Jourdan's latest article

I thought that she posted a REALLY good summary of this team as well as recap. But thought that you'd enjoy this little snippet as well.

[theathletic.com]

Team officials held the plane in Newark, N.J., as players and coaches watched Pittsburgh help punch the Rams’ ticket to the postseason. What an 11 months it has been, as this roster went from open ridicule and last-place rankings by pundits to a wide-open runway stretching out in front of them full of promise and possibility.

The Rams should be commended for the manner in which they’ve rebuilt this house, behind the people whom general manager Les Snead referred to in the spring as “weight-bearing walls”: coach Sean McVay, Stafford, Aaron Donald and Cooper Kupp.

Their rookie draft class is exceptional. Byron Young and Kobie Turner spend their games exchanging the rookie sack leader title (Turner leads with nine). Fifth-round receiver Puka Nacua is 29 yards away from breaking the all-time rookie receiving record. Left guard Steve Avila, a starter from the moment they sent in his name as their second-round selection, has been outstanding all year and will only get better. Other young players such as second-year Williams and third-year Jones are emerging as real talent, too. Their coaching staff has made the most of one of the NFL’s cheapest and youngest defenses even though the problems they always knew could pop up with limited personnel (complete pressure, consistent coverage) have certainly done so.

The holes are still the holes; the Rams quick-patched some of them over with important (and importantly cheap) veteran acquisitions but always looked at setting up for more permanent solutions in 2024 when stripping down their roster last spring and taking on more than $80 million in dead money all in one sweep.

And they all care. They care so much. Nacua cares so much he was vomiting in a trash can on the sideline after the sheer effort of his 80-yard sideline catch-and-run that set up a touchdown. Nacua literally left it (in a receptacle) all on the field. The players openly tell each other they care about each other. The coach tells them he cares about them; more importantly he shows them, less than a year after he almost walked away from it all in hopes he’d escape himself, too.

Work works, remember?

The Rams should also be criticized for keeping, inside this promising house with its modern updates and its good bones, a Ford Pinto in the garage next to a can of gasoline and a bunch of dry old newspapers.

Their special teams unit has lost them field position. Points. A game, and nearly another one plus their shot at the postseason. It ranks dead last in DVOA, a weight that is actually dragging their defensive and team DVOA down with it.

Choosing not to pay a kicker top money in a lean year is fine, even rational. This still should have been fixed — count them — one, two, three, four, five kickers ago. They did not identify the answer (of two possible options) in the draft or college free agency. They did not identify the answer in veteran free agency. The Rams have left 37 points on the board due to either missed field goals (11) or missed extra points (4). They have allowed two punt returns for touchdowns, one a back-breaker in overtime against a Ravens team they otherwise matched punch for punch, and Sunday in the fourth quarter that could have cost them the game.

There’s a small bright, if not ironic, spot: The Rams released the correct kicker a couple of weeks ago. Crosby was on their roster for all of four days, before he was waived and signed with the New York Giants last week. So they’ve got that going for them, anyway. Hey, look what’s in the cupholder of the Pinto, a quarter? Grab it, but be careful not to spark it on anything.

In the playoffs, where the margins are so thin, one little bad spark could make the whole thing blow.

It took the Rams an indescribable amount of effort, patience and a little help but mostly work to get here over the last 11 months. They’re in, and they’d like to stick around.

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RFS69