SF game: tweets, plays, articles … the lament continues

Matthew Stafford was absurd all night. And to think Stafford and the Rams actually entertained a trade this offseason. pic.twitter.com/77W6i0RTsS

— Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerESPN) October 3, 2025

Terrance Ferguson woke the entire Rams offense up with this catch. Insane way to introduce yourself to the league.

Absolutely needs to be more involved in the passing game. pic.twitter.com/ZSXNV4UQjl

— Rams Bros. (@RamsBrothers) October 3, 2025

In loss to 49ers, Rams put the game in Matthew Stafford’s hands — until they didn’t

Nate Atkins

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6685843/2025/10/03/rams-matthew-stafford-loss-49ers/?source=emp_shared_article

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Just after Matthew Stafford placed the ball in Kyren Williams’ arms on fourth-and-1 and the running back fell short as the two lines converged, San Francisco 49ers players ran on the field to celebrate an overtime victory over the Los Angeles Rams.

The mood in the home locker room at SoFi Stadium was not one of stunned silence. It was anger, fury and a whole lot of regret.

“(Bleeping, bleeping) team,” Rams wide receiver Davante Adams said on the way to his locker.

Players tried to talk through what just happened — how they came back from down 13 points in the second half to an NFC West rival, how they threw for nearly 400 yards to give themselves a chance to win, only to fail on fourth down.

“Guys are pissed off,” Stafford said of the mood, “because they care.”

Soon, their heads turned when they heard a scream. It was Jared Verse, the reigning Defensive Rookie of the Year, caught in a stretch between the tunnel and the locker room and in a metamorphosis from competitive warrior to a man who had to answer for why his team came up short.

Then there was coach Sean McVay.

“The play selection was very poor,” McVay said. “I’m sick right now because I put our players in a (expletive) spot and I’ve got to live with that.”

It was a different tone than McVay and Rams players displayed after losing two weeks ago to the Philadelphia Eagles, when they felt some validation in the 26-7 lead they built on the road against the reigning Super Bowl champions. Though they lamented the mistakes that led to a 33-26 loss, they embraced the lessons the first defeat of the season could offer.

Thursday, against a banged-up 49ers team missing three Pro Bowlers, was different. This was anger.

It had McVay rushing off the podium, into the locker room and over to three wide receivers huddled together. Tutu Atwell had won the game last week on an 88-yard touchdown and had just reeled in a 38-yard pass to set the Rams up with this chance in overtime, but he was not in on the final snap since it was a running play. Two other receivers, Puka Nacua and Jordan Whittington, were in as lead blockers.

The four watched clips from the game on a cellphone in a locker stall.

“That’s my fault there,” McVay said as he walked away.

McVay often blames himself when a play ends in disaster. He did it last week on Williams’ fumble, too.

“I’m not going to comment on whether or not I was a fan of it,” Adams said of the call. “If it works, then I’m a fan of it. If not, then I’m not, obviously.”

On one hand, football has an adage that, if you put a game on the backs of your offensive line to gain a single yard, simplify the variables. Shorten the distance. And if you can’t gain a single yard in the trenches, you don’t deserve to win.

But this Rams team is built differently than many that operate that way. It’s built for a passing league. There are costs in a game of inches.

Los Angeles got to the fourth-and-1 by throwing 47 times and running just 16. Stafford was looking like a clutch hero again, as he did last week against the Indianapolis Colts when he guided his 50th career game-winning drive. He was threatening to do it on Thursday with his Rams-career-high 389 yards and three touchdowns.

The overtime drive included one of the best throws he’s ever made. He felt pressure from the inside, spun a full 360 degrees to his left, reset between the hashes and launched the ball 48 yards in the air to a spot along the right sideline, where Atwell caught it in stride and stepped out of bounds for a 38-yard gain.

The Rams put the game in Stafford’s hands — until they didn’t.

That’s where the sting will likely lie for McVay. He went with a football adage ingrained in the grandson of a longtime 49ers executive instead of the bet he and the franchise placed when they acquired Stafford at the cost of Jared Goff and two first-round picks. The bet that won them a Super Bowl.

This was the third straight week the Rams went for a fourth-and-1 and got stuffed. All three were running plays. The first, in Philadelphia, was a Williams run behind backup right guard Beaux Limmer that Eagles first-round picks Jordan Davis and Jalen Carter blew up immediately. The second, against Indianapolis, was a sneak where the Rams left the NFL’s reigning tackles leader, Zaire Franklin, unblocked to pull down Stafford, who notoriously struggles with the sneak.

