Whicker: Rams get boosts from Tyler Higbee and Nelson Spruce, hope for better things from their receiversBy MARK WHICKER / STAFF COLUMNIST
[
www.ocregister.com]
LOS ANGELES – The Rams fans who have quietly endured these 22 years are a forgiving sort. They’re also a forgetting sort. Somehow they blocked out the final, fruitless years that led up to the Rams’ move to St. Louis.
They pretty much filled the Coliseum on Saturday, but before a lot of them parked and made it inside, the Cowboys’ Lucky Whitehead was returning their opening kickoff for a touchdown. Yes, it’s like they never left.
Things settled down afterward, and the sight of actual Rams wearing actual horned helmets seemed more important than the bottom line. And the bottom line turned out fine, with quarterback Sean Mannion handling the second half and bringing the Rams back for a 28-24 victory. Conclusions don’t come easy from games like this, and it’s true that neither the Rams nor the Cowboys used everything in the playbook. But you can see individuals or individual position groups, and use your imagination.
As best they could, the Rams tried to improve their pitchers and catchers. They did draft tight end Tyler Higbee from Western Kentucky, which looked wise from the beginning and especially Saturday, when Higbee smoothly caught four passes in the first half.
They also had three drops by wide receivers in the first half Saturday, including one by Tavon Austin on third down.
Rookie Pharoh Cooper popped open down the middle at the end of the second quarter and Jared Goff zipped it in there nicely, but Cooper was separated from the catch by the Cowboys’ J.J. Wilcox.
“I have to come up with that ball,” Cooper said later. “It was cover-2 and I got in between. I could have taken a better angle. Maybe (Goff) was a little late with the throw. What you do afterwards is get together and say, ‘OK, we both saw the same thing.’ Now we’ll know what to do if that happens again. That’s why you need games like this.”
No Rams receiver has enjoyed a 1,000-yard season since 2007, which is bizarre considering the pass-giddy era in which we live. Last year Austin led them in catches with 51. That ranked 61st in the league, and he was the only St. Louis pass-catcher in the league’s top 100.
The Rams averaged 10.7 yards per catch. That was third-worst in the NFL. They had 35 pass plays of 20 or more yards, which is little more than two per game, and that was dead last among the NFL’s 32. So was their total of 11 touchdown catches.
The same wideouts are back: Austin, Kenny Britt and Brian Quick, along with Bradley Marquez, a second-year man known for his good works on special teams. So there is some room for upward mobility, with rookies Cooper, Nelson Spruce, Duke Williams, Michael Thomas and Paul McRoberts.
But most of their passing game Saturday, at least early, was quick stuff to Higbee and Lance Kendricks. The encouraging thing for the Rams is that they had a strong running game with Benny Cunningham and Malcolm Brown, and that’s with right tackle Rob Havenstein still out, and without Todd Gurley, of course.
In the second half Mannion made a connection with Spruce, who went to Colorado and set Pac-12 receiving records on poor teams. He snagged six passes for 51 yards, including a touchdown.
“Pretty much of a dream thing, getting to do this in my home city,” Spruce said.
“That’s why we drafted him,” Coach Jeff Fisher said. “He’ll have an opportunity to help us down the line. What he and Tyler (Higbee) did was a continuation of what we’ve been doing in camp.”
But in a vacuum, every impression is real. The Cowboys started Dak Prescott, the Mississippi State rookie. He looked like he’d been playing 10 years. He had a QB rating of 154.5 in the first half and threw two touchdown passes, and had the offense purring nicely without the services of rookie Ezekiel Elliott. And that was against the Rams’ first defensive unit, which has big names and big dreams if nothing else.
However, that unit lost Janoris Jenkins and Rodney McLeod to free agency and showed it on Saturday.
“Like every preseason game you see things you like,” Fisher said. “And there’s a long list of things we’ll have to do better.”
There’s a longer list of fans, judging by the cars on the 110, the 10 and every road in between Saturday night, who will be there to watch that list get narrowed.
