the press sums up the Dallas game

7 takeaways from Rams’ season-opening win over Cowboys

Cameron DaSilva

link https://theramswire.usatoday.com/lists/rams-cowboys-week-1-takeaways-recap/

There’s no better way to start a season in Week 1 than with a victory. The Rams welcomed the Cowboys to their new home on Sunday night and sent them home packing with an 0-1 record.

Los Angeles held on to beat the Cowboys 20-17, starting 1-0 for the fourth consecutive season. It wasn’t the easiest win, but it was an important one – especially for a team that has had lower expectations set upon it all offseason.

Here are seven key takeaways from the Rams’ win over Dallas.

1 Tackling was a huge issue

After a summer without preseason games, it was expected that tackling might suffer. It was true for the Rams, who missed tackles left and right. Granted, they were trying to bring down Ezekiel Elliott, but they missed way too many tackles that led to big yardage.

On Elliott’s touchdown catch, he faked out four defenders along the sideline, leading to this shot that made its rounds on Twitter.

It wasn’t any one group, either. The defensive line missed tackles, Micah Kiser missed some, and even John Johnson was out of position on a few attempts. This part of their defense should improve, mostly because it has to.

2 The running back rotation is real

Fantasy players had both eyes on the Rams’ backfield Sunday night, watching closely to see which running backs would get the bulk of the carries. Malcolm Brown wound up emerging as the top guy in Week 1, but only by four carries over Cam Akers. Brown rushed for 79 yards on 18 carries, scoring two touchdowns and adding 31 yards receiving.

Akers carried it 14 times for 39 yards, making a few nice moves at the line of scrimmage to make defenders miss. His longest run was only 6 yards, though.

As for Darrell Henderson, his playing time was limited. He carried it three times for 6 yards and wasn’t targeted on a pass. We’ll see if his workload grows next week as his hamstring continues to improve.

3 Jordan Fuller is ahead of Taylor Rapp … for now

One of the biggest surprises was how much Jordan Fuller played on defense. The sixth-round rookie was on the field early and often for the Rams, doing everything from playing the deep post to covering in intermediate coverage. His best play came on fourth down in the fourth quarter, hitting CeeDee Lamb short of the sticks in the red zone.

He did miss a tackle on Tony Pollard that led to some extra yardage, but overall, it wasn’t a bad showing by the young safety. He seems to be ahead of Taylor Rapp at least for now, as Rapp continues to get up to speed on Brandon Staley’s scheme. He missed most of camp with a knee injury, which set him back.

This was about as good of a debut as a sixth-round pick could’ve asked for, even without creating a turnover. He led the team with eight tackles, none bigger than the one on Lamb.

4 Red zone woes stymie offense

The Rams were awful in the red zone in 2018, scoring touchdowns on 56.8% of their trips inside the 20 (19th in the NFL). They seemed to solve those issues last year by ranking sixth in that department, but they reared their ugly head on Sunday night.

The Rams scored touchdowns on only two of their five red zone trips, and missed a 29-yard field goal on one of those. They really could’ve taken a commanding lead early if not for issues inside the 20-yard line.

Even Sean McVay’s decision to run it on third-and-4 before attempting a field goal was questionable. Execution and play calling just have to be better.

5 Kicker is still a question mark

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

In no way should the Rams feel completely comfortable with their kicker situation. Sam Sloman missed his first career FG attempt, which can probably be chalked up to rookie jitters, clanking his kick off the left upright from 29 yards out.

His next kick was dangerously low from 35 yards, even though it was good, and his next 31-yarder improved in the height department – also a successful kick.

Hopefully he can shake off the rookie nerves and become a reliable kicker, but it wasn’t exactly a great start for Sloman. His kickoff depth wasn’t impressive, either, routinely booting it to about the 5-yard line instead of into the end zone. Maybe that’s by design, but the Cowboys got some good gains out of it. He did have a few touchbacks, but the short kicks were somewhat concerning.

