from off the net

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aeneas1

headed into the game arizona’s pass defense ranked 2nd best qb rating allowed, 3rd best in tds per pass attempt allowed, and best in interceptions per pass attempt – in short foles faced a tough pass d today. in fact the card’s defense ranked 4th best in offensive points allowed prior to today’s game, giving up an average of just 16.3 per game… also, the cards’ defense had given up just 4 offensive tds on the season, the rams scored 3 on them.

the rams’ offensive performance today was damn ugly for a lot of the game, but in the end they were able to score 24 points against a very tough defense, on the road no less

…

during fitzgerald’s presser he mentioned that the cards moved the ball well offensively against the rams defense, up and down the field, but could only do so between the 20s, couldn’t convert redzone opportunities into tds, instead the cards had to settle for field goals…

and he was right, the cards converted only 1 of 5 redzone opportunities into a td against the rams, which was especially frustrating for the cards given they were tops in the league in this category headed into the game, they had converted 11 of their 12 redzone opportunities into tds for a whopping 92% rate.

the flipside is the rams’ defense ranked 7th best in redzone td % allowed headed into the game, and their effort against the cards will put the defense around 3rd come tuesday morning, which is where the rams’ defense ranked last season, 3rd best in redzone td % allowed. in fact since fish has been head coach the rams have ranked in the top 10 every year when it comes to redzone td % allowed.

from off the net

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Prime Time

What Cardinals Fans Are Saying After Their Loss To The Rams

many of us are curious how the Cardinals fan base feels about the Rams now and how they explain their loss. In my reading on their many different forums this week, I found that for every goofy, troll-like post there are 2 or 3 members in a thread that will point it out. They’re the enemy but still a pretty good fan base.

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http://www.arizonasportsfans.com/vb/f4/quick-reactions-226781.html

Quick Reactions

* Hard to imagine the defense playing this poorly—worst game by them in a long time. Still can’t believe, however, that neither of the two Ram fumbles resulted in turnovers on the 5 yard line.

* Interesting that the Rams’ defense, which could put pressure on Palmer with a 4 man rush, threw blitz after blitz at Palmer. I thought I was watching a Todd Bowles defense against us.

* Clearly the offense looked intimidated by the Rams’ defense and so did BA whose third down and short calls were consistently questionable, as were some second half decisions to just kick the FGs. I think BA is going to rethink his choices in this game.

* Still can’t believe Carson Palmer threw 3 bad passes after the 2 minute warning—been so used to his accuracy. But—this is what relentless pressure can do, as we saw when Bowles was our DC.

* I think it was a mistake to start Iupati in this game and thought so at the time because his weakness in pass pro isn’t his man head on it’s on being quick enough to switch on twists and inside blitzes and Laurinaitus ate him up.

* Still can’t believe Larsen was made inactive. He should have been in there at the end when we need the best pass pro possible.

* Team MVP was Chandler Catanzaro—not only for his 5/5 FGs, but for making tackles on kickoffs, which remain another weakness, kick coverage.

* Still think there are better options on key third downs than passing to Jermaine Gresham. I hope I am proved wrong. But that play still bothers me the most. David Johnson missing the TD catch, I can attribute to inexperience and that the pass came out quicker than he expected. But the Gresham drop was at a time when the Cardinals could have taken the lead and control of the game. Was really surprised, to see BA concede that field position on 4th and 2 and go for the FG.

* I still maintain that for the Cardinals in 2012 draft, Tavon Austin, would have been better pick than G Jonathan Cooper. Yes, we have a good speed WR in John Brown, but Austin is so versatile and electric and imagine if we had them both. If BA had had Austin the last three years he would be a Pro Bowler by now.

* Still worried about the Cardinals lack of speed at LB all across the board. I would like to see Steve Keim make a trade—

* But two things stand out to me at this point: one is that Carson Palmer can’t keep getting hit like this or he is not going to last 16 games and two is that without edge pressure, QBs like Nick Foles can stand in the pocket and deliver even off double clutches.

* It should be interesting to see how the Cardinals respond this week. I think we will learn a lot. It sure looked like the team lost complete focus at the end of this game.

