Since Sean McVay took over as head coach, there haven’t been many instances where the Rams were embarrassed and completely dominated by an opponent. Sunday against the Cowboys was undeniably one of those instances, though.
They went into AT&T Stadium and laid an egg, getting blown out 44-21 by a sub-.500 Cowboys team. At one point, the Rams were down 37-7 before scoring two touchdowns in the final four minutes to make the final score a bit more respectable.
McVay was understandably frustrated after the game and in his press conference Monday, he admitted the film was reflective of just how poorly the Rams played as a team the day before.
“Yeah. It wasn’t very good. Really, in a lot of instances, it’s never as bad, it’s never as good as you think, but a lot of the things that we felt like after the game, I think, kind of showed up,” McVay said. “The expectation and the confidence that I do have in our players and in our team to be able to execute and just do the fundamental things that you have to be able to do to win in this league, we really just didn’t do. That’s not the norm for us.”
The Rams rushed for only 22 yards, Jared Goff threw a costly interception before halftime that led to a Cowboys touchdown and Dallas gained 263 yards on the ground in the win.
There was a lot that went wrong for the Rams, from their lack of protection for Goff to their inability to tackle, which led to Dallas scoring 44 points. For a defense that had been playing so well, this was a huge surprise.
McVay pointed out issues that plagued the team on Sunday, from missed tackles to poor execution on blocks.
“Defensively, not tackling, not maintaining some of our gap integrity, playing our leverages right in coverage. Those are things that we pretty much, for the most part, done a really nice job of. We didn’t do that yesterday” he said. “Again, you give Dallas credit for being able to force some of those missed tackles and things like that. That was a big result as some of the production that they had. Just not finishing some of the plays and then offensively, a lot of the same. Not attacking some of the blocks the way that we had talked about, not just making standard throws and making the catches, creating some separation. A lot of the things that are really just instrumental from a fundamentals and techniques standpoint to be able to play good football, we didn’t really do and didn’t give ourselves a chance to be in that game as a result of that.”
McVay acknowledged the problems the Rams had on offense, but he did come away pleased with the way the offense closed out the game. It doesn’t make the end result any better, but he did like the way Goff and company finished with two touchdown drives.
“Really, we just didn’t have really any sort of drive continuity. We weren’t converting on third downs, they did a good job on their offensive side being able to sustain some drives and then the next thing you know, the score is what it is,” he said. “We make no excuses about it, we didn’t play good enough – I was pleased with the way the guys finished. You don’t ever have any sort of moral victories, but I was interested to see how we continued to compete, especially offensively, even though it was, what it was and they were playing more softer zone-coverages and just to get some completions, get into a little bit of a rhythm was important to finish out that way.”
The Rams will take on the 49ers at Levi’s Stadium on Saturday night, which will help decide their playoff fate. A loss will end any chance of them making the postseason. A win by Minnesota on Sunday will do the same.
McVay’s squad doesn’t have much left to play for, but he expects to see a better team against the 49ers than the one that played in Dallas this week.