6 Offensive line held up – largely thanks to McVay and Goff

The Rams offensive line got a lot of help from Sean McVay and Jared Goff against Dallas. Sure, Goff was only sacked once and hit three total times, but it was a great game plan by McVay that helped the line immensely.

In the first half, Goff’s average depth of target was only 2.2 yards. It was a whole bunch of screens, short out routes and checkdowns, which the Cowboys couldn’t stop. And so McVay kept calling them.

Those quick passes prevented the rush from getting home, and kept Goff upright for much of the game.

7 Balance returns to the offense

Last season, the Rams were completely unbalanced on offense – especially to start the year. They had the third-most pass attempts in the NFL (Jared Goff led the league individually), while they only had the 18th-most rush attempts.

Far too often, Goff was asked to throw the ball more than he should have had to. That wasn’t the case on Sunday. The Rams handed the ball off to their running backs 35 times and Goff attempted 31 passes.

That’s the balance the Rams want to see from the offense, taking pressure off of Goff.

from NFL Week 1 grades: https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-week-2-early-odds-seahawks-favored-over-patriots-chiefs-looking-to-continue-wild-run-vs-afc-west-teams/

…

L.A. Rams 20-17 over Dallas

B- Cowboys
Dak Prescott was really good. Ezekiel Elliott was really good. Aldon Smith was surprisingly really good. Unfortunately, Mike McCarthy was not, at least when it mattered most, preferring to play it safe despite an envious array of weapons. It didn’t help that the defense couldn’t stop the Rams pretty much all night. Still, this team had the looks of one that can be dangerous when everything is clicking.

A+ Rams
Yes, they were at home, but everything else about this game suggested they would be Week 1 fodder for the high-powered Cowboys. Not so. Sean McVay had a pitch-perfect script to keep Jared Goff comfortable. The O-line handled Dallas with relative ease. Malcolm Brown was a revelation as the unofficial RB1. And both Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey proved that all you need is a few play-makers to swing things on “D.” Huge win for this club.

A rookie breaks out, Malcolm Brown’s moment and more from a Rams win

Jourdan Rodrigue

https://theathletic.com/2063775/2020/09/14/the-pile-a-rookie-breaks-out-malcolm-browns-moment-and-more-from-a-rams-win/?source=twittered

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Nobody in a “Bone” uniform was surprised to see rookie safety Jordan Fuller not only start for the Rams on Sunday night against Dallas, but thrive.

Quarterback Jared Goff, for example, specifically remembers how the rookie picked him off in the first week of training camp. As a sixth-round draft pick filling in for starter Taylor Rapp when he suffered a knee injury before pads went on this summer, Fuller wasn’t necessarily supposed to carry such a big stick.

“He’s challenged me in training camp,” Goff said. “I mean, being a rookie, being able to be as long as he is and as smart as he is, he does a lot of stuff in our defense that really fits him. He’s a tremendous player. … (When) he picked me off, I was like, ‘OK, this kid can play. He’s smarter than most rookies.’”

Fuller showed up to Rams camp as a man on a mission, and seized his opportunity. And by the end of Sunday night’s 20-17 win, in which he led the Rams with eight tackles — and made a huge fourth-quarter stop on fourth-and-3 with the Cowboys trailing by just two points at the Rams’ 11-yard line — it doesn’t look like that opportunity is going away soon.

“That play right there,” head coach Sean McVay said after the game, “that was the play of the game, arguably. Can’t say enough about Jordan Fuller and his maturity as a rookie, and what kind of play that was. Outstanding.”

In fact, McVay indicated Rapp is not still nursing his knee injury and that, in fact, Fuller had played his way into the starting spot. Rapp played special-teams snaps and was on the field at the end of the game alongside John Johnson and Fuller in what appeared to be a larger nickel package.

