fisherball! It’s FAN-tastic!

Position by position:
* QB: Nick Foles (19-28-197) did not start or finish strong. Second play of the game, he got all day to throw and had Tre Mason open in the flat, but ate the ball for a sack instead. 3rd-and-short a little later, the throw came out of Foles’ hand funny and too low for Lance Kendricks to make a tough catch. After a lot of screening and dumping off, Foles got downfield connections with Kenny Britt working toward halftime. A 19-yard post beat a blitz to set up a FG. The Ram offense looked ready after the half. The ground game was moving a little, Foles hit Britt on the sideline for 15, all setting up a pretty play from midfield. Play-action, the Steelers bite, and Kendricks is beating James Harrison deep in a total mismatch. Foles throws probably his best ball this season, dropping it in the bucket right over Kendricks’ shoulder. And Kendricks freaking drops it. Foles got sacked the next play, the Rams punted, and that was probably the ball game. Foles hit Britt deep late in the 3rd, but that drive was killed by a penalty. The Rams got inside the 10 in the 4th, but stalled there with poor blocking and penalties. They still had a shot with 3:00 left, and lo and behold, Kendricks is running that same deep route again, and he’s covered by a LB again, and Foles fires… a terrible pass, missing Kendricks but directly hitting Will Allen, the deep safety Foles apparently never saw. That set up a Steeler FG, and down 6, Foles, looking exclusively for Britt by this point, fired a 4th-down pass too high for Britt to bring down cleanly, sending everyone home. His teammates made bigger mistakes, but Foles’ game had its flaws. His accuracy on short throws did not look consistent and he made a couple of bad decisions, especially the INT. In working to take away Tavon Austin and the Rams’ screen game the past two weeks, defenses have decided they’re going to make Nick Foles beat them. Nick’s got to play better than he has the past two weeks to make them pay for it.

* RB: The Ram running game is a complete disaster. It was odd enough that last week’s leading Rams rusher was Tavon Austin; this week, Chris Givens led all Rams rushers on ONE CARRY. I complained all last season that the Rams didn’t run Tre Mason (9-16) outside often enough; they’re doing it this year, but now nobody ever gets him a block out on the edge. Mason’s best runs this week were up the gut. His big problem was that he was dropped for losses at least four times by completely unblocked defenders. He got the Rams started with a 7-yard run and a 13-yard reception, but the o-line just is not giving him a chance. Even the pro debut of Todd Gurley (6-9) wasn’t near enough to spark life into the running game. If he learned anything from his three series of action, it’s that his o-line misses a lot of blocks. None of Gurley’s plays really went far enough to even evaluate him. He didn’t break any tackles but didn’t really have a chance to. Gurley ran his plays properly; he just didn’t have any blocking. Benny Cunningham (1-12) swung through a rare hole for 12 to get the Rams moving in the 3rd, and looks like the only life the Rams have at RB, but rarely sees the ball. But there isn’t a talent problem at RB. The huge problem is that we’re a month into the season and an offense built around running and ball control doesn’t have a line that can run-block.

* Receivers: With the Steelers focused on slowing down Tavon Austin and Jared Cook, it was Kenny Britt’s (7-102) week to step up. He took a wicked shot from Mike Mitchell to convert a 2nd-and-12 that got the Rams’ first FG drive rolling and added a 19-yard catch to get them in range. He beat Antwon Blake deep and drew a 34-yard DPI that spurred the Rams’ 2nd FG drive. By the end of the game, Britt was the only target Foles could find, getting 4 targets in the final 2:00 but just barely failing to complete a catch while coming down with a high 4th-down throw. Austin (5-38) took off with an early screen for 11, and ran through tackles for 10 more a couple of plays later, and started off looking like a live wire. The Steelers cooled him off in the 2nd half, but Britt stepped into the void, getting open reliably, catching well and using his size well to make plays. The Rams could use more of that.

