Nice game review by thirteen28…

Here’s thirteen28…

Reasons for the loss:

1) Raheem Morris sucks. While he alone isn't responsible for the loss, he gets the majority of the blame. I realize we lost Johnson, Hill, and Fox from last year, but losing those three isn't nearly enough to cause the kind of decline we have seen this year. We still have the best DL and best DB in the entire league. And yet for four games now teams have went up and down the field against us almost at will, the difference today being that a good offense was able to finish drives with scores and it bit us in the ass. Morris has implemented a scheme that looks markedly different from what Staley did. In doing so, he has failed to put the players we have in a position to succeed. The soft coverage does negates the man coverage ability of our corners and makes them look worse than we are, while allowing opposing offenses to feast on us. Further, where this team has spent the last decade doing a great job against mobile QB's, and today we were crap against one who we had contained just fine for several games now. I don't like what that portends. We have way too much talent on the D side to put up an effort this bad, even against a good offense.

McVay better be up in his grill after today's game and demanding changes. We have too much talent on D to be this bad. He held our last QB accountable when he declined. He held Cooks accountable when he declined. He let Wade walk, ditto with Kromer who had become stale after a good start. He'd better start holding Morris accountable now if he expect to play deep into January.

Which brings me to:

2) McVay. A) McVay hired Morris, over guys like Pleasent, who IMO was ready and had a year in Staley's D and knew how to get the most out of our DBs. Now his hire has pretty much ruined this defense with terrible scheming and playcalling. We still have 13 games left. We'll learn a lot about McVay as to whether he forces Morris to make some changes or lets him become a Larry Marmie and ruin the Rams chances for a deep run in the playoffs. The buck stops with Sean.

But the D aspect wasn't McVay's only failing today. The playcalling absolutely sucked, and it's the same thing we've seen the last few years, something that accelerated the decline of the last QB we had and did no favors to our current starter: abandoning the run when it's working while trying to force the pass when it's not. There are certain games like this where McVay just seems to have no feel for what is going on. Stafford struggled much of the day, and did so with good line play in front of him. Furthermore, the running game was working. Instead of slowing down the game, taking control of the tempo, and forcing the Cards to respect the run, he instead abandoned it and made it too easy for them. The Rams ended up in a huge hole where running wasn't an option anymore. I just don't get why the hell he does this sometimes, especially when the QB is struggling. Getting the running game going is one of the best things you can do to get a QB settled down. And further, when the other team can't stop it, you can pretty much control the game. That's how we beat Dallas in the playoffs in 2018, it's how we rolled over New England last year. We just rammed the ball down their danged throats. And the run game was there for the taking today, but McVay zigged when he should have zagged. We've had a number of preventable losses in the McVay era for this very reason, and it's one of the things that prevents him from getting to the highest level. He's an excellent coach, but he's not an elite coach, yet. When he learns to always take what the D gives him, then he'll be elite.

Had McVay stuck with the run today, on a day when the neither the D nor his own QB was playing well, he could have made this a competitive game and even given us a chance to win it.

3) Stafford. After 3 stellar games, he finally came back to Earth. I have no idea what happened, because he had protection. His throws were off, his decision making wasn't as good, and generally he just had a lackluster effort. He and DJax definitely need to work on their timing in practice, because he has underthrown most of his long attempts to him this year. Hopefully, today was just an aberration.

4) Blueberries. I don't care if you are superstitious or not. I don't care if you believe they have anything do do with winning or not. But no matter what side you are on, can we just agree that these things are the ugliest uniform combo the Rams have ever had? Demoff, or whoever decides the uniform combos ... can you please just resign the whole blue-on-blue uniform concept to the ash heap of history where it belongs? Whether it has anything to do with all the losses we've taken in that combo or it's just pure coincidence, I don't care - they are ugly as hell and should never be worn again.

And I'm spent.