Rams show resilience with short-handed win over Raiders

LAS VEGAS, Nev. — For the better part of three quarters, the Rams looked like they were headed toward the kind of get-right performance that they needed after their dreary first six weeks of the season. A total win, with all three units playing as one.

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But the Las Vegas Raiders gave the Rams a fight, cutting what had been a 25-point lead down to 10. In the end, the Rams got their win, 35-21. And instead of that total victory, they instead got a showing of resilience that could be foundational for the team moving forward.

“I love the fact that we had to weather a little bit of adversity in the second half. Some self-inflicted wounds,” head coach Sean McVay said. “We gotta be able to build on it.”

Twice, the Rams (3-4) committed penalties inside the Raiders’ 5. The first, a hold on right guard Kevin Dotson. The second, a false start by tight end Davis Allen. But both drives ended in Allen touchdowns anyways.

Then after a Kyren Williams fumble, the defense forced a turnover on downs. And when a tipped-ball interception off tight end Colby Parkinson’s hands allowed the Raiders (3-4) to get within 10, the Rams offense responded with a 12-play, 70-yard drive that chewed 6:38 off the clock. It ended in a Blake Corum touchdown that put the game out of reach.

So, yes, the Rams made many of the same mistakes as the past six weeks. But they were able to overcome them, which might have been more encouraging than a clean slate.

“Proud of how we played off of each other,” quarterback Matthew Stafford said. “That’s what it takes, that resiliency and that ability to just bounce back from whatever happens and I think we showed that today.”

The first half offered a lot to be encouraged with, too. The defense – down five starters after Trent McDuffie (groin) was ruled out before kickoff – took away the Raiders’ run game and limited Kirk Cousins to 95 yards through the air.

And the offense, even without Davante Adams, looked like what the team envisioned entering the year.

A gnarly running attack, with offensive linemen rumbling 10 yards downfield to keep Williams and Corum going to the tune of 33 carries for 192 yards on the day. A death-by-a-thousand-cuts passing attack, with Stafford dissecting the Raiders with a 23-for-29 performance with 195 passing yards and three touchdown passes.

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After a three-and-out to start the game, the Rams put together four straight touchdown drives of 50 or more yards, including two of 80 and 81, respectively. They did it with a balanced attack, with 16 handoffs to 20 dropbacks in the first half before they went into clock management mode.

That balance paid dividends, allowing the Rams to activate their play-action passes and screen passes in a way that they have not been able to do up to this point this season. Stafford’s first touchdown pass came on a play action that allowed Allen to slip away unnoticed into the end zone for an easy touchdown.

“It felt great being able to have those consistent runs and then you know when a play-action is called you know, ‘Oh this is going to hit,’ because we’ve been doing the same thing,” center Coleman Shelton said. “So it felt good to be able to kind of marry our offense together and kind of get back to who we are.”

With Adams on injured reserve with a ruptured tendon in his hamstring, the Rams did not fall into the easy trap of overreliance on their other All-Pro receiver.

Yes, Nacua – playing through a calf injury suffered in practice Thursday – got his share of attention with eight receptions on 10 targets for 68 yards and a touchdown. And Konata Mumpfield was the only other receiver to get a target. And he only got two.

But the tight ends were heavily involved, with 14 targets and 11 receptions. Parkinson left the game twice with apparent lower-body injuries but returned both times to help grind out the win.

“If you guys knew the half of it,” Stafford said of what Parkinson is playing through. “You play a long time in this league and certain people just show up and keep showing up no matter what. And we got a bunch of those guys on this team and he’s one of them.”

And that’s what the Rams showed that could be a powerful lesson for them moving forward. Not perfection, but the grittiness to overcome mistakes that had sunk them in previous weeks. To play through injuries and still contribute to a win.

“It was a positive day and something that we got to build on because this is a long journey but I thought this was a good step in the right direction,” McVay said. “And you could feel that throughout the course of the week by the way the guys approached it.”

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