On Thursday, McVay had Williams run slightly off-tackle, where he had blockers against a defense in a two-safety look. But those blockers included backup right tackle Warren McClendon Jr., No. 2 tight end Davis Allen and wide receivers Whittington and Nacua. Whittington made a quick motion behind the other three, and then Nacua, Allen and McClendon got beat to their inside as 49ers cornerback Deommodore Lenoir came unblocked through the space Whittington vacated to pull Williams down.

“Sometimes if they line up and they’re a little looser, you may have a chance to have some sort of play-action pass on that play,” said 49ers All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner, who helped Lenoir on the tackle after swooping around Allen’s block. “But you could tell on that play by the way they came out that they were going to run.”

An offense can believe in making it obvious it’s running and still pick up a single yard when it has to. But that ideology usually comes with heavy personnel, like two tight ends or an extra tackle. Or with a quarterback sneak, like the Eagles have perfected amid a 20-1 stretch, a weapon the Rams know they don’t have with Stafford.

“I want the ball every time. That’s the kind of competitive player that I am,” Williams said. “I just have to keep the legs driving, run behind those people and get that 1 yard that we need.”

So was the problem the execution? Or the bet on the talents of the players blocking it?

“That’s a bread-and-butter short-yardage call for us,” Stafford said. “I didn’t have any problem with it. I trust in our guys to go out there and make a play.”

Said Nacua: “In short yardage, we trust our guys and with the physicality that we’ve been trying to adopt as our identity. I just barely saw the clip on social media, but I know I owe one to Kyren. It’s something I pride myself on.”

The Seattle Seahawks famously lost Super Bowl XLIX to the New England Patriots through the inverse of this play, by throwing at the goal line with a chance to win. But the pain of Malcolm Butler’s interception of Russell Wilson wasn’t just in the idea of throwing at the goal line: The Seahawks went against the strength of their offense by not running Marshawn Lynch.

On Thursday, the Rams went away from the strengths they are built on — Stafford, the game’s active leader in game-winning drives; Nacua, the NFL’s leading receiver; Adams, a three-time first-team All-Pro; and McVay, a Super Bowl-winning coach revered for his pass-game designs — to run behind backups and wide receivers.

And it was defensible: Williams has a hard-running style and was averaging 5.0 yards per carry. And McVay had just called a pass on third-and-1 in the fourth quarter, only for Stafford and Adams to miscommunicate on an option route. Perhaps that play weighed on McVay’s mind. But so, too, could have Williams’ fumble at the goal line with a chance to win at the end of regulation.

McVay had foundational passing plays to run. But he also knew the source of the most bankable plays, Nacua, was likely to see a double-team. And of the 14 previous runs he called in this game, every one gained at least a yard. But never was a run more obvious than this fourth-and-1.

Whether it was the play call or the execution, the chicken or the egg, a three-point overtime loss to a division rival is still a three-point overtime loss to a division rival. The pain is real, and it manifests in screams and expletives.

But it’s also just Week 5.

The Rams have details to clean up, but have a quarterback playing as well as any and stars at wide receiver and in the pass rush. They will have five more NFC West games, including a revenge match with these 49ers Week 10 in San Francisco.

They’re 3-2 with inches separating them from 5-0. Those inches are an inspiring, painful, motivating and heartbreaking pair of chapters in a book that is barely a quarter written.

Whether they become wounds or scars is the story the Rams will write the rest of this season.

McVay is sick. I’m sick. We’re all sick. Things need to change. pic.twitter.com/4LOGljiwxz

— nat 🪬 (@habibiting) October 3, 2025

Rams’ self-inflicted errors against 49ers were unbecoming of a contending team

Jourdan Rodrigue

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6686338/2025/10/03/rams-mistakes-49ers-overtime-loss/?source=emp_shared_article

LOS ANGELES — For every moment that it felt like quarterback Matthew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams’ offense might pull off a thrilling win over hated division rival San Francisco, there was also a major mistake that meant they never would.

In Thursday night’s 26-23 overtime loss, there were missed kicks, missed blocks, dropped passes and a few early missed throws. There was a special teams penalty that helped the 49ers’ field position in overtime, and a blocked/tipped extra point that left the game tied in the fourth quarter and took the wind out of a promising comeback drive.

There were fumbles: One coughed up in the second quarter at the San Francisco 30-yard line (ultimately credited in the box score to Stafford, on a pitch play with running back Blake Corum), and an even costlier giveaway by starting running back Kyren Williams inside the 49ers’ 3-yard line with 1:07 to play in regulation. The Rams were down three points at the time.

“I feel like I let the team down,” said Williams. “… It’s all on me. … I’ve got to do better.”

