Rodrigue: Rams offense broken, change must be imminent

Rodrigue: The Rams offense is broken, and change must be imminent

Jourdan Rodrigue

https://theathletic.com/3674653/2022/10/09/rams-offense-broken-offensive-line/?source=emp_shared_article

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — There was a moment in the fourth quarter of the Los Angeles Rams’ 22-10 loss to the Cowboys on Sunday when quarterback Matthew Stafford lay on the ground, on his back, and seemed to let out a dreary exhale, the kind you could feel even up high behind the press box glass. It was after he took his 20th sack in five games, behind his fifth offensive line variation in five games. He’d endure the 21st sack by the time the game ended and five total on the night alongside 11 hits and 22 pressures.

The 2022 Rams cannot run the ball. They cannot pass the ball with any consistency. They cannot score meaningful points — they have one touchdown in the past nine quarters, and Sunday afternoon, they even missed a 51-yard field goal attempt after starting an offensive (a fitting word, here) drive on the Cowboys’ 29-yard line. Read that again: The Rams got the ball, down just 19-10 as the fourth quarter began, at the Dallas 29-yard line and came away with no points.

It starts with the pressure they’re seeing; it’s the responsibility of the five linemen, sure, but also all of the players who are responsible for chipping and checking and moving the people across from them. It’s not the Rams’ only problem, but it permeates everything they do. A progression-based, timing-based offense can’t get moving if there’s no timing or ability for the quarterback to progress. Too often, it stalls. When the Rams offense is in the compacted space of the red zone and every defensive player can crank tighter to their embattled line of scrimmage, they’re even worse. They currently rank No. 26 of 32 teams in red-zone percentage. Their one touchdown in two-plus games was courtesy of a 75-yard catch-and-run off about a 4-yard pass to receiver Cooper Kupp.

“I love Matthew Stafford, he is competing and doing everything in his power for this team, (and) he needs some help,” coach Sean McVay said. He repeated it a few moments later: “I think he’s doing everything he can. I think he needs more help.”

Stafford hasn’t been perfect this season, but he is hardly the problem. Really, what the hell is he supposed to do when the pressure comes at him like this? What the hell is anyone supposed to do?

“I just think everybody has got to pick up their play around him, you know?” said tight end Tyler Higbee. “It’s tough being back there running around and not getting the protection and guys not being open, so just everybody being better.”

In three losses, Stafford has been sacked 19 times and pressured 64 times.

Week 1: 19 pressures, 38.8 percent pressure rate.

Week 4: 23 pressures, 41.1 percent pressure rate.

Week 5: 22 pressures, 45.8 percent pressure rate, the second-highest single-game pressure rate of the McVay-Stafford era.

You’ll note that all of those season worsts, each somehow more of a walloping up front than the previous in some way or another, have come from defenses that are currently regarded as the best in the NFL. The offensive line, which has featured nine players in starting roles over the past five weeks, is smack in the middle of an implosion because of injuries.

We can point fingers at the front office — its decisions here have certainly not been perfect — but the linemen who have played by far the best football for them over this season include two undrafted free agents (Alaric Jackson and Coleman Shelton) and second-round veteran Rob Havenstein at right tackle. Shelton is a starter, and Jackson should be full time eventually even when others are healed, and heading into Week 5 both ranked well among their counterparts across the league. There’s rarely such a thing as total continuity among an offensive line through the course of a season, but any roster build plans for the middle space between continuity and catastrophe, and the Rams’ line is in a full-on catastrophe. We can argue that perhaps they didn’t invest in the correct left tackle (we’ll know the real story after 17 games), but we can also hold as a truth that no team is adequately prepared to run through three right guards and three centers in five weeks (and four total right guards, because third-round pick Logan Bruss got hurt in the preseason). If you’ve been following along here for the past three years, you know that this ecosystem — delicate, high-stakes, interconnected — wavers without what had previously been a remarkable streak of health.

It’s also true that the Rams, while they did extend Havenstein, left tackle Joe Noteboom and center Brian Allen (still out with a knee injury) this offseason, had historically not made high-capital investments into their offensive line, minus unicorn left tackle Andrew Whitworth (who retired last year). This team invested, through one type of capital or another — financial or draft pick — in its quarterback and its offensive skill players. In part, the Rams did so because of their dependence on a McVay “system” that largely protects its linemen and allowed an offensive line — which featured Whitworth, a couple of late-round picks (or late-round-pick trade) and Havenstein — to thrive in 2021. That group also stayed healthy. What happens when injury strikes in such a massive wave?

The irony, now, is that all the pretty play designs and cutting-edge ideas the Rams have for that quarterback and those skill players don’t work a lick if the quarterback’s jersey is stained red and green by the end of the first quarter.

In missing Rams WR Allen Robinson, many things are true and fixable

The passing game is missing Van Jefferson, a dependable and versatile speed threat who should return after the bye, and the run game has blatant limitations when not barreling behind receiver-turned-fullback Ben Skowronek as a lead blocker. Stafford wouldn’t comment on the disconnect in the run game, saying he “had to look at the tape” despite the clear recurrence of the issue.

“Just gotta be better,” said running back Cam Akers. “Gotta be able to get into a rhythm, we have to open up the run game. In a nutshell, we gotta run the ball. It’s easy for me to say this or that, but we’ve just got to open up the run game. … It’s not a choice. We have to.”

Said McVay: “It starts with everybody (doing) their job, and then being able to create a little bit. We gotta be able sometimes to get more than what the play is blocked for, and then we can’t have free runners, we can’t have guys into the backfield with penetration. The run game, it truly takes all 11 and we are not executing whether it be one player here, a couple players, and it’s been a challenge. It’s something that has really hurt us.”

The Rams can’t just sit there and ponder through a Week 6 matchup against Carolina and their bye the following week and hope they’re better after they’re healed and a few players return to the fold. Their off week in the middle of a bleak November skid last season didn’t do them diddly. Adjustments and answers must come quicker.

Captain Bobby Wagner is adamant that the team will stick together despite currently featuring a defense that also is dealing with a streak of injuries yet playing better each week, in juxtaposition with a wallowing offense. (And don’t even get me started on special teams, with another blocked punt that led to a Dallas touchdown and Matt Gay’s missed field goal attempt.)

“That’s easy. You watch these guys at practice, you see how hard they work,” Wagner told The Athletic. “I think it’s not a one-side thing, I think it’s a collective thing. … It’s just being confident, confident in one another (and) not letting the outside noise affect anything inside the building. We see the way that guys prepare. We know there’s a lot of easy mistakes that we can fix, so that gives us confidence.”

This doesn’t strike me as a group that will be idle in making personnel decisions over the next month — in every phase of the offense — and some of them may be difficult. Change is creeping into the open sides of SoFi Stadium with the salty fog.

Because “help” doesn’t mean peeling Stafford off the grass again. And again. And again. It means finding better answers, and soon.