“I kid you not, and I wouldn’t lie to you guys. Half the time, I didn’t know where the ball was.”
That was said by Eric Weddle after the Rams got their “faces peeled off” by the Ravens, as the veteran safety put it. He and his fellow defenders had no idea how to stop MVP frontrunner Lamar Jackson, who torched them for five touchdown passes and 95 yards rushing in only three quarters of play.
The good news is, the Rams won’t have to face Jackson again this season unless they miraculously make it to the Super Bowl. The bad news is, they have to play a quarterback with similar speed and quickness twice in the next five weeks – beginning on Sunday when the Rams visit Kyler Murray and the Cardinals.
It’s the team’s first taste of Murray, who’s in contention for Offensive Rookie of the Year after being drafted No. 1 overall by Arizona. He doesn’t run as much as Jackson, and the Cardinals don’t utilize zone reads the way Baltimore does, but Murray is certainly the second-fastest quarterback in the league.
With as much trouble as Jackson gave the Rams, it’s easy to wonder how Los Angeles will fare against another player like Murray. Sean McVay shared his thoughts on the Cardinals rookie Tuesday, calling him a “dynamic runner” who’s throwing the football well.
“Really impressive. Takes great care of the football. His ability to speed it up and be able to deliver the ball when he sees guys open is really impressive – just how twitchy he is,” McVay said. “He can obviously make throws from a bunch of different platforms. He can make plays in the pocket, out of the pocket. Then, you see just what dynamic runner he is as well. You look at a couple of the plays that he’s made as of late, where they’ve started to utilize him a little bit more as a runner. He’s playing with a lot of confidence and you can see why he was a No. 1 pick.”
Kliff Kingsbury and the Cardinals probably watched Baltimore’s dismantling of the Rams and loved what they saw. Los Angeles had no answer for Jackson, whether it was against the run or pass. When Weddle, one of the smartest players in the NFL, says he didn’t know where the ball was half the time, that’s alarming.
Expect to see plenty of read-options by the Cardinals on Sunday afternoon in an attempt to fool the Rams defense. At the very least, it can slow down the pass rush the way it did in Monday night’s drubbing.
Arizona is only 3-7-1, but this is yet another tough test for the Rams. They failed miserably against Jackson and the Ravens, so perhaps they learned from their mistakes and will be better prepared for yet another former Heisman winner.