9/27Practice Report:Defense Making Big Plays-Room to Improve

Practice Report: Defense Making Big Plays, Has Much Room to Improve


By Myles Simmons

[www.therams.com]


Over the last two games, Los Angeles’ defense has shown a penchant for getting big plays when they most need them.

Linebackers Alec Ogletree and Mark Barron combined to force Seattle running back Christine Michael to fumble in the fourth quarter of Week 2, and Ogletree was able to fall on the ball to secure the victory over the Seahawks.

Then in Week 3, defensive end Robert Quinn recorded a strip/sack of quarterback Jameis Winston that defensive end Ethan Westbrooks picked up and returned 77 yards to pay dirt. Plus, Quinn made the final tackle inside the 10-yard line after time had expired to end the contest.

“There’s a lot of plays that are made during the course of the games, you end up focusing on the one at the end,” head coach Jeff Fisher said Tuesday. “‘Tree’s’ play was huge against Seattle, Rob’s effort was tremendous — we needed that.”

“You take the wins however you can. In a perfect world, you’d like to think you don’t need to make that play at the end,” Fisher continued. “But that’s something you can hang your hat on and you can always go back and say ‘Hey, you made plays at the end, so if it comes up again, just go do it. Do what you’ve done before.’”

That’s a sentiment players echoed in the locker room following Tuesday’s practice.

“We’re always one big play away,” safety T.J. McDonald said. “We know we’ve done it before. We’ve been in those types of situations. So that situation does come up, we have confidence we can do it again.”

“I guess you could say we step up in big-time [situations] — they say big-time players step up in big-time games,” middle linebacker Alec Ogletree said. “So as a defense, we take pride in being out there, if we have to go out there to win the game. And that’s what we want to do — go out there and win the game for the team.”


Still, as Ogletree put it, there’s much more to a game than a significant play late in the contest.

“It takes a whole 60 minutes to do it,” Ogletree said of winning. “You can say it’s one play throughout the whole game, but it’s a buildup of different plays throughout the whole game that accumulate a win.”

To that point, the Rams know there is plenty of room for improvement on the defensive end. In Sunday’s victory, Los Angeles surrendered 472 yards of offense, including 389 net yards passing. Without the sacks factored in, quarterback Jameis Winston threw for 405 yards on 58 attempts, as Tampa Bay had 90 offensive snaps.

“That’s a combination of D-line, linebackers, DBs — all of us out there on the field not really [having] everybody doing their jobs. So there’s a lot of work to do,” Ogletree said. “I know it feels good to win, but at the same time, we know we’ve created a lot of mistakes out there. And we’ve got to fix them.”

“We got the win, and you’re never unhappy with a win,” McDonald said. “But there’s definitely things we’ve got to work on.”

That the Rams were still able to get a victory on Sunday is significant. Even with plenty to correct, is 2-1 for the first time since 2006.

“We fought through a lot of adversity,” defensive tackle Michael Brockers said. “We played [90] plays, a couple guys went down, and we didn’t let that stop us. Guys moved into their spot and played well. So if I can take anything from that game, we stepped up when adversity was upon us and we conquered it.”

They will have to continue to improve to beat Arizona on Sunday.

EXTRA POINTS

— One of those aspects of adversity the Rams had to go through on Sunday was being down two defensive lineman with ends William Hayes and Eugene Sims. One of the ways the Rams compensated was to have defensive tackle Aaron Donald play defensive end for a significant number of snaps.

And Donald played well there, forcing Tampa Bay’s offensive line into holding penalties and getting quarterback hits. Donald is fairly unique for that kind of positional flexability.

“I’m just doing my job,” he said Tuesday. “A lot of guys went down, I needed to step up and help. So I just did my part. Like I said, I did it in college, so it wasn’t nothing new to me. And coach needed me to do it. So it wasn’t a problem for me.”

— Fisher said cornerback E.J. Gaines could be available for Sunday, but the team isn’t quite sure yet.

“Won’t know until later on the week, it’ll be a day-to-day thing,” Fisher said. “He’s feeling good, he had a really good pregame workout in Tampa and felt really good, had no setbacks. So we’ll see how he is and just kind of work him in.”

— Finally, Fisher also said he gave a presentation on penalties to the team in order to address the issues they’ve been having so far this season.

“The big thing, as I mentioned yesterday, is the ones that don’t have anything to do with the play,” Fisher said. “And that’s what kind of gets under the coaches’ skin — the false starts, the defensive offsides and the things that happen after the play. You’re in control of that.

“Penalties are penalties, but at this rate, it’s not good,” Fisher added. “We have to coach better and we have to talk about things and we have to be aware of a hard count on second-and-10 or third-and-one — just bring it to their attention and we did that.”