* Tight ends: No one did a better job of finding a way to lose this week than Lance Kendricks (2-12). In the 3rd quarter, he beat 100-year old OLB James Harrison deep for a certain TD, all he has to do is catch a perfect throw from Foles like he’s done thousands of times in practices and pregame warmups. CLANK it goes off his stone hands instead. Kendricks is reportedly claiming he lost the ball in the lights. WHAT lights? The Ed is the worst-lit stadium in the league. That’s like saying, sorry, I can’t hear you, I’m at the library. Kendricks deserves to be charged with a dropped game for that play, let alone a dropped ball. He also couldn’t pull in a low throw from Foles that killed the opening drive. While that was a tough catch, all Kendricks and Jared Cook (1-7) seem to give the Rams even at the top of their games are the most ordinary plays, provided they’re thrown near-perfect balls. And even then, you’ve got to hope they actually catch the ball. Cook had one go through his hands, too, late in the game. Any fundamentals are just a bonus the Rams typically don’t get. 3rd-10 at the end of the 3rd, Cook runs an 8-yard comeback route. He also had a false start that helped keep the Rams out of the end zone in the 4th. That kind of slop has always been in Cook’s game and is never going to go away. The Rams have invested a lot at TE without a whole lot of dividend.

* Offensive line: Reflected in the Rams’ complete failure of a running game and the number of unblocked defenders that have been running around all season, things are drastically wrong with the offensive line. Some of it may be scheme. Cook lost the edge on a Mason run that got stuffed in the 1st, but if the LB that beat Cook wouldn’t have gotten there, the unblocked safety would have. Even more, though, it just looks like guys missing blocks, missing assignments, failing to execute. Gurley got flipped by William Gay on his 2nd carry because Jamon Brown came off Gay to block a LB. Flatten that safety, and Gurley’s still running. Stephon Tuitt swam by Rodger Saffold a couple of plays later to drop the rookie for a loss. A Mason sweep lost 2 in the 2nd after Kendricks and Corey Harkey both whiffed blocks on the edge. Pass protection was all right. Foles was sacked only twice, and the first was all his fault for holding the ball. In the 3rd, though, Arthur Moats came in unblocked after the TE didn’t chip him and Rob Havenstein got tied up in a double-team. Greg Robinson did not have a good 2nd half. After a big gain by Britt put the Rams in long FG range, his holding penalty took them back out. Gurley got stuffed for no gain in the 4th with Robinson running right by the LB who tackled him. The Ram FG drive in the 4th did not start well after a blown assignment got Mason blown up for a 4-yard loss. Robinson and Brown were double-teaming on the edge while Jarvis Jones ran in unblocked to make the backside play. The Rams overcame that, helped by Givens’ 24-yard end-around off a perfectly-timed block by Kendricks. They’re at the 7-yard line with a chance to take the lead, but Mason gets hammered by somebody called Sean Spence for a loss. How is an inside LB getting to our RB untouched on a goal line play? This has been happening all season and only seems to happen one way. The Ram o-line should have plenty of tape available on how to block LBs; ours get blocked out of plays all the time. Without play-action to consider, opposing LBs roam freely. I’m no Jim Hanifan, but this is very, very wrong. After that play, Cook false-started, Robinson false-started, FG time, and Rams fans threw up their collective hands. Evidence through three weeks points to the offensive line still not knowing what they’re doing, and it’s killing the offense. Can we get some tutors in here or something?

* Defensive line: The Greatest Show Rams’ bob-n-weave TD celebrations were inspired by Muhammad Ali; maybe so is the Ram defense these days, with all the rope-a-dope they’re playing. Pittsburgh opened with an 8-minute scoring drive while the Ram secondary laid too far back and Ben Roethlisberger (just Ben from here on out, 20-24-192) got the ball out too quick to get pressure on him. They drove all the way to the Ram 2 before the defense started landing some blows. Robert Quinn batted down a screen pass, and on 3rd down, Michael Brockers slipped Cody Wallace’s block, dived and tripped Le’Veon Bell in the backfield for a loss. The rope-a-dope continued for a second drive, with the Steelers methodically driving for a TD while the Rams, not surprisingly, couldn’t generate immediate pressure with 3- and 4-man rushes. Lesson learned after a week and a half, Gregg Williams turned up the thermostat and the pass rushers turned up the heat. The Steelers stalled out before halftime after Quinn drew a hold and Alec Ogletree blitzed through for the Rams’ first sack. After a quiet first half, Aaron Donald revved up in the 3rd. He fought through David DeCastro to drop Bell for a big loss, and later in the drive, burned Wallace and dropped Ben for the Rams’ second sack. Ben’s season took an unkind turn the next play. Mark Barron went down while blitzing and nailed the side of Ben’s knee just as he was taking off to run. The Rams took it only slightly easier on backup QB Michael Vick (5-6-38). Quinn opened the 4th by whipping Ramon Foster with an inside move for the Rams’ fourth sack and a Vick fumble, but of course, the loose ball bounced right to Bell. The offense couldn’t sustain the momentum, though. The D got the Rams the ball back down only 3 with 3:00 to play, but Foles immediately squandered that opportunity with the INT. I’m not sure where these plays were last week, when the Rams deployed a lot of rope-a-dope against a Redskin offense that doesn’t punch anywhere near Pittsburgh’s weight class. A big problem with rope-a-dope for the Rams is that they give up a ton of 3rd-down conversions. But with 5 sacks, effective run defense and only 12 points allowed to one of the NFL’s most potent offenses, the defense gave the Rams all the chance they needed to shock the world.