“(Fuller’s snaps were) based on the way that Jordan played throughout camp,” McVay said. “Taylor Rapp is a big part of our football team. That’s not going to change. But it’s more a result of all of the great things that Jordan has done from day one. I mean, he’s been making plays. He’s mature beyond his years, the way he sees things. His range. His ability to make plays, as he demonstrated tonight. Very pleased with Jordan, and he’s going to continue to get better — but Taylor is a huge part of our football team as well.”

Fuller was not made available to media in the limited Zoom interview sessions after Sunday night’s game. But it’s pretty easy to see he’ll be a huge part of the Rams’ plans on defense moving forward.

“Jordan has been balling all camp,” star cornerback Jalen Ramsey said. “We’re happy to have him…he’s been playing extremely well, and we expected him to do that tonight. Very proud of him, glad to have him a part of this team.”

Welcome to The Pile. The Rams are 1-0 … let’s start poking around.

The importance of Malcolm Brown

The Rams’ certainly utilized a running-back-by-committee approach on Sunday night, but the hero was veteran Malcolm Brown, who scored the first-ever touchdown in SoFi Stadium, and followed that up with the Rams’ only other trip to the end zone in the third quarter.

“I feel like I might live forever,” said a smiling Brown after the game, about what it meant to be the guy to achieve that historic moment.

Brown finished with 110 scrimmage yards on 21 touches, and there is a reason I’m framing his statistics in that way. The Rams used Brown as a “layup” option in the passing game with Goff, targeting him four times (he caught three). This is notable because, according to Football Outsiders, the Rams used their backs in the passing game less than any other team in the NFL last season. Brown also was a drive-finisher — the exclamation point at the end of a sentence — and after things got messy in the second quarter and it seemed like the Rams were just throwing pages of their playbook at the wall, they went back to what worked, simply and effectively. They heavily featured Robert Woods in the passing game, and then punctuated the drive with Brown.

But I want to talk about something more important than Brown’s stats, or personnel groupings or what he just did for your fantasy football team.

Think about it this way: Brown is only 27 years old, but in running back years, that’s a little past middle-aged. He’s got multiple seasons on the Rams’ other three active backs, rookies Cam Akers (who got the start on Sunday) and Xavier Jones, and second-year back Darrell Henderson. This season, Brown was “the guy who is supposed to teach all the other guys how to be a pro.” Last season, and in those prior, Brown was “the guy behind the guy,” Todd Gurley. If a person was ever a physical embodiment of McVay’s “We not me” mantra, it’s Brown.

On Sunday night, Brown was it. He was the engine who made the Rams hum. He was exactly who they needed. He wasn’t playing a supporting role; he was that dude.

I asked Brown what that meant to him.

“Oh, man. It’s very exciting. I feel like that’s just what I had to do. Sometimes in this league, you have to step in and play a role. And I was very aware of it,” Brown said as his voice seemed to waver a little bit.

“My rookie year, when I came in, I knew I wasn’t just going to be the man automatically. I was very, very, very aware of it. And I just played that role, man. I just kept my head down and worked. And … I knew maybe, eventually, I may get a shot. And I may not. But you just have to keep going. Just never quit. That’s what I tell a lot of guys coming in, man. It may not be the circumstance you want, but you last long enough and do what you need to do throughout your years in this league, and something will spark. The opportunity came, and I was able to do what I had to do.”

Brown might never be a superstar. But he — and everything he stands for — is now cemented in Rams history. And that’s important.

Kickers, man

Rams rookie kicker Samuel Sloman had to operate in a fairly high-pressure situation Sunday night, even without fans in the stands. He was kicking in front of former longtime Rams kicker Greg Zuerlein, with whom the team parted ways last year. Zuerlein then signed with the Cowboys.

So, of course, a missed field-goal attempt off the left post in the first quarter wasn’t the best way to start things for Sloman. The fact that it was a 29-yard try didn’t help; nor did the fact that, without fans in the stands, the “doink” rattled through the airy stadium.

