J.B. Long@JB_Long
Probably something only I find interesting, but…
In descending order of snap counts from their most recent win, Rams defense by Draft position:

6th Rd
College Free Agent
4th Rd
CFA
1st Rd
3rd Rd
3rd Rd
7th Rd
CFA
2nd Rd
4th Rd
CFA
CFA
3rd Rd
CFA
CFA
CFA
6th Rd
3rd Rd
3rd Rd

2 games is not a lot to judge by, but just like last year it seems the Rams stepped up after their bye.

Here’s an example.

Before the bye, their pressure allowed rate averaged out to 29.1%.

After the bye, it’s 10.05%.

There’s a lot of factors in that.

* stabilizing the OL, including replacing Bruss with Dedich

* getting Kupp and Nacua back

* defensive improvement, which obviously helps the offense

* the Rams just have a knack for self-scouting and adjusting at the bye…it’s a McVay thing.

Brandom Thorne, I think, posted this … I am just getting to it.

Justin Dedich throws double arrows under the DT armpit, and torque him the way the DT wanted to go, then takes to ground

watch feet = foot fire pic.twitter.com/IBW5AzSJzc

— Jim Youngblood 53 (@53_jim70721) October 28, 2024

the 3-tech has leverage on Justin Dedich — uses left arm pillar to keep 52's momentum going

There is no way 52 should have lost this rep, but he did. Dedich didn't let him fall back pic.twitter.com/CPpNwJNzYc

— Jim Youngblood 53 (@53_jim70721) October 28, 2024

OMG

That did NOT happen.

That absolutely did NOT happen!

Absolutely unbelievable

pic.twitter.com/FJaapBeSum

— Rich Eisen (@richeisen) October 27, 2024

Bills slaughtered the Seahawks. Didn’t see the game, just saw the stats. They both ran the ball all over Seattle  and killed the Seattle run game, plus shut them down on 3rd downs. Time of possession: Bills dominant, 38:03 to 21:57.

zn wrote:

The Lions and Eagles games aside, every single other early game has the losing team driving in the final minute or less, within reach of the win.

Result?

Cardinals, Patriots, and Browns pulled out the win. Packers, Texans, and Falcons held on.

Brett Kollmann@BrettKollmann
Detroit currently has 52 points, and 55 net passing yards.

The last team to put up 50+ points with less than 100 passing yards was the Bears….in 1955.

Best young DL in football @RamsNFL pic.twitter.com/atVIpwocYk

— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) October 25, 2024

…

Dare

Shula is using Verse as a true OLB not simply as an edge. If he played edge fulltime his production would make him a lock for defensive ROY. But Shula is trying to develop him into a well rounded OLB not simply a pass rushing specialist. He’s doing the same with Young and it’s working. The OL doesn’t know if only one is rushing or if both are coming.

The bottom line is that the defense is aggressive and exciting to watch. They were beating up a decent OL of the Vikings. Their contain of  the qb was better than earlier games as well, which doesn’t bode well for Purdy and Murray.

The Ram pass defense is ranked 18th in the NFL and improving. It’s their early season issues with the run that drags the total defense ranking down to 22nd. I think by the end of the season the defense will be ranked in the top half of the NFL.

wv wrote:

Geez, have you guyz watched the Jared Verse mic-d up vid. Quite the trash talker.

Matthew Stafford’s best throws from 4-TD game vs. Vikings | Week 8

"You could see the gap between Stafford and a guy I love, Sam Darnold."@ColinCowherd reacts to Rams' 30-20 win over Vikings pic.twitter.com/lDiocB6vHM

— Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) October 25, 2024

Anatomy of a Play: Matthew Stafford Used His Brain and His Arm for a Major Touchdown Pass
Matthew Stafford of the Rams combines arm talent and football smarts as few quarterbacks ever can, and it burned the Vikings on one big play.

