And I, too, thought I'd see happy posters. For a split second, I was astonished by all the negativity from otherwise positive posters. Then I quickly realized what was happening.
People were, of course, responding to the negatives that seem to recall our recent past. Fumbles. OL breakdowns. Few points on the board. For Hopesters, it must have seemed a heartbreaking dashing of high expectations. For Doomsters, it confirmed their resolute pessimism. Those reactions make sense insofar as they go.
But, for me, apparent parallels with past futilities are superficial. Fumbles in the first contact of the year and a new offense? Ho hum. Remember that the fumbles messed up repeated drives that were going somewhere. They were not the collapses of a team stuck in the mud. They were mildly frustrating pre-season breakdowns that prevented scoring. We didn't score so few points because we couldn't get out of our own end. We missed opportunities to finish scoring drives because guys laid the ball down while otherwise making plays. And by the way, some of those fumbles were the result of vicious head shot clotheslines that I would have thought would have merited PF flags or worse.
But don't those fumbles need to be cleaned up before the season begins? Sure. It's PS Game 1, and there are glitches to clean up? What else is new?
The question is, can one have confidence that glitches will be cleaned up? Well, that's the big point that had me smiling--very quietly but with a really deep sense of confidence.
Because, see, I felt I was seeing a completely different team. I'll go ahead and use this word which has been overused: a different culture. I'll pin this with comments Marshall made late in the game. Marshall said, talking specifically of the defense, that, throughout the game, people had consistently been in the right place to make plays and had tackled well. He said this was true of basically anyone who was out there. I was nodding and saying, "Marshall, you got that right."
Now think about this. And the point I am making, like Marshall's, is NOT specific player-focused. It doesn't matter which Rams or Cowboys started or what string was playing. It's a unit-wide, pervasive theme. Our Defense is playing a completely new scheme. One might expect discontinuity, misreads, blown assignments, and large open spaces for Cowboys to gallop through. One might expect a blizzard of lunging, desperate missed tackles.
But I didn't see that. I saw a defense that gave the Cowboys very little room to do anything and that made lots of tackles that mattered I saw DBs and LBs swarming around the LOS and the WRs, challenging everything. I saw sure tackles that stopped completed passes in their tracks, a yard short of the sticks. (How people could say we didn't tackle well is, to me, baffling.) I saw a defense that looked integrated, sure of itself, and playing on instinct rather than on thinking things through. I saw a defense that, for the first time in a decade, I could watch with pride and comfort.
We've had talent on defense for a long time. We've had defenses that had big plays and big games. But our defense has been gimmicky and soft, playing back, conceding huge running yards, and conceding 1st down after 1st down, We have NOT really been able to trust our defense in the clutch and we have lost several games each year from a winning position when the defense fell apart. I have personally found that soft, lazy defense to be mostly unwatchable.
Well, to me the difference between what our defense did last night and the recent past is enormous. In the first half, especially, going against one of the best OLs in the league, we conceded virtually nothing. We'd give up 3-6 yards to a great run game, then clamp down and get the stop on downs. We'd crowd the receivers, take away first looks, and force bad throws or make great tackles short of the sticks. This was a different defense, and without AD and Quinn and after only a short period of adjustment.
You know, people see different things, and when they realize what other geezers are thinking, they're amazed. But I honestly don't know what the disgruntled folks were seeing. Personally, I was startled by how profoundly different the defensive culture was.
As for the offense, well, again, I see the beginnings of a very different culture. This, too, is a wholly new scheme. And, again, people were generally in the right place to do their jobs. There are some depth issues on the OL, yes. But otherwise, I really liked what I saw of our offense laying in a foundation for success. I thought Goff played well in his short stint and that Mannion looked pretty sharp. Gurley was stuffed early on as DAL swarmed up to defend the run, and then things loosened up. Most of the young WR/TEs put in sharp and productive plays. And the McVay scheme opened guys up for passes all night. We had very few penalties and few errors apart from the fumbles.
I think this team was FAR more disciplined, coherent, focused, and productive than the team of recent years. It goes without saying that we're a work in progress. All PS teams are, and we have brand new offensive and defensive schemes to install. I thought we played with intensity, poise, and discipline. And I like what I am seeing.
Go, Rams!