* Good performances from Fitzgerald (despite the fumble), Floyd, Chris Johnson, John Brown, Frostee Rucker, Calais Campbell, Patrick Peterson and Carson Palmer (save the late throwback bomb INT to John Brown, which is a throw that has to be made early, otherwise Brown will slow down and let the defense adjust as they did, and the rushed inaccurate three throws to end the game).
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Arians wet the bed in this game. What’s up with the 3 consecutive pass plays needing only two yards too keep game alive?
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Austin is garbage and has done nothing.
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7 catches for 96 yards and 2 scores while adding 20 rushing yards is far from garbage. And remember, his QB’s throughout his career have been Sam Bradfors, Kellen Clemens, Austin Davis, and Shawn Hill throwing at time for 2 seasons. Foles is the best QB he’s had in his short career.
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Now that he has an OC and a QB who seem to know how to create space for him—he is going to be tough for any team to defend.
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Yesterday was BA’s Birthday , did he over celebrate , I don’t know , but this was the worst prepared I have seen from BA or the team in his 37 games coached .
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Except for playing the Rams again, we will not face a better defense in my opinion. Glad in the perspective we got that first loss out of the way… just wish it would not have been at home against a divisional opponent lol
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The Seahawks are just as good if not better—but the Rams are loaded—CB Jenoris Jenkins is a stud, so is Laurinaitis—their safeties are tough and very under-rated—and their pass rush is the most talented, better than the Seahawks’.
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this is the first game I’ve ever been disappointed by an Arians team. I literally can’t remember another game I believed we should win hands down only to come out and lay such a huge egg.

sucks. Will be interesting to see how they respond on the road next week.
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If the Cards can play a game this badly and almost win that’s something.

There were 6 or 7 individual plays that if any one of them doesn’t happen we win this game.

Considering a FG wins this game if…

DJ doesn’t fumble the kickoff,
Fitz doesn’t fumble,
DJ catches the the TD pass,
The non called fumble ( what a BS call that was),
The fumble we didn’t recover (how did we not???),
Greshams drop ( may have turn 3 into 7),
and there is more.

Even with all the defensive breakdowns we still could and maybe even should have won this game.

Hats off to the Rams. They played a great game and were very opportunistic.

Let’s lick our wounds and rebound next week on the road. We are 3-1 and still lead the division. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s time to come back down to earth and accept the fact that we were not going to go through the whole season without a loss.

There have been games we made mistakes and learned from them but the didn’t cost us the game. And then there are games where you make mistakes and it cost us a loss.

This was one of those.
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Said this before, but you sound like Jeff Fisher. We mocked him for saying the same thing in his presser during the week.
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agreed.

and the whole “it says a lot that we almost won”… is this THREE YEARS AGO, when we didn’t expect to win games? We just played a thoroughly mediocre team at home and lost. All that says to me is we laid a huge freaking egg and wasted an opportunity to go to 4-0 overall, 4-0 in the conference and 2-0 in the division. Nothing about that makes me feel good in any way shape or form.

this was a pretty pathetic loss to a pretty mediocre team. that’s all. gotta get it back and going next week.
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If this were Detroit(say what you want but they still have a potent offense), Baltimore, Pittsburgh, or Seattle then I’m with you but it was the Rams. A team that scored a combined 16 points the previous 2 games. It’s a bitter pill to swallow and now I know how Seattle feels.
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I can see why you might say that. However, they spoke of one play in one game and one play in another game. I’m pointing out seven or eight plays in ONE game.

As I said , hats off to the Rams. They beat us and they have beaten the Seahawks so kudos to them.

The key to beating most teams is turnovers. The Rams simply do not have the offense for the long run without getting help with turnovers. I believe we have the ability to do just that, however, today we didn’t.

The cream will rise to the top…and it will be red and white.
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The Rams are a different offense this year—they just need time to settle into their new schemes and QB—but with a bell cow RB in Gurley, a game changer in Tavon Austin and a top TE in Cook, once their young o-line settles in, their offense could be very good.

The Cardinals failed to rattle Nick Foles—that was a big reason why they won.

On the other hand, the Rams threw the kitchen sink at Palmer and while Palmer was one tough cookie, he and the offense couldn’t finish drives or the big drive at the end of the game.

