INGLEWOOD – If you only play once a week, you shouldn’t ever come into a game flat, right?
Read more Rams hit rock bottom with loss to Arizona Cardinals
So why was there such a weird vibe inside SoFi Stadium on Sunday? Why did the Rams seem, if not distracted, at least out of sync?
Could it be that the special teams issues dogging this team have bled into the rest of the roster, at least psychologically? For sure, they had a specific, if unexpected, impact in Sunday’s 18-16 loss to Arizona, a defeat that put the favorites to win this season’s Super Bowl at 2-4 and left them searching, again, to find answers before this thing spirals out of control.
The Rams released kicker Harrison Mevis after his 48-yard field goal attempt in overtime against Buffalo last Monday night was blocked. His replacement, Blake Grupe, kicked a 44-yard field goal in the first quarter Sunday – and then was hurt on the ensuing kickoff when he awkwardly tried to knock kick returner Devin Duvernay out of bounds and instead suffered a knee injury.
So the Rams were essentially without an experienced kicker for the remaining 54:41 Sunday. Punter Ethan Evans was pressed into service, but while he kicked an extra point at the end of the game – briefly putting the Rams ahead 16-15, after Colby Parkinson’s run to the pylon was ruled a touchdown on review with 47 seconds left – coach Sean McVay felt forced into a two-point conversion that failed on the Rams’ first score in the second quarter, and he also green-lighted two fourth-down attempts that failed in the second half.
“If we had our normal kicker, if we had a kicker healthy, then that would have changed the approach,” McVay said. “That was kind of what led to that.”
And Rams fans booed their own team twice. Once was at the end of the first half after McVay had used all three of his timeouts in the final minutes to get the ball back and, after a game-tying field goal by Arizona’s Chad Ryland, settled for two running plays. They didn’t try to get into position for a field goal because, well, you know.
The other boos came after the fourth-and-8 misfire in the fourth quarter. Maybe those were less of that moment and more a reaction to what really seemed a lackluster effort for most of the afternoon.
Maybe handing out replicas of the Rams’ 2021 championship rings Sunday was bad karma. Who knows?
But something just seems off.
“That’s obviously not what we want to put out there,” Puka Nacua said afterward, acknowledging that things just seemed flat. “I think … looking at myself most importantly. I know (with) being a vocal leader, especially on game day, and the attitude and excitement I feel like I know that this game of football brings to me, I could do a better job of being a light on the football field and just communicating with the guys. I think that’s something that we also can improve on, just our communication of what we’re seeing and so we can go out there and all execute and be in sync.”
The Rams’ defense couldn’t be held totally responsible here, but while all of the Cardinals’ points came on Chad Ryland field goals, from 34, 30, 22, 38, 27 and 43 yards, they resulted from possessions of 8, 10, 12, 15 and 14 plays, plus the five-play drive at the end of the game that resulted in Ryland’s winning field goal. Arizona had the ball for nearly 35 of the 60 minutes.
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Part of that game-winning drive? The first play was a 29-yard completion from Arizona quarterback Jacoby Brissett – accompanied by two Rams penalties, one on linebacker Josaiah Stewart for lining up offside that was declined and a 15-yard personal foul on cornerback Josh Wallace for unnecessary roughness that put the ball at the Rams’ 29 with 41 seconds left.
Sometimes a team looks lackluster because the opponent is dictating the action. And sometimes it’s because of its own sloppiness.
“I have to do a better job, figure out exactly how we settle guys down, but we’ve had some really critical errors at the really unfortunate times,” McVay said. “But that’s what our narrative has been for this year. And we can’t keep saying, ‘Oh, that we haven’t done that before.’ This year we are doing it. And so we have to be able to fix it, and it’s my job to do that.”
The good news? It’s still only Week 6.
“I know the guys that we have,” offensive guard Kevin Dotson said. “And I know what we are, the possibilities that we had on this team. … You know that they wouldn’t do this (stuff) on a regular practice or something like that. So when it happens in a game, you kind of just try to get past it. It’s not a thing that you want to hang your hat on because you know that’s not who you are.
“Don’t let that one play be the reason that you changed who you were.”
There was one aspect of Sunday’s game that kind of fits the profile of this year’s Rams: They saved their best for their final offensive drive, an eight-play, 86-yard drive in 2:48 that ended with Parkinson getting the ball over the goal line before his knee hit the turf, a play verified with an official review.
Consistency throughout a game has been an issue, but the Rams have been consistently good in fourth quarters this season. Fixing the other three is the issue … one of them, anyway.
“I thought our defense did enough to keep us in the game,” McVay said. But anytime that we’d string a little bit of momentum, we turn it over, we take a negative, we jump offsides on a fourth and three to put it to a fourth down and eight.
“We have to be able to not beat ourselves before we figure out how to even come away with some of the results.”
And yes, as is traditional, McVay acknowledged that it’s on him to fix things. But maybe it should be up to the players to self-reflect and figure out how they, too, can fix things.
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