Coming into the 2024 season, the biggest questions surrounding the Rams were on defense. Aaron Donald retired, the secondary was completely revamped and Chris Shula was entering his first season as a defensive coordinator.
There weren’t many concerns on offense with Matthew Stafford, Puka Nacua, Cooper Kupp and Kyren Williams back, and the offensive line also added Jonah Jackson to the mix.
The defense struggled early in the year but in the last four weeks, it’s been one of the better units in football. The same can’t be said about the offense, which ranks 20th in points per game and 17th in yards.
Andrew Whitworth went through peaks and valleys on offense with the Rams during his five-year tenure in Los Angeles, so he knows what it takes for a team to operate the best it possibly can. In an exclusive interview with Rams Wire on behalf of his partnership with Tide, Whitworth talked about those offensive struggles, which really showed up in a painful loss on Monday night against the Miami Dolphins.
“It was (painful), mainly because I don’t think there’s anybody that questions they were the better football team,” he said via phone. “Really nothing to it. And it made it a painful one just because it seemed to be like the defense gave you opportunities and then you kept just kind of, you know, for whatever reason, hurting yourself over and over and over again and just not playing to the kind of standard you have for yourself on offense. I mean, defensively, you’re young, you really are kind in a midpoint of rebuilding a secondary, all these types of things.
“You can always look when they struggle and you go, ‘All right, like, I can see some reasons.’ But offensively, you have a lot of veteran players, you have a lot of guys that you expect to play to a certain standard and they just weren’t doing that.”
When it comes to the issues plaguing the offense, Whitworth immediately pointed to the offensive line. Though no fault of their own, the Rams still have not played one snap with their projected starting unit from before the season began. Alaric Jackson and Rob Havenstein missed the opener, Steve Avila and Jonah Jackson got hurt in the first two weeks and Havenstein was sidelined for Monday’s game against Miami.
The Rams have been lacking continuity up front and that’s had a major impact on the offense as a whole, Whitworth says.
“The truth is we still haven’t seen a single snap of the offensive line that they were planning to start the season with,” Whitworth said. “I mean, they haven’t played one single rep of football as the starting group, because even in Detroit, you know, Alaric Jackson’s obviously not in the game because he was suspended so they haven’t even played a single snap, which is crazy to think after 22’s debacle. To have something like this happen again this year is wild.”
Avila and Jackson returned from IR on Monday and played the entire game, but the results were not positive. Jackson struggled at center, and while Avila played well, the Rams missed Havenstein at right tackle.
Whitworth isn’t surprised the line struggled with passing off rushers and picking up blitzes because that phase of playing O-line takes practice, chemistry and communication – something the Rams don’t have much of due to injuries.
“But that group that did play last night really has not played many snaps together and especially not played many snaps together with Jonah Jackson as the center,” he said. “So, it’s not up to their standard, but I think it’s to be expected a little bit. It’s just the truth and unfortunately, you’re at this point in the season and you have very little snaps as a group together and I think it showed last night because you’re playing a group that that’s what (the Dolphins) do. They twist, they stunt, they create a lot of complications in the offensive line scheme of how you’re blocking and you’re passing things off and making an offensive line work together.”
Whitworth thinks that the Rams would’ve been better off facing a team like the 49ers this week with the lack of chemistry the line had because it would’ve been easier to protect Matthew Stafford against standard four-man rushes than the blitzes of Dolphins DC Anthony Weaver.
“I mean, I think you’d almost have been better off playing a group like San Francisco or one of these teams that truly plays a standard four-down front because then you’re just playing football,” he said. “But when you’re playing with these groups and that’s what they do, now you’re really being forced to work together. And I think that makes it challenging. So we saw some of that.”
The Rams have eight more games to sort things out, which admittedly isn’t a long time – especially with their record sitting at 4-5. Havenstein could miss another game on Sunday in New England, which is a concern for the Rams, and it’s unclear how the interior of the line will be handled after Jackson’s struggles at center.
No matter which group they send out onto the field, it has to be better than what we saw on Monday.