Tavon Austin, Todd Gurley spark Rams’ offense

Nick Wagoner

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/22084/tavon-austin-todd-gurley-spark-rams-offense

GLENDALE, Ariz. — A look at three St. Louis Rams players who were “up” and one who was “down” in Sunday’s 24-22 win against the Arizona Cardinals:

UP

CB Janoris Jenkins: After Arizona worked the short passing game for most of the first half, quarterback Carson Palmer finally took a deep shot midway through the second quarter. But Jenkins was ready. He ran step for step with wideout John Brown and made a leaping interception that he initially pinned against his helmet before hauling in. It’s the second week in a row with an interception for Jenkins, who also had five tackles and two pass breakups.

WR Tavon Austin: To the surprise of no one, the Rams’ offense couldn’t generate much for most of the day, especially in the first half. But Austin again flashed some of the game-changing ability that the Rams desperately need. He had a 12-yard touchdown catch for the team’s first score and a 47-yard grab set up the team’s first field goal. He finished with 96 yards on six catches and 20 yards on two carries with two touchdowns.

RB Todd Gurley: Hello, Gurley. The Rams’ rookie burst on the scene with 19 carries for 146 yards and had two catches for 15 more yards. In the process, he helped Austin rouse a slumbering offense and provided hope that he is exactly the spark the Rams need on offense moving forward.

DOWN

TE Jared Cook: Once again, Cook had a few costly drops and missed out on some opportunities to make key plays at important times. On one Rams drive late in the first half, quarterback Nick Foles floated a pass for him in the corner of the end zone. Covered by 5-foot-9 Arizona safety Tyrann Mathieu, the 6-5 Cook had it above Mathieu’s head but the safety knocked it away. It was a good play by Mathieu but also one that Cook should make given his size advantage. Cook’s maddening inconsistency continues and leaves one to wonder what he’ll have to do to have his snaps reduced.

Cal wrote:

I thought Saffold stunk against Pitt. But maybe I just noticed a couple of bad plays. Does anyone know what PFF thought of his performance in that game.

The guy has had so many injuries and looks so bad this year that I am starting to wonder if those injuries have had some impact on his effectiveness.

I think missing most of the pre-season is what had the major effect on him. It’s the exact same thing, as I see it, that we saw early in 2014. A few OL players were not practicing and really, the first time they played together as a unit was game 1. They were out of sync and it showed.

PFF has a low grade on RS so far this season.

InvaderRam wrote:

although now i worry about saffold.

Saffold missed a lot of time this summer. But he has been very effective before. He’s slow out of the gate this year for obvious reasons. When that happens IMO you (ie. generic “you”) just wait for him to get his game back.

Rams will try to top the talk in Arizona

Jim Thomas

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football/professional/rams-will-try-to-top-the-talk-in-arizona/article_79933f00-19d4-551a-8e28-50327c592ac1.html

Blunt-talking Bruce Arians couldn’t resist rubbing the Rams’ noses in it late last season when his Arizona Cardinals won a Thursday night slugfest 12-6. His one-two punch in his postgame press conference went as follows:

“Everybody that wanted to talk all that stuff about how great their defense is, I think they saw a good defense tonight. It was in red and white.”

Ouch! And he followed that with:

“I love it when nobody says you’re gonna have a chance to win. There’s an 11-3 team, and a team that’s always 8-8. You figure it out.”

Double ouch!

At the time, the Rams were coming off back-to-back shutouts of Oakland and Washington. As for the Cardinals, they were en route to an 11-5 record and a wild-card playoff berth — doing so despite the absence of star quarterback Carson Palmer for 10 games due to injury.

In a sense, not that much has changed as the NFC West foes renew their rivalry Sunday in Glendale, Ariz. Kickoff is 3:25 p.m. (St. Louis time) at University of Phoenix Stadium.

The Cardinals, with a healthy Palmer, are 3-0 and one of the NFL’s hottest teams.

As for the Rams (1-2), well, they haven’t even been 8-8 since 2006, so maybe Arians — now in his third season as Big Red coach — was being too kind.

Save for a bad first half in Washington, the Rams’ defense has played well. As for the offense? After a promising opening-day performance against Seattle, it has degenerated to milk carton status. That’s right, disappeared.

Arians’ comments were in circulation this week, and several Rams defenders were aware of them during the practice week at Rams Park. But most declined to nibble when reminded.

Any thoughts on Arians’ remarks, coach Jeff Fisher?

“No, none whatsoever,” Fisher said evenly, with his best poker face. “He’s an outstanding coach. They’ve got one of the top teams in the NFC, and that’s a great challenge for us.”

