Lessons from six disappointing NFL teams
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ESPN Article
1. The offensive line collapsed. When I wrote about the reasons the Rams were likely to decline in 2019, I mentioned the offensive line as my biggest concern with the roster. They were replacing veterans Rodger Saffold and John Sullivan with untested second-year linemen Joe Noteboom and Brian Allen.
For a team whose offensive line had been both extremely effective and remarkably healthy in Sean McVay's first two seasons, it was an obvious point of weakness. And the line has been a mess, although not necessarily in the ways we might have expected. Noteboom tore his ACL in Week 6. Allen looked like he belonged as a starter before suffering a season-ending MCL injury in Week 10.
More disconcertingly, the expected strength of the line -- the tackles -- has been a disaster. Right tackle Rob Havenstein, who committed only two penalties last season, committed eight in nine games before suffering his own knee injury. Andrew Whitworth hit the wall at age 38, as the superstar left tackle has clearly lost a step. Whitworth has committed a career-high eight holding penalties, tied for second most in the league behind Denver's Garett Bolles. The Rams will likely need to replace Whitworth in their lineup next season without the benefit of their first-round pick, which went to the Jags in the Jalen Ramsey deal.
Should the Rams have seen this coming? They should have expected their offensive line to decline in 2019. Counting on Whitworth to stay at a Pro Bowl level this late in his career was always a big ask, given that just four tackles in league history have started anything close to a full age-38 season. I don't think they could have expected Havenstein to decline.
How to avoid making the same mistake: L.A. isn't likely to have much cap space in 2020, so it needs to use the remaining draft capital it has to supplement the line.
2. They've been hit by injuries. I was concerned about the Rams dealing with more injuries, especially on offense. McVay's team had the league's fewest adjusted games lost on offense in 2017 and its second fewest in 2018. For an offense that loved to run the same offensive personnel for more than 90% of the snaps when everyone is healthy, it's tough to imagine that keeping up into 2019.
In addition to the three offensive linemen I mentioned, Brandin Cooks, Robert Woods, Gerald Everett, Tyler Higbee and Todd Gurley have all missed time with injuries. On defense, the Rams lost safety John Johnson to injured reserve with a shoulder injury and Aqib Talib (before he was traded) with a rib ailment, while Clay Matthews was out for three games after breaking his jaw against the Seahawks. Rookie Taylor Rapp, who took over in the starting lineup for Johnson, appeared to blow the coverage on the third-and-16 conversion that set up San Francisco's winning field goal on Saturday.
Should the Rams have seen this coming? They might have wanted to believe they were immune to injuries after two extremely healthy seasons under McVay, but decades of evidence suggests that no team can avoid the injury bug. The Rams have built a top-heavy team by trading for stars and sending away draft picks, and it came back to bite them in 2019.
How to avoid making the same mistake: At this point, they have established their team-building philosophy. They're not about to suddenly trade their stars away. They aren't going to have great depth, and if their stars aren't healthy, we're going to see uneven seasons like 2019 in the years to come.
3. The offense lost its identity. I figured McVay would have an antidote to the 6-1 fronts that the Lions showed and the Bears and Patriots emulated last season in limiting what had been a wildly productive Rams offense. For most of the year, McVay hasn't. Just about every team the Rams have faced has used those six-man fronts at least part of the time, and it has slowed down the outside zone and killed Jared Goff's effectiveness on play-action. Goff ranks 31st in the league in passer rating on play-action in 2019.
What has been strange is just how McVay has handled the whole thing. The Rams eventually moved to a heavier dose of toss plays and duo runs to try to defeat teams that were cheating toward the edge, but those haven't been quite as effective. Early in the year, the Rams were conservative with Gurley and framed that as a coach's decision. In recent weeks, they've focused the passing game around Higbee and begun to keep Gurley on the field for virtually every play, even late into blowouts, with McVay saying he had been an "idiot" to keep Gurley on the sideline earlier in the year.
