the big articles on the Seattle game

Bobby Wagner controlled every detail, every emotion until he could channel it all out on the field on Sunday.
Sean McVay has run his Rams as the very embodiment of meticulous control and command of detail.
It’s what you can’t control that kills you. https://t.co/zEiVWWBpuI

— Jourdan Rodrigue (@JourdanRodrigue) December 5, 2022

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Rams’ effort is there, but they’ve lost control of big plays and season

Jourdan Rodrigue

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Bobby Wagner worked all week to control his emotions, to funnel them into one of the better games of his long career Sunday afternoon.

Wagner, spitting fire throughout the game toward Seattle’s sideline — the same one he used to stand on, before his unceremonious release by the team last spring — had seven tackles, three tackles for loss, two sacks and an interception. His last two-sack performance was in 2020 and his five sacks this season are his most since totaling five in 2013.

But as the Rams know all too well this season, it’s the things you can’t control that kill you.

Head coach Sean McVay knows it, as the Rams started backup quarterback John Wolford for the second time in 2022 — starter Matthew Stafford has a spinal cord contusion and is likely out for the year — and the team featured its 12th offensive line combination in 12 games. They were minus Cooper Kupp, minus Aaron Donald, minus the Robinsons (A’Shawn and Allen), and feature around $83.4 million of their 2022 salary cap on injured reserve (and over $130 million not playing, if you’re counting overall 2022 cash payout), according to Over the Cap.

“This is challenging,” McVay said postgame. Down to the hairs he cements into place each day, he is the picture of control. He has little control over his team’s circumstances now.

“But,” he said, “I’m proud to be going through this with these guys, and this is where real growth can occur. … I know for me personally, this is the most challenging thing that (I have) ever gone through, that’s forcing a lot of reflection that wouldn’t exist otherwise.”

Sunday, Wagner — who stuck to his in-season routine that will one day lead to a gold jacket as if it were just another game, whose teammates rallied around all week as he stayed calm and consistent because they wanted to break their historic losing streak for him — could only do so much as it all fell apart around him. There is a darkly ironic undertone to a Rams team that won a Super Bowl by featuring core stars and overperforming unknown players, that now is minus most of those stars. Wagner, one of the only stars still intact (though not on their Super Bowl roster), was unable to change the game’s ultimate outcome, even with his best performance of the year.

The Rams led by three points late in the fourth quarter after a gutsy effort against Seattle, a team everybody counted out before its season began but which has found an identity behind former backup quarterback Geno Smith and a corps of talented receivers.

Smith put together a 10-play, 75-yard game-winning touchdown drive to hand the Rams their sixth consecutive loss. On the drive, Smith picked up pass plays of 17, 14 and 10 yards, the latter on a third-and-10, and an illegal contact penalty called against Jalen Ramsey for a fresh set of downs just before the two-minute warning.

Safety Taylor Rapp said the Rams got caught in an “in-between area” on the final drive, where they didn’t want to be overaggressive and risk giving up an explosive play for a touchdown but also didn’t want to allow the Seahawks to get into field goal range. Two-minute and running-clock tempo situations have hindered the Rams defense this season, including in a Week 9 loss to Tampa Bay.

“Difficult two-minute situation,” Rapp said, “they got some good plays and some good chunks in there. … There could have been some tighter coverage, some tighter calls. As a back end, when we’re all on the same page, we’re flying around (and) doing it. But when you make mistakes on the back end, everything is amplified.”

Where the Rams didn’t seem able to assert, Smith took control — and the Rams ceded theirs. The drive ended with an 8-yard touchdown to DK Metcalf, a bullet of a throw by Smith who was moved off his spot by a bunch of second- and third-string defensive linemen and outside linebackers powered by pure effort. The Rams’ pressure, which their front attained at a 52.3 percent rate through the game despite missing their stars (more than double their season average), didn’t matter because the coverage failed a couple of times on Seattle’s game-winning drive and did so in the biggest spot imaginable. Metcalf scored on Ramsey, one of the few core players they haven’t lost this year to injury.

“Made a good throw and a good catch, I guess,” Ramsey said, “gotta look at (the film). … We lost (by) a touchdown from the man that I was guarding.”

Teammates were crushed — there’s a numbness that can seep in when losing so often and in such circumstances, but this one stung more than most because of what it meant to Wagner and what he put into it.

“I just felt like we had a lot of guys out, we have a lot of playmakers out,” Wagner said, “so I wanted to try to provide a spark for the team and help us find a win.”

“Bobby is an amazing leader, a pro’s pro. He works so hard,” Wolford said. “Really wanted to get it done for him. Ton of respect for him. I’ve seen him, how he prepares, how he works. I’m upset that we weren’t able to get it done for him.”

Wagner stayed composed through his postgame press conference — another part of his routine, which he has stuck to win or lose — but sat quietly for an extra moment in his locker before packing up. This was not what he signed up for when he signed with the Rams in free agency. He’ll never admit it.

It’s not what any of the players who battled until the last whistle Sunday signed up for — but it’s the moment they are in.

“I’m a master at controlling my emotions,” Wagner added, yet there’s only so much now that can be controlled. The Rams play again Thursday night, and the turnaround for their physical selves started immediately postgame, as players stationed themselves horizontally across the middle of the locker room in compression boots, many surrounded by electrolyte drinks, protein and in one case, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on wheat bread.

Wolford, who entered the concussion protocol mid-game and cleared it, then suffered a nasty-looking ankle injury and returned from that, will get his body as ready as it can be for Thursday’s likely start. He led a nine-play, 75-yard touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter that featured smartly-utilized misdirection and change-of-pace plays from under-the-radar receivers Tutu Atwell and Brandon Powell, hard running by Cam Akers and smart decision-making in Wolford’s throws. He also picked up a fourth-and-2 on the drive, with a keeper on one bum ankle. The effort gave the Rams a three-point lead with 2:56 to play, and a glimmer of brightness where it has been missing offensively for much of the year.

Then, the Rams defense — a group that entered Week 13 as the best goal-line unit in the league and played well in its front seven despite missing key players — gave up piles of yards, a penalty and then ultimately a touchdown as the offense could only watch from the sideline.

It was a twisted role reversal from too many other losses this season.

Every person on this team, at one point or another, has felt it: It’s the things you can’t control that kill you.

Mentally, it’s hard to know where recovery begins. There’s been no starting point for that, this year, but no bottom to their collapse either.

“If you’re being honest, I think you acknowledge some insecurities that maybe you didn’t think you had,” McVay said. “This forces you to reflect … Are you really foundationally (sic) secure in the things that really matter? Do you let some of the outside-in narratives affect your being? Or some of these results affect the way that you approach things? To say that there haven’t been those moments, where some of those doubts have occurred, I’d be lying to you guys.”

It’s the things you can’t control that kill you.

The free-falling Rams have less answers, less certainty of their futures, less control over their collective fates, by the week.