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For the most part this season, the Los Angeles Rams offense has remained fairly well-balanced. Through the first seven games of the season, Jared Goff never attempted more than 38 passes in a game. The Rams were running the ball more than just about every team in the NFL, and were doing so successfully with Darrell Henderson leading the charge.
Then Week 8 hit and that balance went out the window. Sean McVay went back to his old ways of leaning heavily on the arm of his quarterback, which got the Rams in trouble often last season.
Goff threw the ball 61 times against the Dolphins, with the Rams running it 29 times. Now, 29 rush attempts still seems like a lot, but considering they got off 92 plays, the balance simply wasn’t there.
And when looking at the team they were facing, there’s no reason the Rams should’ve thrown the ball 61 times.
Coming into Sunday’s matchup, the Dolphins ranked 30th in yards per carry allowed. They were giving up 5.0 yards per rush attempt, getting gashed regularly on the ground. The strength of Miami’s defense is in the secondary where Byron Jones and Xavien Howard comprise arguably the best cornerback tandem in the NFL, both ranking in the top 11 in completion percentage allowed.
Add in the fact that the Dolphins blitz the fifth-most in the NFL, and all signs pointed to this game being a ground-and-pound effort by the Rams. But again, McVay had other plans.
It’s easy to say, “But the Rams were down by 21 points in the first half.” Well, it was the passing game that dug them that hole, with Goff committing four turnovers on plays where he was under pressure almost immediately.
And it’s not as if the Rams weren’t having success on the ground. Henderson was averaging 5.9 yards per carry before getting injured. Malcolm Brown had 40 yards on 10 attempts, and Cam Akers looked good on his nine carries for 35 yards.
What made matters worse was how quickly McVay abandoned the run after it seemed to get going. Henderson opened the game with back-to-back carries of 4 yards. After that, McVay called three straight passes, all of which fell incomplete.
On the third drive, Henderson gained 18 yards on the first play. He didn’t touch the ball again on that possession. Brown took over and had a 6-yard run on first down, but McVay once again called two straight passing plays that both fell incomplete and ended the drive.
There were only four instances where the Rams ran the ball on back-to-back plays. And each of those times, Henderson or Akers kept the offense ahead of the sticks with runs of at least 4 yards every time.
Henderson had back-to-back runs of 4 yards to open the game. Later on in the first, he had runs of 4 yards and 7 yards on consecutive plays. In the second quarter, Akers had consecutive runs of 10 yards and 5 yards, then in the fourth quarter, he went for 4 yards and 5 yards on back-to-back plays, which was followed by a 2-yard run on third-and-1.
Again, you could say the Rams were playing from behind for most of the game, but had they stuck with the run early on instead of trusting Goff to beat zero-coverage blitzes every time, they probably wouldn’t have dug such a deep hole.
McVay’s refusal to trust the running game has become a gripe of Rams fans everywhere, especially given how well the team has run the ball this season. Early in the season, it looked like the ground game would be their identity. But recently, he’s abandoned the rushing attack and once again gotten off-balance.
Hopefully he recognizes this trend during the Week 9 bye.
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