unbelievable (Raiders game thread)

aeneas1

1976 rams beat falcons 59-0, this would be the rams second largest margin of victory since 1940…

Can’t remember the last blowout where the Rams were on the upside. This was a big surprise to me.

I was at that 20-0 win. We had good seats, a couple of rows in front of Huggy Bear, who’s son was playing for the Raiders.

wv wrote:

Um…so….what was the Turning Point?

w
v

Opening kick off.

I’m going to move this to the post-game thread. It will have a good home and we will take very good care of it.

Is the Oakland game completely dismissable?

Well I balance it out with the SD and Denver games.

Oakland at one extreme, SD at the other, Denver in the middle.

Looked at that way, is this Rams team a good team now or not?

I say yeah, good.

I agree with WV. I need to see this team win two in a row. But I think that’s getting ready to happen.

Slowly, but surely, this team keeps getting better.

As WV says, a team is not “good” in any meaningful sense until it can win numbers of games. Laurinaitas, for example, makes that point emphatically.

We all know that any one game can be very misleading. This is particularly true for a Ram team that this year has been all over the map. Just looking at the defense, the fine efforts against DEN and OAK sandwich a really poor effort against SD. How does one tell?

And then there is the problem of accounting for the opposition. OAK was gawdawful. I just kept laughing and thinking, “Well, I guess there are fans that have it worse than we have.”

One way to evaluate the game is to look at aspects of the game and ask myself, “is that repeatable?”

A positive: the pass D. Against DEN and against OAK, we had numerous cases of passes defended in the short zones. Against both, we had effective pass rushes. I think that those 2 factors go together. We A) have DBs who CAN challenge short passes and B) an excellent pass rush. Put those together, and we’re tough. Sure, OAK is limited. But DEN isn’t and we showed in BOTH GAMES that we can do business when we challenge the short ball.

Which, from my point of view, provides a way to understand the SD game. A defense that could effectively defend against DEN is CAPABLE of defending Rivers & Co. We didn’t because, in my view, Williams regressed into Blitz-Mania like a drunk falling off the wagon. Many an observer, including professionals, has observed the deep drops against SD and the effortless ease Rivers had dumping off before our pass rush could get there. To me, lousy coaching explains SD and good coaching supporting good talent explains DEN and OAK. I think that, with effective game plans, our pass defense IS repeatable.

Now, a negative. The running game. Mason looked great … especially on 1 memorable run. But is that repeatable?

I doubt it. On Mason’s big run, the OAK LBs blundered like Ram LBs. They just ran away. And Mason ran into a huge lane due to blocks by almost no one. The lead blocker literally had no one to block. OK, that can happen. But can you hope for it to happen again?

Nope. Those same LBs got their act together in the 2nd half and we couldn’t run for like 3 series in a row. I think our running stats were padded by Mason’s big run, Hill’s bootleg (definitely not repeatable) and Tavon trickery which is nice but not much to count on. Our RBs got stuffed a lot, especially when we had the lead. If we are going to be a tough team that protects leads, we have to be able to run when it is expected. And I don’t think we did.

The OL is still not really much good at imposing its will in the run game. And Saffold’s shoulder is becoming a serious problem. I believe that we are at least a solid OG and OC away from being genuinely “good” in the running game. We have the backs, but not the interior OL.

So, some aspects of yesterday are repeatable. Others aren’t. It’s hard for me to say what they add up to.

A puzzle: why do we not throw to Britt and Bailey more consistently? Both are capable. But we spend so much time working elaborate underneath stuff. And we rarely work simple, bread-and-butter throws to our solid or better WRs. I do not get that, and I am convinced it hurts us. Against a better team, it would have put the win in jeopardy, as it has done repeatedly this year.

But now for the really hard question. We beat OAK. OK. We beat them comfortably. OK.

But we scored 52 freaking points and pitched a shut out! What does that mean?

I have to think it means something. I mean, suppose we won 37-6. That would’ve been very nice, right? But it wouldn’t make a significant POINT.

But 52-0? I dunno. Even if OAK sux, that does seem to make a point. It’s kind of like developing your golf game. Teaching pros sometimes advise guys to play solo rounds on a largely empty course, taking 2nd or even 3rd shots. The idea is to prove to yourself what your body is capable of doing. It’s a developmental stage which of course can’t directly carry over to competition. Yet discovering what you CAN DO can help you raise your ceiling in competition.

I just have to think that, on some levels, a beat down that big will raise the team’s understanding of its own ceiling. At some point, that might well translate into the team commanding its destiny.

But when? I dunno. This coaching staff has markedly failed to teach the team to win numbers of games, even when they were in reach. How long it will take these guys to translate 52-0 against stiffs into a winning team mentality is anybody’s guess.

wv wrote:

It just looked like the Raiders WRs were easy to smother.

w
v

I mean, yes.

But that doesn’t account for the DEN game. And what I saw in both games was the effectiveness of aggressive challenges by our DBs on said WRs.

We give up so much with soft coverage. When we don’t do that, it is so much harder for the opposing QB to execute, and to avoid our pass rush.

I’d put it this way. Challenge good WRs and you may get burnt. You also demonstrably engage our pass rush.

Play soft, and you have no chance whatsoever of getting stops. None. We blitzed hell out of Rivers, allowed him to throw into empty zones, and gave up 400 yards a week AFTER containing and pressuring Manning and his WRs.

InvaderRam wrote:

haven’t watched the last 2 games, but it’s possible that we’re all witnessing a turning point for this team?

Could be. This team is so different from week to week
its hard for me to say.

I can tell you, i watched the Oakland game and == that was
virtually all Oakland, LoL. They were the worst
team I’ve seen since Jacksonville last year.
An inexperienced QB with no weapons.

Lets see if the Rams can actually beat two
bad teams in a row 🙂

w
v

wv wrote:

I can tell you, i watched the Oakland game and == that was
virtually all Oakland, LoL. They were the worst
team I’ve seen since Jacksonville last year.
An inexperienced QB with no weapons.

Lets see if the Rams can actually beat two
bad teams in a row

w
v

Oh, indeed. No question. They were just embarrassingly bad. Scott Linehan abysmal.

But here’s my thing. 52-0.

As I say above, if it’s 36-6, I say, “Poor opposition” and not much else.

But 52-0? That’s not easy to do. I don’t think even Scott Linehan lost that badly.

The Rams flashed something in that game.

I just dunno if they are capable of building on the flashes.

zn wrote:

wv wrote:
As i was watching replay, i noticed what a big difference
it makes in a game if the opposing team does not have
a Larry Fitzgerald or Dez Bryant type threat on the outside.

It just looked like the Raiders WRs were easy to smother.

w
v

And yet, the only team to put 40 or more on them this year was Denver … that score was 41-17.

Their lowest scores on offense — 6 to 13 at San Diego, 9 to 16 at New England.

It was like the Indy game last year.
Sometimes itz just yer day.

w
v