What happened with Two-Two

But after the bye they scaled back on him.

He apparently applied himself in camp last summer and upped his game. Then  he got hurt and Robinson seemed to displace him.

He had 54 targets, 6 a game avg.,  before the bye. After the bye he missed 3 games, but then only had 13 targets in 5 games, 2.6 a game. That’s some serious back-scaling.

This is just speculation but…I think TA stepped up this season but McV still had to program him in in specific ways. He was good at what he did in 2023 but what he did was more limited than Robinson. When Robinson finally stepped up, he became the 3rd WR–after the bye he had 38 targets, or 5.4 a game. Just guessing, but it looks like at that point McV was just less interested in programming in “Atwell plays.”

wv wrote:

Yeah, Robinson’s emergence, did push tutu down to no.4-role-player, but he still was so much better than in the previous years.

Well I am just speculating here, but, the Rams had so many rookies that starting in OTAs they had to “build up the team,” teaching them how to practice, drill, and do the basics, and then slowly progressed to doing more. Rodrigue watched this happen and said that across those weeks she saw them go from learning how to do basic drills to actually performing the playbook as functional units in practice. This is Rodrigue on that:

They were so imperfect. My goodness, what they looked like when they arrived at OTAs in May — I’ve never seen anything like it. The coaches re-taught a group of 44 rookies and new arrivals how to do drills in May, so that they could have functional practices by June. … Growth occurred in small, quiet repeated actions and in failure — and there was a lot of that in the first weeks and even months. They kept showing up.

Maybe Atwell benefitted from doing that. Instead of being perpetually behind and not fully functional as an NFL WR in the first 2 years, he had a chance to start over and learn it all from the ground up.

I remember his first 2 years, he would often–and it was often–catch passes on the sideline and not be able to get both feet in. He clearly needed to work on that, among other things. I took that as him not being fully developed as a WR–other probems were less visible, but you could clearly see that not getting his feet in on sideline catches meant he was still undeveloped overall. But then he actually did do that in 2023 (feet in), after a couple of years of me complaining that he didn’t. Taking that as just one symbol of improvement, my guess is that he had a chance in his 3rd year to start from scratch and build himself up again, because the Rams had to treat the whole team that way.

Billy_T wrote:

The Rams have put together a really good coaching staff, but, with the exception of this past draft class, they’ve missed on too many draft picks.

We see that slightly differently, though I agree with everything you say on Atwell.

The Rams (except in 23) have been less good drafting when they’re in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. Though they are better in the 3rd round than in the 2nd. But they would not have even been competitive at all in 23 if they weren’t way, way above average picking in the lower rounds. There were like players producing in 23 that came from the lower rounds in 21 and 22. (For example every NT they’ve picked starting in 2017 has worked out–it’s 3 in a row).

Why the difference? I have a theory. I think that either McVay or the defensive coordinator or both get too involved in the 2nd round. They see favorites they want. (2 picks that perfectly illustrate that—Everett and Atwell).Then after the 2nd round their favorites matter less and the personnel staff dominates the discussions and choices. It’s an old complaint of mine–coaches can’t scout. But then if your head coach has a favorite in round 2, who has the authority to back him down? HOPEFULLY the Avilla pick is a sign of things to come and they improve a lot with the high picks (1 and 2) and improve a little in round 3 too, while also still being way way above average with the lower picks.