From https://www.therams.com/news/top-rams-news-previews-predictions-rams-at-lions-week-1-2024

• All five of NFL.com’s analysts have picked the Lions to beat the Rams on Sunday Night Football. Read why Brooke Cersosimo chose Detroit here.
• One of the seven Sports Illustrated/The MMQB’s staffers, Conor Orr, picked the Rams to win in the season opener. All of their Week 1 predictions can be seen here.
• Of ESPN’s 11 experts, one chose the Rams to come out on top in Week 1: Seth Wickersham. Picks for every game can be viewed here

The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue on QB Matthew Stafford and C Jonah Jackson’s dynamic and returning to Detroit

“Do I feel the crowd? Yeah, I feel the crowd, 100 percent. Motivating factor. Love it. I’m one of the guys that walks into the opposing stadium and everybody has their headphones on, I don’t. I want to hear all of it. I want to smell it. I want to feel like it’s football. And that’s a part of football, especially going to an away game. That stuff just motivates me.” – Matthew Stafford

ESPN’s Sarah Barshop on Rams players remembering last year’s playoff loss at Ford Field

“Anybody that has something to prove, anybody that didn’t get a chance to do what they did in that last game, we have every opportunity to do what we want to in [Week 1].” – Quentin Lake

LA Times’ Gary Klein on the Rams’ rookie kicker, Joshua Karty, embracing the pressure in his debut

“Why not just jump straight into the deep end? I definitely like high-energy environments. It’s just a lot of fun.” – Joshua Karty

LA Daily News’ Adam Grosbard on Puka Nacua staying grounded after huge rookie season

“He’s a special dude. I know there’s a lot of things that he’s navigating and going from a fifth-round pick to having the success he had so quickly. But he’s done a great job of that.” – Cooper Kupp

Los Angeles Rams@RamsNFL
“Wherever they need me, I’m ready.” Jonah Jackson set to start at center against the Lions.

They started off slow last year too. Part of that was K Wms being out 4 games but he was not out in the opening 3 games. The first 3 games include a win at Seattle, but then 2 losses to SF and the Bengals. They ended up going 3-6 before the bye, but regrouped at the bye to go 6-1 in the 7 games where the starters played (they didn’t play the starters in the final game).

Now they’re on the road against a tough opponent and here’s what they’re missing:

CB: Wms is out we don’t know yet if Durant can play. Update via edit: Durant is playing.

ILB: They’re replacing Jones, probably with Reeder

One thing is that the CB/ILB situation could be lessened if the Rams rely heavily on their safety rotation. They are deep and talented at safety.

OL: Jackson is out, Hav might be out,  and they’re shifting things around at center.

If the relplacement OL can hold up, they could be the offense we knew from the 2nd half of last year. But if anything, deeper at WR and RB. It’s hard to say what replacing the OTs and then also experimenting at center will do to their cohesiveness, but they absolutely do have the firepower. Plus I hear that that Mort Stafford guy is a good qb.

If the young front 7 players on the DL and at edge can rise up in game 1, and like I said if they fill in the gaps by deploying multiple safeties, they could surprise us on D.

If not, it could be another situation like last year where maybe they’re not firing on all cylinders at first until they get a few guys back and then re-group at the bye—and re-grouping at the bye is something this team is good at doing. This year the bye comes earlier btw

Then they will smoke the league like a processed meat product being abruptly heated in some fashion.

…

Read the latest injury update in this thread: injury situation going into game 1…including, Darious Wms out

It is already starting to look like this is one of the years where the Rams will have to regroup at the bye.

Zooey wrote:

Uh…okay. McVay was a big part of the problem there. But McVay isn’t a “domineering head coach” who put “training wheels” on Stafford, so maybe Goff’s problem in LA was not just that his coach didn’t trust him. There were reasons the coach didn’t trust him.

I don’t agree actually. McVay was openly and derisively impatient with Goff once he became the de facto qb coach starting in 2019. He was pushing Goff into doing certain things that he, McVay, wanted to do, and Goff wasn’t really ready for or especially adept at doing. It was a confidence issue, which led a former Rams coach, who I am pretty sure was Zak Taylor, to say that McV knew how to tear Goff down but not how to build him back up. And McV did put training wheels on him–that was the whole talking into the helmet thing, that New England took advantage of in that super bowl, where Goff just didn’t know how to respond to the new and unexpected things the defense was showing him.

The difference in Detroit was that Goff and Johnson built the passing  game together around Goff’s strengths and the things Goff liked to do, so that was a case study in confidence building.

The difference in LA was that McV was always going to respect the long time veteran Stafford, so they have both described their relationship as collaborative.

Another coach, in 2019, would have built around the qb’s strengths. McV instead was basically saying “keep up! why can’t you keep up?” I mean, you know, we’ll see about Bennett, but so far in his career McV has never developed a young qb. In 2017 and 2018, both years, he had accomplished and very involved qb coaches who could mediate between the qb and McVay. One of those was Zak Taylor, the coach I mentioned as saying McV worked against Goff’s confidence. After 2019 McV became the de facto qb coach though, and I think it made a difference.

After 2022 McV talked about how he fell into bad habits that season and he had to rethink how he did things, and I think the signs are that losing the way they did that year brought out his worst kinds of impatience and his habit of riding people. I think he was doing that with Goff in 2019 and 2020, and then crashed into that tendency of his in 2022 and had to reinvent how he approached coaching. Which he obviously did, and that’s part of what makes him great. It took a bad year for that to happen, but still, some guys actually don’t learn from bad years, so that’s to McV’s credit.

