Here it is ...

PITTSBURGH — A slew of buses waited for the Rams outside Heinz Field late Sunday night, set to transport a frustrated football team to the airport for a long flight home to Los Angeles after a bitterly disappointing 17-12 loss to the Steelers.

Jared Goff had a plan for what he’d do upon boarding the charter flight, and part of it involved logging onto his Microsoft Surface computer and keying up footage of the Chicago Bears, the Rams’ next opponent.

“I’ll watch this game,” Goff said. “I may sleep, but I’ll definitely start working on the Bears and just get ready for next week.”

A small piece of advice for the fourth-year quarterback: Hit the stop button immediately, then flip over to footage of the Rams.

If Sunday taught us anything at all — heck, the first nine games of the season for that matter — it’s that this is no longer about the Bears or Steelers or 49ers or Seahawks or anyone else on the schedule.

Past, present or future.

This is purely about the Rams, who need to take a hard, honest, cold look at themselves from every imaginable angle. The loss to the Steelers sent them hurtling further down the standings and leaves them needing urgent help from all quarters of the NFL to re-ignite their playoff hopes.

The defending NFC champions are now 5-4 and firmly in third place in the NFC West. And while a major tip of the cap goes to the four teams that beat them, the face looking back at them in the mirror is most responsible for their staggering fall.

The ugly and painful truth is almost too much to bear, but it’s increasingly impossible to turn away from or ignore.

The Rams have problems. Big ones. And while they aren’t the sort of issues that will send them to the bottom of the NFL anytime soon, they are potent enough to deny them goals that seemed just an inch or so out of their reach just nine months ago.

And in a way, that’s far more difficult to stomach than being the kind of gosh-awful bad that warrants complete overhauls and major organizational direction changes.

Because that inch is sometimes the hardest to account for — especially in real time.

How can it be made up when an offensive line already in disruption after replacing two key starters to start the season has progressively deteriorated into a MASH unit?

The Rams switched their alignment up on Sunday — their first game out of their bye week — by flipping left guard David Edwards to the right side and moving right guard Austin Blythe to the left. Edwards, you’ll remember, recently replaced Jamil Demby at left guard after Demby took over for an injured Joe Noteboom, who had taken over for long-time starter Rodger Saffold. It was Saffold who started the left guard merry-go-round when he left as a free agent during the offseason.

By the end of Sunday, though, Blythe was at center in place of the injured Brian Allen and Edwards was at right tackle in place of the injured Rob Havenstein. Austin Corbett, whom the Rams recently traded for, was at left guard and Coleman Shelton, whom the Rams claimed off waivers at the beginning of the season after he was cut by the Arizona Cardinals, was at right guard.

If your head is spinning, imagine being Goff, who, given all the upheaval, was under inevitable and constant pressure all game. Or McVay, whose play-calling reflected all the chaos along the offensive line.

“Oh yeah, it does,” McVay said when asked if the status of the offensive line changes his play-calling. “You just have to be mindful of some of the plays in terms of the timing, the rhythm, how long you have for those things to be able to develop. So it absolutely does.”

In other words, the deeper concept throws to playmakers like Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp, which the Rams beat teams down with over the last two seasons, are no longer viable parts of the play sheet. If you can’t protect the quarterback long enough to let those pass patterns evolve and play out, there is no sense calling them.

Woods had seven catches for 95 yards while Kupp didn’t have a reception on four targets.

Goff, whose longest completion was for 24 yards, was sacked four times on Sunday while playing under heat throughout. He threw two interceptions and fumbled three times — one of which was returned 43 yards for a touchdown. Goff shoulders some of that blame. But the offensive line is most culpable.

As the Rams try to regroup, they do so with a very uncertain and very vulnerable offensive line that, frankly, had deteriorated into a concern even before this barrage of injuries.

“I think we have to look inward,” Blythe said. “You look around the league today and it just shows that parity that this league has. We just have to stay the course on what we can control. We just need to get better as a football team.”

But how are the Rams to find their equilibrium if Todd Gurley is on the sort of pitch count that limits his inclusion at key periods of the game? For the first time in weeks, Gurley looked strong and explosive through the first three quarters of the game while accumulating 73 yards on 12 carries. But when the fourth quarter arrived, with the Rams trailing 17-12, their star running back was standing on the sideline watching backup Malcolm Brown take hugely meaningful snaps. Gurley didn’t touch the ball once in the pivotal fourth quarter.

At this point, Gurley is just rolling with things.

“Um, not really,” Gurley said when asked if he wanted the rock more, especially with the game on the line in the fourth quarter. “I’m used to it.”

In fact, McVay indicated Gurley’s usage pattern is sometimes determined as a staff rather than by him.

“That was just kind of the rotation,” McVay said, when asked why Gurley wasn’t on the field to begin the fourth quarter. “Sometimes I’m on both sides of the headsets. There’s just a lot of trust for our coaches that have some of the (confidence) to be really able to say, ‘Alright, who’s in?’ Then I will be able to click back on, and then we know what we are going with.”

If the Rams can’t tap into one of their best weapons — be it because of an organizational plan to protect Gurley or out of concern that his surgically repaired knee will not hold up with more use — it puts McVay in an incredibly difficult position of having to coach around some very messy and cumbersome restrictions.

Furthermore, what hope do the Rams have if the aforementioned issues aren’t at least somewhat solved over the next six weeks? It’s beyond obvious that Goff’s best typically comes when everything around him is functioning at a high level. Specifically, that’s an adept and efficient offensive line and a healthy and explosive Gurley punishing opposing defenses.

When Goff had those two dynamics to play off, he oversaw the highest-scoring and winningest team in the NFL in 2017 and 2018.

But without it — and for far too long this season, the offensive line and the handcuffed use of Gurley has negatively impacted the offensive operation — Goff has played strained and uneven.

Goff completed 22 of 41 passes for 242 yards and his passer rating was 51.2. Again, he deserves a lot of criticism. But when the line isn’t up to the challenge of protecting him and the running game labors to churn out 88 yards on 23 carries, well, it means Goff is the victim of some mitigating circumstances.

“I think we’re still in a good place where we’re still good,” Goff said.

About that there is no question.

The problem is, the Rams set out to be great this season. And they had every intention of fulfilling that quest.

But as they examine themselves in the mirror, the face looking back bears the unmistakable appearance of being flawed. And those flaws are potent enough to leave a good team falling far short of great.