Coming out of their Week 6 bye, the Los Angeles Rams changed things up a little bit on both offense and defense against the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday. They benched Logan Bruss for Justin Dedich at left guard and Jordan Whittington was shockingly not involved at all in the game plan.
Both he and Blake Corum played minimal snaps in the win, a surprising development after each of them looked good in the Rams’ last game against the Packers.
On defense, rookie Brennan Jackson made his NFL debut by playing a handful of snaps. Chris Shula utilized much less base 3-4 packages and more nickel and dime sets where the Rams got five and six defensive backs on the field.
Here’s a look at the snap counts from Sunday’s win over Las Vegas.
Offense
The Rams’ five starting linemen all played 100% of the snaps, including undrafted rookie Justin Dedich.
At wide receiver, it was Demarcus Robinson and Tyler Johnson playing the most snaps, each getting a 91% snap share. Johnson’s role had decreased significantly in the last couple of games after the emergence of Whittington, but he played 50 snaps compared to only nine for Whittington. Tutu Atwell played 43 snaps and Xavier Smith got in five plays on offense.
Colby Parkinson hadn’t played less than 79% of the snaps in a game all year and was averaging almost 90% through the first five games, but he played just 64% on Sunday. That’s because both Hunter Long and Davis Allen saw an increase in playing time as the Rams utilized all three of their tight ends.
Defense
Quentin Lake, Kam Curl and Darious Williams all played the entire game, but they were hardly the only defensive backs with meaningful roles. In fact, the Rams went deep in their secondary group to utilize a bunch of different players. Ahkello Witherspoon played 59%, Cobie Durant played 56%, both slightly lesser roles for them compared to Week 5 when they each played more than 80%. Josh Wallace (49%) and Jaylen McCollough (23%) each saw increased roles and played a season-high number of snaps as the sixth and seventh defensive backs. Kam Kinchens played two snaps after seeing no playing time in Week 5.
At inside linebacker, Troy Reeder remained the top guy with an 89% snap share, but it’s the second straight game he’s played fewer than 90% of the snaps. Christian Rozeboom also played just 51% of the snaps as the Rams utilized more nickel and dime packages, taking him off the field more often than usual.
Byron Young played almost the whole game, getting an 85% snap share, with Jared Verse playing 78% and Michael Hoecht playing 59%. All three were impactful in the win, so it was a promising performance from that group. Rookie Brennan Jackson made his NFL debut with nine snaps played, recording one tackle.
Up front, Kobie Turner played 78% of the defensive snaps and Braden Fiske played 51%, which is around their usual share each week. Interestingly, Neville Gallimore played more than Bobby Brown III, and even Tyler Davis played 17 snaps along the defensive line.