I would put a larger portion of the blame on Goff, because McVay's offense is still creating makeable passes. Goff's expected completion percentage is 66.5%, according to NFL Next Gen Stats. He is instead completing 62.8% of his throws. The only quarterbacks with 200 attempts or more who have a larger negative gap between their completion percentage and expected completion percentage than Goff are rookies Gardner Minshew and Dwayne Haskins.
When the Rams signed Goff to a four-year, $134 million extension in the offseason, expectations rose for the fourth-year passer. Saturday night's loss to the 49ers, in which Goff mixed drives where he looked unstoppable with a pick-six and a dropped interception on the tying drive late in the fourth quarter, was a reminder of how flawed the former first overall pick still is after four seasons.
Should the Rams have seen this coming? The Lions, Bears and Patriots all used this tactic with varying levels of success at the end of 2018. It would have been naive to imagine opposing defenses wouldn't emulate them in 2019, although I was also expecting McVay to have more answers early in the season.
How to avoid making the same mistake: McVay needs to come up with new solutions this offseason. The Rams are locked into their offensive core for the foreseeable future, so this won't be solved by adding weapons around Goff.
4. The unsustainable stuff wasn't sustainable. In my preseason column, I noted that the Rams had gone 6-1 in games decided by seven points or fewer, which has historically been almost impossible to keep up. The Rams are 2-3 in those same games this season, including a loss to the Seahawks where reliable kicker Greg Zuerlein missed a 44-yard field goal with 15 seconds to go in a 30-29 defeat.
Likewise, the Rams' defense was incredible at recovering fumbles last season. Wade Phillips' unit picked up 12 of the 14 fumbles it forced, while the Rams as a whole nabbed a league-best 71% of the fumbles in their games in 2018. There's no track record of a Phillips defense or a defense managed by anybody recovering fumbles at that sort of rate over multiple seasons. This season, the Rams have recovered 48.6% of the fumbles in their games, with the defense down to an even 40%.
Should the Rams have seen this coming? I know the Rams are readers, so yes.
How to avoid making the same mistake: There's not much they can do here. With a 16-game schedule, variance is going to swamp fumble recovery rates.
BeachBoy
1. The offensive line collapsed. When I wrote about the reasons the Rams were likely to decline in 2019, I mentioned the offensive line as my biggest concern with the roster. They were replacing veterans Rodger Saffold and John Sullivan with untested second-year linemen Joe Noteboom and Brian Allen.
For a team whose offensive line had been both extremely effective and remarkably healthy in Sean McVay's first two seasons, it was an obvious point of weakness. And the line has been a mess, although not necessarily in the ways we might have expected. Noteboom tore his ACL in Week 6. Allen looked like he belonged as a starter before suffering a season-ending MCL injury in Week 10.
More disconcertingly, the expected strength of the line -- the tackles -- has been a disaster. Right tackle Rob Havenstein, who committed only two penalties last season, committed eight in nine games before suffering his own knee injury. Andrew Whitworth hit the wall at age 38, as the superstar left tackle has clearly lost a step. Whitworth has committed a career-high eight holding penalties, tied for second most in the league behind Denver's Garett Bolles. The Rams will likely need to replace Whitworth in their lineup next season without the benefit of their first-round pick, which went to the Jags in the Jalen Ramsey deal.
Should the Rams have seen this coming? They should have expected their offensive line to decline in 2019. Counting on Whitworth to stay at a Pro Bowl level this late in his career was always a big ask, given that just four tackles in league history have started anything close to a full age-38 season. I don't think they could have expected Havenstein to decline.
How to avoid making the same mistake: L.A. isn't likely to have much cap space in 2020, so it needs to use the remaining draft capital it has to supplement the line.
2. They've been hit by injuries. I was concerned about the Rams dealing with more injuries, especially on offense. McVay's team had the league's fewest adjusted games lost on offense in 2017 and its second fewest in 2018. For an offense that loved to run the same offensive personnel for more than 90% of the snaps when everyone is healthy, it's tough to imagine that keeping up into 2019.