But the Rams went back to Sloman, even in certain yardage situations when analytics argue that a coach should go for it on fourth down. One reason the Rams kept on kickin’, McVay said, was the fact that they had to show confidence in their young leg after the miss. It worked. Sloman made his next field goal and two point-after attempts.

“And, you know, I’ll never claim to be perfect with some of my decision-making,” McVay said. “You always look inward as well. … There was a lot of being mindful of making sure (we) got Sam in some good situations, and I think in a lot of instances it was like, ‘Hey, we still have confidence to let you come out and punch this thing in. We felt like that was the right decision. … There were a couple that I thought about (going for it), even at the end there (when the Rams punted), but just feeling the flow at the end of the game, that the defense had such good momentum, I felt good about punting it back. But a lot of good things to be able to look at tonight.”

Red-zone woes

The Rams were 2-for-5 in red-zone efficiency. In the first half, the Rams made four trips to the red zone and came away with a single touchdown (on their opening drive), and they finished the half with just 13 points to Dallas’ 14 even though they possessed the ball for nearly twice the amount of time the Cowboys did.

McVay summed up the issues pretty well postgame.

“We have to call some better plays, and also, we have to do a better job of avoiding the penalties,” McVay said. “Self-inflicted wounds. We had favorable down and distance (and) we end up getting an intentional grounding. That’s a drive-killer. I called a bad screen in a situation there on a second down. The good thing is, it’s much easier to correct after a win. We made some plays that could have cost us, but we also made some plays that got us the win tonight.”

Robert Woods, another “that dude“

Receiver Cooper Kupp signed a three-year, up-to-$48 million extension this week, but veteran Robert Woods was the money-maker against Dallas.

Goff’s comfort with Woods, particularly on throws over the middle or in crucial conversion situations, was notable. Woods essentially set up the Rams’ first scoring drive with catches of 20, 30 and 9 yards, respectively.

Woods finished with six catches for 105 yards — a 17.5-yards-per-catch average — and one carry that gobbled up 14 yards. Woods had back-to-back 1,000-yards-receiving seasons in 2018 and 2019 and wants another ones, especially with contract negotiations coming up in the next year and a half.

The calls that made a difference

Two calls really stood out for the positive and the negative, depending on the teams’ perspective.

On a third-and-7 play at the Rams’ 30-yard line, Goff’s pocket broke down and Cowboys edge-rusher Aldon Smith came barreling in. He appeared to make enough contact with Goff to force a wobbler out of the quarterback’s hand, and the ball was picked off by Chidobe Awuzie (Dallas ultimately turned it into a field goal). Upon closer inspection, Smith’s forearm made substantial contact with Goff’s helmet and facemask and appeared to twist his head around, but there was no flag.

Goff is not allowed to criticize the officials for fear of a fine from the league. But he said he pleaded his case on the field — to no avail — and that if there was ever going to be a roughing call in his favor, that would be it.

Then, with 31 seconds left in the fourth quarter and the Rams leading by three points, Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott went deep to Michael Gallup, who pulled in a 31-yard catch that could have, at the very least, set up a game-tying field-goal attempt. But a flag flew, and Gallup was called for offensive pass interference. The cornerback in coverage? Ramsey, who said after the game that the controversial call was “as clear as day” to him.

Ramsey said he was even surprised that the Cowboys challenged him deep, and on an island, at the end of the game.

“But everybody gets paid in the NFL,” he quipped.

Bottom of The Pile

• Many Rams players walked into SoFi Stadium on Sunday wearing shirts that honored victims of police brutality and racial violence, showing their names and pictures. Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tamir Rice and Emmett Till were all among those honored on players’ shirts. Players also warmed up in long-sleeved shirts that read, “It takes all of us.” Several minutes before kickoff, the Rams played “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” on the video board and the Cowboys stood in their end zone quietly, hats removed. Most of the Rams were in the locker room as it played, but Micah Kiser and David Edwards remained in the Rams’ end zone. As the national anthem began, approximately 15 Rams players took a knee in protest; notably, Donald and nose tackle Michael Brockers were part of this group, their arms linked tightly and their heads bowed.

