Things continue to get worse for the Rams’ struggling offensive line. After another horrifying performance against Pittsburgh on Sunday, the team has announced it’ll be without two starters up front for Week 11. Rob Havenstein has been ruled out for Sunday and could be out for a few weeks, while, starting center Brian Allen has is out for the remainder of the season.
For the first two years of Sean McVay’s tenure as head coach, the Rams rolled out a healthy and reliable offensive line. Not a single starter missed significant time as the offense rolled to back-to-back NFC West titles. The offensive line was the engine that kept the offense rolling.
In Year 3, the Rams have fielded the NFL’s worst offensive line, and the offense has struggled mightily as a result. They’ve gone from one of the most feared offensive units in the NFL to one of the league’s most exploitable and turnover-prone. The difference between McVay’s 2018 and 2019 offenses is night and day.
Injuries have devastated this offensive line. Still, they were bad before the injuries, and they’ll likely continue to be bad in the weeks ahead. The players deserve blame for their poor play. But the front office and the coaching staff deserve more of the blame for actually thinking this would work.
Stability and consistency were staples of the Rams offensive line in 2017 and 2018. Six players started meaningful games for the Rams in that stretch: Andrew Whitworth, Roger Saffold, John Sullivan, Rob Havenstein, and Jamon Brown, who was replaced by Austin Blythe in 2018. They weren’t a perfect unit, but it was rare that they’d be the reason the Rams lost a game, even with Sullivan’s slump in 2018. Jared Goff and Todd Gurley were comfortable playing behind that unit, which allowed Mcvay to unleash the offense he wanted to run.
The Rams chose to break up this unit. It wasn’t forced upon them, it was a choice. The decisions to move on from Sullivan and Saffold were financial ones. Sullivan wasn’t worth the money he was owed, but as far as we’re aware, the Rams made no attempt to bring him back on a cheaper deal. They simply declined his option for this season.
As for Saffold, it’s obvious that the Rams didn’t want to pay him the money he had coming to him. Saffold signed a four-year, $44 million deal with the Titans after eight seasons with the Rams. But Saffold’s contract has a cap number of just $6.375 million with an out after the 2020 season that wouldn’t result in a devastating cap hit. The Rams could have made this contract work if they thought he was worth it. They’re paying Clay Matthews similar money this season and had the cap space to give Tyler Higbee a four-year, $29 million contract extension. The Rams could have afforded to pay Roger Saffold, they just didn’t want to.
Still, walking away from Saffold wasn’t the worst decision. The bigger problem was how the team chose to replace Saffold and Sullivan. When the Rams didn’t add a single offensive lineman in free agency, many figured they’d choose to address the need with their first-round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft.
They didn’t. The Rams chose to trade out of the first round and move back 14 picks. Six of those 14 picks ended up being offensive lineman. The Rams still had a chance to take center Eric McCoy at 45. They decided to move back again and chose safety Taylor Rapp at 61. While Rapp has turned out to be a solid pick, McCoy is currently the starting center in New Orleans and has the second-highest PFF grade in the league at the position. The Rams did select two offensive linemen during the draft: Bobby Evans in the late-third round, and David Edwards in the late-fifth round.
The decision to move on from Saffold and Sullivan and not replace them in the offseason was due to the team’s trust in 2018 mid-round picks Joseph Noteboom and Brian Allen. Both the front office and the coaching staff must have agreed that Allen and Noteboom were good enough to replace Saffold and Sullivan despite no in-game evidence proving as much. Neither guy played any real meaningful snaps in 2018. Still, it sounded like McVay trusted them. That was enough to keep most fans optimistic about the pairing heading into 2019. Clearly, it wasn’t the right decision.
The team’s decision to add essentially no depth behind their new offensive line may have been an even worse decision. Drafting Evans and Edwards was the extent of the Rams adding offensive linemen this offseason. Since McVay doesn’t play his starters in the preseason, which included Allen and Noteboom this year, the backups got a chance to shine on the offensive line. They shined about as bright as a dull rock that had been buried under thousands of pounds of dirt for centuries. Jamil Demby, the team’s first lineman off the bench at every position, looked like he didn’t even belong in the NFL. It became clear quickly that the Rams would be in big trouble should a starter get injured.
It became just as clear that the Rams were already in big trouble early on in the season. Not only were Allen and Noteboom completely in over their heads, the right side of the line seemingly forgot how to play football, and father time continued to catch up with Whitworth. The Rams couldn’t have predicted that their three vets would regress like they did, but they should have known that their new additions would have failed to pick up the slack. They put all their eggs in the Allen and Noteboom basket. That basket was filled with holes, and now all we have to show for it is broken eggs.
In addition to Noteboom and Allen being exposed this year, the team’s lack of line depth came back to haunt them. Demby graded out as one of the worst offensive linemen in the NFL while filling in for Noteboom and went from starting to being a healthy scratch. Edwards has looked better than expected filling in at guard, but he’s not exactly setting the world on fire. With both Allen and Havenstein set to miss next week’s game against Chicago, the team will turn to Blythe at center and likely in-season acquisition Austin Corbett at left guard. Bobby Evans could take over at right tackle with Edwards remaining at right guard.
Goff and Gurley have been noticeably worse in 2019. McVay’s play-calling has been questionable at times. But the source of the offense’s regression starts and ends with the offensive line. They replaced veterans with un-proven youth, and the youth failed to prove anything. They’ve been bad, but maybe they weren’t that good to begin with? You can’t blame bad players for being bad. You have to blame the people who trusted them to be good.
The Rams dug themselves into this hole in the offseason. They’re going to need a pretty big shovel to dig themselves out of it. They’re not getting that shovel this season, and it might be tough to find a shovel big enough to dig themselves out of the hole this offseason. Snead and McVay have quite the task ahead of them when it comes to salvaging this offensive line.