* Linebackers: In pass coverage, the LBs turned out to be the rope-a-dope defense’s glass jaw, at least in the form of giving up first downs. 3rd-5 in the 1st, James Laurinaitis’ tackle to pass Merlin Olson as the franchise career leader turned out to be little to celebrate after Bell took off with a one-handed catch and beat him for 22, the big play of the opening FG drive. Bell broke out for 19 to start their TD drive after Alec Ogletree got blown out of the lane left by a Rams overshift. Antonio Brown then ran through an Ogletree tackle for 16. 3rd-7, it’s Brown again, for 16, with Trent Green on TV pointing out Ogletree’s failure to drop back in coverage. Bell finished off Pittsburgh’s second really long drive with a 1-yard dive where Laurinaitis was blocked and couldn’t even get out of the end zone. Ogletree sacked Ben out of a blitz stack over right tackle to give the Rams some halftime momentum. But in the 3rd, Mark Barron committed a hold on 3rd-6 and let Brown turn a 2-yard route into 14 yards on 3rd-13 with poor tackling. Grrr. Barron inadvertently changed the game dramatically by knocking Ben out, but Vick hit Bell, posted up on Ogletree, for a 19-yard catch to end the 3rd. With about 5:30 left, Bell busted loose for another 22 after a bad miss in the hole by Laurinaitis. These second-half plays didn’t hurt the Rams on the scoreboard, but the Steelers still controlled the clock and field position. Sometimes you just gotta get the other team off the field.

* Secondary: The secondary’s main function this week was to keep the play WAY in front of them. Antonio Brown (11-108) got his yards – he extended his 5 catches/50 yards streak before the 1st quarter was even over – but they were harmless yards in the big scheme of things. Ben peppered soft zones with quick throws and converted a couple of 3rd downs en route to an opening FG. Brown was most of the Steeler offense on their TD drive, beating Janoris Jenkins twice and getting them in range with 3 catches for 51 yards. Rodney McLeod made a big play to blow up a screen to Brown at the goal line, but Lamarcus Joyner got fooled by a fake screen the next play and interfered with Heath Miller, setting up Bell’s TD lunge. (Trumaine Johnson broke up the 2-point pass attempt.) Jenkins stemmed the tide with a big play. Instead of biting on Markus Wheaton’s double-move, Jenkins ran his route for him and picked off Ben’s deep ball like he was the intended receiver, surviving a big hit from an oblivious McLeod and hanging on. Joyner had a shot at a big INT in the 4th but couldn’t recover from uncalled OPI on Brown to make the play. He dropped the hammer on Wheaton, though, to help get the Rams the ball back with about 3 minutes left. The secondary supported the run well, tackled pretty well and made plays out of a defensive scheme that wasn’t designed to really allow them to make plays. Gregg Williams may have underestimated what he has here.

* Special teams: He had a great run, but Johnny Hekker has lost his status as the Rams’ most clutch passer. Near midfield in the 2nd, the Rams tried to pull off a fake with Stedman Bailey running a comeback instead of gunning downfield, but Hekker threw a one-hopper to turn the ball over on downs. Austin had a couple of nice returns, though he brought one out from inside his own 5. Benny got nothing going on kickoffs, and burned clock at the end of the game returning from 5 yards deep out to the 21. Just kneel with that! Joyner cost the Rams 23 yards of field position in the 4th holding on a punt return, and Daren Bates was offside on the 2nd kickoff. Greg Zuerlein’s (49 and 27-yard FGs) been automatic all season, but overall, special teams looked poised for special things this season but has been inconsistent instead. A familiar refrain.