• The Rams had Kupp back as a punt returner. We saw a little of this in training camp, as mostly Nsimba Webster got those reps.

• Not only did Donald’s opening-drive sack on second down (for a 7-yard loss) help set up a third-and-long play and then a Cowboys punt, it also moved him into second place on the all-time franchise sack list. The Rams then hit a bit of a dry streak until the third quarter, when a Brockers sack up the middle on third down gave them back a little momentum. Outside linebacker Leonard Floyd also notched his first sack, and there are clips floating around on social media of moments when Donald completely manhandles multiple blockers on his way to pressuring Prescott.

• Another big play involving Fuller and Ramsey: On third down, with Dallas backed up deep in its own territory, Ramsey put an enormous hit on receiver Amari Cooper that appeared to knock the ball loose. Fuller then sprinted to dive on it. While the play was ruled as an incomplete pass (Cooper never fully caught it), the play was still important because it forced a Dallas punt.

• I’m not totally ready to freak out about the Rams’ tackling problems yet. There was one play in which Dallas running back Ezekiel Elliot should have been forced out of bounds by one of (checks notes) FOUR players covering him downfield, but he cut inside and all four missed him. It was bad — bad enough to get the Twitter meme treatment — yet without a preseason or much of any live preparation, I sort of expected tackling to be an early issue around the league.

• You can’t have cheerleaders on the field in COVID-19 times. So the team had them all doing their thing in the parking lot, then streamed it on the video board and into a “second screen” experience for fans watching at home.

• Rams owner Stan Kroenke, in attendance to see the first game ever played inside his $5 billion SoFi Stadium, received Sunday night’s game ball from McVay.

from PFF: https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-week-1-pff-team-of-the-week-key-takeaways-weekly-awards-and-more

DALLAS WON’T GET TOO FAR IF ITS OFFENSIVE LINE REPEATS ITS WEEK 1 PERFORMANCE

Led by Aaron Donald, the Los Angeles Rams caused Dak Prescott to play under fire throughout their Week 1 matchup. He was under pressure on 19 dropbacks, the second-most of the week. When a quarterback is under pressure that much, not many good things are going to happen for the offense. Prescott did make a great play under pressure early in the second quarter to CeeDee Lamb, but that was just about the only positive outcome on those plays.

And that number of pressured dropbacks could have been much higher had Prescott not had so many short, quick throws to avoid it. He did make all these requisite throws when free from pressure, as he was the sixth-highest graded quarterback of the week on such plays.

Because of Donald and the offensive line not having its best day, we didn’t get to see Prescott uncork many downfield throws. His deep ball was the backbone of his success last year, but he threw a pass 10 or more yards downfield on just over one-fifth of his passes (third-lowest rate of the week) in Week 1.

As a whole, the Dallas offensive line was the third-lowest graded unit of the day and lost the third-most reps. Tackle Tyron Smith and center Joe Looney didn’t play poorly, as they earned pass-block grades of 77.3 and 69.1, respectively, but the other three (Connor Williams, Zack Martin and Terence Steele) offensive linemen struggled. All three were either beaten by a defender or allowed a pressure on six or more pass-block reps. While the Cowboys won’t face a player like Donald every week — and Martin is likely to bounce back, given he was the highest-graded active guard in pass protection from 2014-19 — Williams and Steele are two reasons to worry, especially with facing Grady Jarrett in Week 2.

wv wrote:

Not that i care what the National Celebrity-Media thinks, but I noticed in every vid i watched, the celebrity-pundits talked about what Dallas did right and what Dallas did wrong, and what the future of DALLAS might be.

InvaderRam wrote:

yeah. i have seen the rare tweet where someone recognizes the rams for what they did.

This is the guy who founded Football Outsiders:

Aaron Schatz@FO_ASchatz
I think too many people are analyzing last nights game as “what’s wrong with Dallas” and not enough are asking “did we underrate the Rams?”