In addition to the three offensive linemen I mentioned, Brandin Cooks, Robert Woods, Gerald Everett, Tyler Higbee and Todd Gurley have all missed time with injuries. On defense, the Rams lost safety John Johnson to injured reserve with a shoulder injury and Aqib Talib (before he was traded) with a rib ailment, while Clay Matthews was out for three games after breaking his jaw against the Seahawks. Rookie Taylor Rapp, who took over in the starting lineup for Johnson, appeared to blow the coverage on the third-and-16 conversion that set up San Francisco's winning field goal on Saturday.
Should the Rams have seen this coming? They might have wanted to believe they were immune to injuries after two extremely healthy seasons under McVay, but decades of evidence suggests that no team can avoid the injury bug. The Rams have built a top-heavy team by trading for stars and sending away draft picks, and it came back to bite them in 2019.
How to avoid making the same mistake: At this point, they have established their team-building philosophy. They're not about to suddenly trade their stars away. They aren't going to have great depth, and if their stars aren't healthy, we're going to see uneven seasons like 2019 in the years to come.
3. The offense lost its identity. I figured McVay would have an antidote to the 6-1 fronts that the Lions showed and the Bears and Patriots emulated last season in limiting what had been a wildly productive Rams offense. For most of the year, McVay hasn't. Just about every team the Rams have faced has used those six-man fronts at least part of the time, and it has slowed down the outside zone and killed Jared Goff's effectiveness on play-action. Goff ranks 31st in the league in passer rating on play-action in 2019.
What has been strange is just how McVay has handled the whole thing. The Rams eventually moved to a heavier dose of toss plays and duo runs to try to defeat teams that were cheating toward the edge, but those haven't been quite as effective. Early in the year, the Rams were conservative with Gurley and framed that as a coach's decision. In recent weeks, they've focused the passing game around Higbee and begun to keep Gurley on the field for virtually every play, even late into blowouts, with McVay saying he had been an "idiot" to keep Gurley on the sideline earlier in the year.
I would put a larger portion of the blame on Goff, because McVay's offense is still creating makeable passes. Goff's expected completion percentage is 66.5%, according to NFL Next Gen Stats. He is instead completing 62.8% of his throws. The only quarterbacks with 200 attempts or more who have a larger negative gap between their completion percentage and expected completion percentage than Goff are rookies Gardner Minshew and Dwayne Haskins.
When the Rams signed Goff to a four-year, $134 million extension in the offseason, expectations rose for the fourth-year passer. Saturday night's loss to the 49ers, in which Goff mixed drives where he looked unstoppable with a pick-six and a dropped interception on the tying drive late in the fourth quarter, was a reminder of how flawed the former first overall pick still is after four seasons.
Should the Rams have seen this coming? The Lions, Bears and Patriots all used this tactic with varying levels of success at the end of 2018. It would have been naive to imagine opposing defenses wouldn't emulate them in 2019, although I was also expecting McVay to have more answers early in the season.
How to avoid making the same mistake: McVay needs to come up with new solutions this offseason. The Rams are locked into their offensive core for the foreseeable future, so this won't be solved by adding weapons around Goff.
4. The unsustainable stuff wasn't sustainable. In my preseason column, I noted that the Rams had gone 6-1 in games decided by seven points or fewer, which has historically been almost impossible to keep up. The Rams are 2-3 in those same games this season, including a loss to the Seahawks where reliable kicker Greg Zuerlein missed a 44-yard field goal with 15 seconds to go in a 30-29 defeat.
Likewise, the Rams' defense was incredible at recovering fumbles last season. Wade Phillips' unit picked up 12 of the 14 fumbles it forced, while the Rams as a whole nabbed a league-best 71% of the fumbles in their games in 2018. There's no track record of a Phillips defense or a defense managed by anybody recovering fumbles at that sort of rate over multiple seasons. This season, the Rams have recovered 48.6% of the fumbles in their games, with the defense down to an even 40%.
Should the Rams have seen this coming? I know the Rams are readers, so yes.
How to avoid making the same mistake: There's not much they can do here. With a 16-game schedule, variance is going to swamp fumble recovery rates.
BeachBoy
| Subject | Author | Views | Posted |
|---|---|---|---|
 | BeachBoy | 311 | December 25, 2019 01:25PM |
