You will continue to see Matt Stafford be placed in repeated high-leverage situations where he's taking unnecessary risks (i.e. no-look passes; side-arm passes; not throwing the ball away; etc.). Because the offense isn't good enough, there are no throw-away downs or series.
Now to be fair, we all know that both Stafford and McVay don't believe that there isn't any problem that can't be solved by passing the ball. And, Stafford IS being paid $40M to produce. So, I suspect that this is where they both want to be.
But the offense eventually suffers because, as defenses begin to exploit weaknesses (e.g. too much of a focus on Kupp; weak links along the OL; abandoning the run), Stafford becomes more careless.
Go back to the 2021 season where, through the first few games, the Rams had a healthy mix of runs and WR ball-distribution. Then, only because Stafford preferred it, the offense morphed into more of the drop-back empty backfield sets where Stafford just becomes a gunslinger. What happened? Well, starting with the Tennessee game, we saw the beginning of a 3 - 4 game stretch of "Bad Stafford" repleat with bad passes and even worse decision-making.
The only way we got out of that mess and righted the ship was by taking the ball out of Stafford's hands. McVay inserted Noteboom as a 3rd tackle, gave more touches to Sony Michel, and started running downhill. After his "timeout," Stafford collected himself and went on to help us to a championship.
But the mistakes were/are self-inflicted as we choose to ignore the running game.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2023 06:08AM by ramBRO.