Doug Farrar

https://athlonsports.com/nfl/los-angeles-rams/matthew-stafford-demarcus-robinson-vikings-brian-flores

Now that the Minnesota Vikings have dropped two straight games after a 5-0 start to the season, and Brian Flores’ usually amazing defense has looked far more mortal over that time, there are some who are worried that the rest of the NFL has “figured out” Flores’ petri dishes of evil pass-rush and coverage switches pre- and post-snap, and this team will be a paper tiger from here on out.

In truth, what the losses to the Detroit Lions and the Los Angeles Rams really showed is that if you want to beat Flores’ defense, you need a quarterback who can read a defense like first-period French in 0.1 seconds, the arm talent to exploit those football smarts, and a chemistry with a play-caller that lets the quarterback play both in and out of structure.

The Vikings just got charred by two of the very few quarterbacks who have all those attributes — Jared Goff in a 31-29 nail-biter on October 20, and Matthew Stafford in Thursday night’s 30-20 Rams win that was uglied up by one of the worst calls you’ll see all season from one of many officiating crews that shouldn’t be allowed to wear stripes to manage third-grade recess.

That debacle aside, the most consequential play of the game may have been Stafford’s 25-yard touchdown pass to receiver DeMarcus Robinson with 2:40 left in the third quarter. The Vikings were up 17-14 at this point, and while there were cracks in Minnesota’s defense against a version of Stafford making effortlessly ridiculous throws all over the field at SoFi Stadium, this may have been the killer.

And it came about from something Stafford said to Robinson in the huddle before the play.

Before this play, the Vikings had played man coverage on just one of Stafford’s 34 passing attempts — this 14-yard in-and-up to Puka Nacua with 13:29 left in the first half.

So it was highly interesting that Stafford had a sense he’d see it again here.

“It was kind of a designed little choice route inside for Cooper [Kupp], but to be honest with you, there’s something that happened in the huddle before the snap,” Stafford said postgame. “I’m like ‘Hey, D-Rob. we may be alive on this,’ and just felt like we might catch man coverage. They’d been doing a bunch of show man, drop [into] zone the whole game, trying to keep it in front of them, and I felt like they might get aggressive there, and they did. And then he did a hell of a job going and making a play. That’s what D-Rob does. He makes plays for us, and when his number was called, he made it tonight.”

Both plays were against Cover-1, and on the Robinson touchdown, it was Josh Metellus as the deep safety as opposed to Cameron Bynum, who was the deep-third guy on the Nacua catch. Metellus is a good overall player, but he’s lined up at free safety on just 37 of his 432 snaps this season, and there are reasons for that. When Stafford saw cornerback Shaquill Griffin pressed up on Robinson with questionable help up top, that probably reinforced his theory.

Rams head coach Sean McVay pointed to the Rams’ ability to deal with the Vikings’ pressure concepts, and a reduced rate of blitzes, as a factor in how Minnesota might have wanted to go for something different on this play.

“Early on, they did it a little bit but they didn’t pressure nearly as much as they had shown on tape,” McVay said of the expected blitz stuff. “I thought Stafford was hot from the jump. They slowed that down and really they didn’t pressure a whole lot in general. They brought the pressure at the end… but for the most part they didn’t do nearly as much as what they had shown. Coach Flores does a great job mixing it up, but I thought we were able to really get run, pass, keep the ball in play. I thought even being able to push the ball down the field because our offensive line was holding up, even if we didn’t hit it, it ended up loosening things up. The big play was DeMarcus Robinson’s touchdown on the go ball down the far sideline. They played a man coverage, caught him right there. I thought Stafford played really well, and I loved his response.”

All the Vikings could do was to tip their collective caps, and move on to next week. Sometimes, no matter how good you are, the guy you’re facing just has a bit more on the ball in the most important moment.

InvaderRam wrote:

verse early favorite for droy. turner last year third place finish. nacua runner up oroy last year. some good drafting by the rams.

Plus in 2023/24, 4 out of 7 combined 6th rounders are contributing players this season: Ethan Evans, Karty, Limmer, Whittington. Evans may be better than Hekker was.

To understate it a bit, teams don’t usually have a 57% hit rate in round 6.