* Strategery: Gregg Williams clearly came out planning to play bend-but-don’t-break defense, well, more like bend-over-backward-but-don’t-break defense. The DBs were so far off the receivers that Ben had little trouble getting off completions off 3-step-if-that drops, giving the d-line no time at all to pressure him. BBDB worked on the long opening drive, holding Pittsburgh to a FG. Williams seemed to have their red zone tendencies scouted well and the Rams anticipated a couple of plays well. Williams’ red zone reliance on rushing three and dropping 8 didn’t work, though, as Bell got the Steelers in close for their first TD. Williams re-adjusted at that point. The pass coverage cushions got cut by half when the Rams weren’t pressing, and more blitzing was on the way. For three quarters, that strategy shut down one of the league’s most potent offenses. Did Williams start out too soft and adjust too late? Well, shouldn’t most teams win when they hold their opponent to 12 points?

And I don’t really blame Frank Cignetti’s game plan for that. The line was riddled with execution mistakes, killing the running game and making play-action ineffective. Kendricks was open in the 1st after the Rams shifted out of a power run formation into 5-wide; Foles just didn’t execute. As the Steelers took the screen game away, unlike last week, the Rams took what was available downfield. On at least two failed 3rd downs, the Ram receiver didn’t run his route deep enough for the 1st. I was fine with the fake punt call (by Fisher and/or John Fassell). The Rams really needed a momentum change, and the play call worked. Hekker didn’t execute. The jet sweep to Givens was a clever call with Austin on the field. Better element of surprise than his end-around in Washington last week. The Rams have looked better coming out of halftime on offense three more times this season than they ever did under Schottenheimer. The TD pass to Kendricks was a terrific play call, and that wasn’t the only time Cignetti got that tremendous mismatch against a LB in deep coverage. Oh, did I say TD pass? The Rams should have gotten much better results from those two plays than a drop and an INT. The Rams 3-and-outed early in the 4th after a smoke route to Benny on 3rd-and-7. He actually came close to converting it, and I’ll continue to lobby for him to get the ball more, but that was a curious call. That 3-and-out came right at the point the Rams should have seized control of the game, down only 3 with Ben out. Cignetti’s goal line offense was impossible to evaluate the next drive with the Rams trying to false-start their way out of FG range. Hey, I’ve canceled the Cignetti Temple and Shrine and de-commissioned the wax statue. I still don’t see a ton wrong with the Rams’ X’s and O’s this week.

The big picture, however… A team in its 4th season under a head coach ideally wouldn’t fail to execute as often as the Rams did this week or be going through the growing pains the o-line is now. It would have a legitimate downfield receiving threat. Two of the three players it drafted in the 2nd round three years ago wouldn’t be healthy scratches now. The o-line may yet gel and fix a lot of what’s wrong here. But a lot of the Rams’ current issues are not likely to change under Fisher and haven’t, really, since he took over. Fisher and Les Snead seem to have turned the Rams into a team with a high floor, but a low ceiling. And, to finish torturing the house metaphor, the window of opportunity’s becoming hard to find.

* Upon further review: John Hussey and crew didn’t call a great game imo, but we’ve seen 1st-year refs do a whole lot worse. The lack of holding calls on both o-lines was laughable. Last play of the 1st, 3rd-7, Heath Miller is collaring Chris Long from behind to keep him off Ben, who hits Brown for 16. Prior to the Steeler TD, McDonald was called for PI but the crew correctly reversed the call; contact was incidental. Then a correct call on Joyner for holding Miller. That was fine, but later, Britt was held just as much on 3rd-and-4 on an incomplete pass that made the Rams settle for a FG, and that wasn’t called. They did correctly get Antwon Blake for textbook DPI on a deep ball for Britt later. We’ll see if the league says anything, but I don’t think Barron’s hit that injured Ben should have drawn a flag (it didn’t). That’s definitely the kind of low hit on the QB the league wants to avoid, but Ben had become a runner by the time Barron stumbled into him. Otherwise, I think he would have earned a roughing call. I’ll give a solid C to Hussey and crew.

* Cheers: Yes, the Rams burned up the turf this week, not on offense, but with pregame pyro that literally caught the field on fire and led to a half-hour delay kicking off. Watch that land on Kroenke’s list of excuses for moving the team. “Field catches on fire.” Rams fans were louder than the ton of Steelers fans in the crowd, but the Steelers fans drew a key false start with the Rams inside the 10 in the 4th. Save your fire for St. Louis fans; Pittsburgh would have shown well any year outside of 1999-2001. They’ve always had a big fan base here. Watching on TV, it was hard not to flash back to 1999 while Roethlisberger was down and Trent Green described Barron’s hit as “not a deliberate hit where somebody dives into your knee,” unlike his own experience. It’s hard not to flash back to 1999 for a lot of reasons these days.