How about you, linebacker James Laurinaitis?

“He’s entitled to his opinion,” Laurinaitis replied.

Do you have an opinion?

“I do have an opinion,” Laurinaitis said. “I will keep it to myself.”

But defensive tackle Michael Brockers elaborated on what many on the probably team felt.

“When somebody takes a shot like that, at your team, you try not to look into it,” Brockers said. “But deep inside, it’s a little fire in you saying, ‘OK, I’ve got to get these guys back.’

“We haven’t taken any shots at them, any shots in the media at all. We have a lot of respect for them, to be honest with you. We’ll see Sunday who’s the better team. If it’s them, it’s them. If it’s us, it’s us.”

Almost universally, most people outside the confines of Rams Park expect Arizona to be the better team Sunday.

“We really don’t care about those people,” said Rams tight end Jared Cook. “All the naysayers and the negatives, we don’t even condone any of that. We don’t put any of that in our head.”

But who wouldn’t feel that way on the outside? The Cardinals are firing on all cylinders.

Coming off a 47-7 crush job of San Francisco, Bill Bidwill’s Big Red have scored 126 points in three games. Not only does that point total lead the NFL, it’s tied for fourth-most in league history after three games.

They have scored 40 points in back-to-back games for the first time since 1969, when Charley Winner was the coach, Charley Johnson and Jim Hart were the quarterbacks, and Busch Stadium was home.

Palmer has won his last nine starts, wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald is one of the league’s hottest pass-catchers, and the Arizona secondary — AKA the “No Fly Zone” — already has seven interceptions with three returned for touchdowns.

“I’ve said it before, they’re playing at a really high level right now,” Cook said. “So we have to get our minds right to go in there and do something to disrupt that. We know it’s not gonna be easy.”

“They have a lot of weapons,” Brockers said. “Those guys are good, so we’ve gotta bring our ‘A’ game. I think if we can win this game, it’ll bump our confidence up.”

The Rams have reason to take at least some degree of confidence into the game. They’ve played the Cardinals pretty tough in recent seasons; Fisher’s Rams are 3-3 against them.

The Cardinals swept the season series in 2014, with that 12-6 contest last Dec. 11 in St. Louis preceded by a 31-14 loss at Arizona on Nov. 9. But Arizona led by just 17-14 midway through the fourth quarter in that one before the Cardinals returned an Austin Davis interception and a Davis fumble for touchdowns to close out the game.

“We feel we’ve played these guys very hard the last few times we’ve played ’em defensively,” Laurinaitis said. “When we were down there last time, we really got after ’em.

“We feel very confident on how we match up to them. And it’s a division game. You don’t need any motivation. When you play anybody in the division, it’s time to roll, and things get more intense.”

But if the Rams needed any additional motivation, there are always those words from Arians last time they met.

“I try not to really read into press conferences and newspaper articles too much,” said defensive end William Hayes, one of the Rams’ elder statesmen at age 30. “We’ll just see Sunday. Our goal is go out there and be the best defense on the field. And I’m pretty sure they’ll say the same goal. So we’re just gonna go out there and play good, solid football.”

And see who’s talking afterwards.

Rams keeping focus on preventing big play against Cardinals

Nick Wagoner

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/22058/rams-keeping-focus-on-preventing-big-play-against-cardinals

PHOENIX — A look three things to watch when the St. Louis Rams play the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday at 4:25 p.m. ET at University of Phoenix Stadium:

1. Staying underneath: Three weeks into the season, the Rams defense is allowing opposing quarterbacks to complete 81.6 percent of their passes. Without question, that’s an eye-popping number for a defense that has been expected to carry the load in the early part of the season. While that number will certainly drop (it almost has to), the Rams actually don’t mind it so much, especially when playing dynamic offenses like Pittsburgh or this week’s opponent, Arizona.

The reason? Well, the Rams aren’t allowing big plays down the field, instead relying on the pass rush to force the ball out quick and make tackles short of the sticks. Last week, Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had just four incompletions on 24 attempts but his yards per dropback came in at just 6.3. That was a big step back from the 13.67 he had the previous week against San Francisco and the 8.45 he had in the opener against New England. The result was a Pittsburgh offense that didn’t have a passing play over 20 yards and the only one going that long was a catch-and-run by running back Le’Veon Bell.