In terms of qb comparisons, Goff is a very good qb and Stafford is a HOF level qb. And I defended the trade the minute it happened. My take was that Goff at that stage of his development was not in a good “marriage” with McV at that stage in his development. With a bad marriage, you move on, and I thought that Stafford would work better with McV. McV didn’t have to develop Stafford, if anything he would benefit from listening to him. Which I think is what happened and I think this is an especially good HC/qb marriage.

Rams Bros.@RamsBrothers
Byron Young: played 917 defensive snaps in 2023, the most by a rookie defender in the Next Gen Stats era (since 2016).

Kobie Turner (now a team captain): played 660 defensive snaps in 2023, over 100 more than any other rookie DT.

Can’t wait to see what these two do in year 2, with Verse and Fiske by their sides (stats per
@NFLPlus)

Jourdan Rodrigue, from:
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5738891/2024/09/04/los-angeles-rams-observations-preview-week-1/?the best of an already tough situation.

Players/coaches/topics we aren’t talking about enough

Because the Rams so outperformed expectations in 2023 with a relatively unknown group, I have decided we should probably get ahead of a couple players and coaches people should be talking about:

• Avila. I think the second-year lineman has a real shot at cementing himself among the best in the NFL this season.

• Jordan Whittington. The rookie receiver was my sleeper way back in the spring, and will clearly factor into the offense in some way this season (though isn’t a lead target). Whittington was a former running back whose catch-and-run ability is more fullback-like, if a fullback was also pretty dang fast.

• Eric Yarber, receivers coach. Can this veteran coach get more attention for churning out receiver after receiver who McVay couldn’t have dreamed up any better for his system over the years?

• Ryan Wendell, offensive line coach. Wendell’s work with not one, but three potential starting centers this summer is notable as was his management of backups Warren McClendon and Joe Noteboom at the tackle spots when the starters got hurt.

• Aubrey Pleasant, pass game coordinator/defensive backs coach. People ask me every year, “who is the next coach to ascend out of McVay’s staff?” This year or in the coming years, I believe it’s Pleasant — who is, at the very least, on a defensive coordinator track.

• Braden Fiske. I didn’t want to make a big deal about how Fiske was moving in the early days of camp because players didn’t have pads on. His hands were right, and so were his feet. When pads went on and later when the Rams got into joint practices, it became clear that Fiske could match his technique with power, speed, and a tenacity that will probably irritate offensive linemen over time. Fiske rarely finishes a practice without one of his pants/tights getting ripped to shreds because he just doesn’t stop churning his legs through blocks. Am I now making too big of a deal about the rookie second-rounder? Probably. But when he pairs with first-round pick Jared Verse (who also very much looks the part), you can see why the Rams’ staff was so excited to get them together.

• How much the Rams like all three of their running backs (Kyren Williams, Blake Corum and Ronnie Rivers) and all three of their tight ends (Colby Parkinson, Davis Allen, Hunter Long).

• The run defense minus Aaron Donald. I believe the Rams will find ways to get pressure, but I remain skeptical about how the smaller-sized, still-developing group will fare against physical running schemes, particularly those they will face in their first three games this season (Lions, Cardinals, 49ers).

Jourdan Rodrigue, from:
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5738891/2024/09/04/los-angeles-rams-observations-preview-week-1/?source=emp_shared_article

Offensive line concerns

The position the Rams put so much money into this spring is in question out of the gate because of injuries and left tackle Alaric Jackson’s suspension. With more help needed on the left side in the interim, coaches moved Steve Avila back to left guard early last week and installed Jonah Jackson at center (where Avila had been working since the spring). I started asking into this topic with sources in Houston at joint practices, when I spotted rookie center Beaux Limmer also getting a shot with the first-team. There’s no complaint about Avila’s play at center. No, this is all about figuring out how best to help vulnerable positions (left and right tackle) with Alaric Jackson and possibly Rob Havenstein out and which combinations work best in that regard. Jonah Jackson wasn’t back from a shoulder injury when Limmer repped in, which is why the Rams couldn’t test him at center until last week. But this has been in discussion since the two tackles respectively hurt their ankles (and reiterated when the Rams received news of the suspension). Jackson told me on Monday that he’s been trying to get back to playing center, which he calls a “natural” position for him, for a little while now and hopes to seize this as an opportunity.

My suspicion, too, is that Avila’s return to left guard is in part motivated by how much of the screen game he activates — he is truly gifted in that phase — combined with the fact that keeping that element in the playbook also helps counter pressure. Is it ideal to be shuffling this much so close to the season opener in Detroit? No. But injuries and absences aren’t, either, and my read of all of this is that the Rams are trying to make the best of an already tough situation.

Havenstein was able to take part in at least some of the individual drills Monday, but head coach Sean McVay wasn’t sure at that time whether he can play Sunday night and said they would use every day they have to determine that.

Speaking of which …

One under-the-radar offensive line story from camp? Logan Bruss, the oft-injured and embattled former third-round draft pick, finally seems to have put things together. One of my favorite moments of camp was after the first preseason game, when I caught Bruss smiling and dancing to practice music as the offensive line stretched and warmed up. I don’t think I’d seen Bruss smile at practice in his first two years in Los Angeles. His growing confidence is apparent, and offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur took notice, too.

“He just hasn’t stopped. When it looked like it maybe was not going to work out for him, and he knows that, he just kept pushing through and those are the really cool ones right there, where you’re not sure. The player’s not sure,” said LaFleur. “Which you never want as a coach to see a player have to go through that. For him to just keep battling last year behind the scenes (and) on the practice squad, doing it in the scout team fashion then to be able to get his opportunities.”

Bruss has backed up Kevin Dotson at right guard.