* Who’s next?: Even at a dominating 3-0 and playing at home, the Arizona Cardinals cannot be looking too forward to playing the Rams next week. Don’t get me wrong; Arizona has won the last three meetings, including a 31-14 turnover fest by Austin Davis last year that ultimately got him run out of town. But when these teams play lately, the Rams tend to break the Cardinals’ QB. Carson Palmer tore an ACL after a hit from QB killer Mark Barron last November, and in December, backup Drew Stanton sprained his knee on a hit from Aaron Donald. The Rams ended most of Arizona’s playoff hopes before they got there.

Palmer’s return has given Arizona early hopes for a deeper playoff run this year. They’ve won Palmer’s last nine starts and he’s already thrown for 9 TDs, leading Arizona out to the league’s best point differential and a 47-7 laugher Sunday over the 49ers. A huge key to Palmer’s success is that he’s been sacked only once. His movement in the pocket has improved over the past couple of years, making his offensive line’s job easier than it has been for a long time and giving his receivers extra seconds to get open on the deep routes Bruce Arians’ offense thrives on. The Rams should remember deep threat John Brown from getting burned by him last year. Arizona’s new slot receiver is a big guy the Rams should remember, but never seem to. His name’s Larry Fitzgerald (aka Godzilla), and he’s winning mismatches in the slot to the tune of 23 catches, 333 yards and 5 TDs already this season. Even at the age of 32, he is still the main player you have to take away from the Arizona offense. Gregg Williams seemed to learn this lesson last year. The Rams didn’t cover Fitzgerald the first game and predictably got smoked (9-112); he got much more attention the second game (7-30), triple-teamed at times, and the Rams kept Arizona out of the end zone. With Palmer proving hard to sack this season, the jury’s very much out on the Rams doing it. They got a lot of pressure up the middle in last year’s matchups, but Arizona has free agent acquisition Mike Iupati waiting in the wings. The weak link looks like rookie hot mess D.J. Humphries at RT. Matchups don’t matter much if the Rams don’t stop the run, where they’ve been inconsistent at best while the Cardinals have topped 100 yards all three games. They play-actioned the Rams to death last year and ran over them with Kerwynn F. Williams and Stepfan F. Taylor, which does not bode well against a backfield with the big-play 1-2 punch of lightning-quick Andre Ellington (or Chris Johnson) and thunderous rookie David Johnson, whom the Rams also have to be prepared for on kickoff returns, where he has a TD this season. It’s a lot of offensive balance the Rams haven’t proven good at throwing off-balance in the past, especially in Arizona.

Arizona will give Nick Foles plenty more opportunities to show how he performs under pressure. Not because the Cardinals are exceptional at getting to the QB – 35 sacks last year, similar pace this year – but because they get to Rams QBs a lot: 8 times last year, 6 in Arizona. As usual, Calais Campbell will be the man to watch up front. At 6’8”, you wouldn’t think he’d be hard to find, but the Cardinals move him around and he beat every Rams lineman during last year’s game there. The Rams also attempted to turn Frostee F. Rucker into a Pro Bowler last year, so their hands are already full even before accounting for Alex Okafor, who led them with 8 sacks from OLB last year and has two this year. New DC James Bettcher doesn’t sound any less likely to blitz than old DC/ Jets HC Todd Bowles ever was, and has the secondary to back that up. Ask Colin Kaepernick (4 INTs, 2 pick-sixes Sunday) how well the Cardinal DBs read QBs. Patrick Peterson is an elite corner, and though Arizona had trouble defending slot receivers and TEs last season (even Jared Cook), Tyrann Matthieu’s return from a torn ACL fixes a lot of that. The Rams attacked the edge a lot against Arizona last year, and screens and wide runs could be an antidote to their aggression. Then again, you have to win the line of scrimmage to get anywhere. The Rams aren’t doing that this year and haven’t done it against Arizona in the past. Their offensive fortunes aren’t likely to reverse in the desert.

At 1-2 and now staring road trips to Arizona and Green Bay in the face, the Rams are looking hard at 1-4 unless they figure something out right now. This is where Jeff Fisher’s got to find the right philosophical change or personnel change or push the right buttons on the right players. Fisher’s got to get the Rams on the right track and into Arizona playing without fear and finding ways to WIN instead of ways to lose. This season’s not gone, but it’s not hanging around a lot longer, either. Seize it while you still can.

— Mike
Game stats from espn.com