Antonio Brown
The Rams have kept opposing offenses bottled up by making them throw the ball quickly.
With that in mind, don’t be surprised if the Rams take a similar approach against Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer and his offense. Palmer enters the game fourth in the league in yards per attempt (9.4) and won’t hesitate to take shots down the field. That means the Rams will probably again try to force him to get rid of the ball quick and make the Cardinals dink and dunk their way down the field.

2. Finding big plays: On the other side of the ball, the Rams find themselves in a position where they must attempt to do offensively what they’re trying to stop defensively. In the season opener against Seattle, the Rams had eight plays of 20-plus yards so even when they struggled to run the ball, they were able to get yards in big chunks and put points on the board.

Over the past two weeks, the Rams have had a total of three plays of 20-plus yards. That wouldn’t be a big deal if they were running the ball with any consistency but they aren’t. The Rams are 29th in the league in rushing and still adapting to new zone concepts in the running game. Although they insist they’re close to a breakthrough, it probably won’t come this week against an Arizona team that is tied for fourth in the league in rushing yards per attempt allowed at 3.45.

Putting the ball in the air against opportunistic defensive backs such as Patrick Peterson and Tyrann Mathieu can be a dangerous proposition, but the Rams will have to lean on the passing game if they want to get the chunk plays needed to reach the end zone.

3. Scoring other ways: If you’re picking up on a theme here about the Rams finding a way, any way, to score more points, well you should be. They’ve averaged eight points per game over the past two weeks. Is that surprising? No, not really. Most expected the offense to struggle with so many moving parts early in the season. Though perhaps the Rams’ offensive struggles have been greater than expected.

But if the offense can’t do it that means we have to unfairly put even more of a burden on the defense and special teams to make something happen, right? Well, yeah. It’s asking a lot of the defense and/or special teams to come up with a touchdown every week but that’s the world the Rams live in right now. In three games, they have one such touchdown, a punt return from Tavon Austin in the opener. It might not be a coincidence that that stands as the only game the team has won so far.

Palmer and the Cardinals generally do a good job of taking care of the ball, but there might be some opportunities for Austin if the Cardinals actually kick to him. It’s a small sample size, but Arizona has allowed an average of 19.67 yards per punt return on three tries in the first three weeks. Logic says they won’t give Austin a chance but if there’s a mishit, perhaps he can again make a play that changes the game.

InvaderRam wrote:

. they could have stayed strictly with a man blocking scheme.

That’s assuming the zone scheme never works out.

Because if it does, then, using a lot of zone is just..,again…doing something early that they might struggle at at first in order to set up something good longterm.

If they abandon the zone scheme, I would both say you’re right AND nice try Rams.

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InvaderRam wrote:

ag makes a good point about preseason preparation. i don’t think they took the optimal route. the oline should have played more snaps together.

With all due respect, I don’t see it that way. And of course this is all just opinion and mine is, I think that whole issue is a molehill.

I think when teams lose, we dredge up a million reasons why, and we all have our favorites.

These coaches have had lines ready for the season before. Between Fisher and Boudreau, that’s 4 decades of combined experience fielding OLs.

IMO nothing would have changed or mitigated the fact that an OL this inexperienced would struggle at first. No different policy here, no change there, would have made any difference. No coach in the NFL would have found a way to make it any easier or better.

For example, this is the best explanation (from a reporter) I have heard to switching Saffold and Brown—that that was the plan all along. Saffold was always going to be the right OG. BUT during OTAs, they kept him over their for the time being to help Robinson out.

And who’s to say that was the better or worse thing to do?

In terms of center, Barnes is the one Rams lineman getting consistently good grades in live action so far. Rotating centers just did not set him back.

So personally, I just don’t see any fatal flaws in their approach to fielding a young OL. In fact truth is, they are doing better than I expected.

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Zooey wrote:

Now you may say that flies in the face of the “fast start” talk in preseason, and I respond by saying, “Big deal.” I don’t care

That talk, pointedly, was all about the defense…at least when it came from THEM.

I don’t think the team itself ever pretended that a young line would be optimal right off.

And of course, fast start talk by the defense made perfect sense. The defense itself started slow in 2014, largely because the team did not know the system, but also—and this is me—because Wms had never before taken over a new unit and installed his system in the new conditions dictated by the CBA.

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