Still, with Stafford there’s always a chance. He may have missed receiver Tutu Atwell on a long ball to open the game — more mistakes; the Rams only ran six offensive plays in the first quarter as the 49ers dominated time of possession and took a 14-0 lead early in the second — but he threw a beauty to Atwell for 38 yards in overtime to get the Rams in scoring position. Sure, the signs of a disaster were there: Kicker Josh Karty, who had already missed a field goal and had an extra point blocked, also opened overtime with a landing zone penalty on the kickoff that gave the 49ers the ball at the 40-yard line.

But once the Rams got to the 49ers’ 11-yard line, down 3 points and against an injury-depleted defense, it felt like Stafford had the makings of a vintage “Stafford” moment.

Then it was the head coach’s turn to make a mistake. Sean McVay called a run on fourth-and-1, after both coaches used a time out to scope out each others’ alignments (McVay also said he was aiming to get the 49ers to jump offsides). Williams, who caught two touchdown passes along with the fumble, didn’t gain the yard. Game over.

“It’s a bad call,” McVay said postgame. “A bad call by me. … I’m sick right now because I put our players in a sh—- spot and I got to live with that.”

McVay took several minutes to come to the lectern, which is rare for him even in a loss. He looked and sounded miserable. It hurts worse when it’s the 49ers, and worse still when almost all of the reasons the Rams lost were avoidable. Players were audibly and visibly frustrated coming off the field and in the locker room. Good, according to an equally irked Stafford.

“Guys are pissed off because they care,” he said. “If everybody was laughing and joking, I’d be a little bit more concerned. I feel like we had opportunities to win the game, like I said, multiple times. We didn’t get it done. Guys are ticked. I like that.”

Stafford said postgame he had no problem with the call itself, calling it a “bread and butter” short yardage play. Nor did either he or McVay believe going for the win on fourth down rather than attempting a tying field goal — especially in light of Karty’s issues all night — was the wrong decision. “I love that we went for it, we’re not playing for a tie. Let’s go,” said Stafford.

But the 49ers knew what was coming on the play itself.

“You could just tell (from) the way that they lined up that they were gonna run the ball,” said All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner. “… You could tell when they came out that they were gonna run.”

The Rams’ defense held the 49ers to nine points in the second half and overtime. Much of the game, though, resembled the all-too-familiar Kyle Shanahan/McVay “10,000 papercuts” games of a few years ago, when the 49ers could pick and poke their way down the field underneath the Rams’ zones and get the ball out of the quarterback’s hand before the formidable pass rush got to him. Shanahan can barely roster a healthy starting lineup on both sides of the ball, yet his offense became the Death Star once again.

Backup quarterback Mac Jones hit 28 of his 33 total completions (on 49 attempts) and both of his touchdowns on passes under 10 air yards, according to Next Gen Stats. Receiver Kendrick Bourne and running back Christian McCaffrey (as a receiver) were particularly successful against the Rams’ back seven. Bourne had 142 yards on 10 catches while McCaffrey caught eight passes on nine targets for 82 yards and a touchdown.

“They were just getting the ball out fast — they were making plays, and we (weren’t),” said safety Kam Curl. “That’s the name of the game, making plays. They were making more plays than us.”

The 49ers’ mechanical, infuriating offensive style has in the past set up the Rams to make self-inflicted mistakes, and it often felt like that bled into every phase of the team. It was the same story Thursday as the unforced errors compounded.

“We had a chance to close the game out and ultimately it didn’t go down for us,” said McVay. “… For us to even be in it is a real credit to the resilience of the group. But that’s not winning football tonight. … We certainly did more to lose that game than we did win it, tonight. It did compound, for sure.”

It’s not just losing to the 49ers that left the locker room so bitter, it was also losing on a short week right after many in the NFL ecosystem crowned them bona fide contenders following their Week 4 win over the red-hot Colts. It’s the relief of a long weekend that suddenly soured with the understanding that they’ll be watching several other teams inch ahead while they still stew in Thursday night’s result.

It’s the dizzying whiplash of rebounding against the Colts and again confoundingly stumbling just days after that. It’s like a cartoon character stepping over a rake, shooting a self-satisfied glance at the viewer while stepping right onto the second rake. Half of the pain is having the knowledge it was avoidable.

The Rams are bona fide contenders. They can genuinely pull this off. With more mistakes like those they made on Thursday, they won’t.

"We entered the season worrying about Matt Stafford’s back. You want to know why it hurts? He’s carrying the franchise."@colincowherd says the Rams are wasting Stafford's best year as a pro pic.twitter.com/0oINnaQDNI

— Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) October 3, 2025