Some fair insights here on the good and bad of the Rams defense. You'll have to use the link if you want to see the clips they're referring to.
FootballOutsidersHotwiring the Rams' Star-Laden DefenseWhen a team goes into the sort of win-now mode that the Rams have this season, the challenge is not only integrating new players into new roles, but also making sure they are schematic fits. With the team's focus on pass-rushers, that has been understandable. Integrating Ndamukong Suh and Dante Fowler isn't hard -- ask them to rush the passer and win one-on-one next to Aaron Donald. Sure, the Rams still lack a true edge force, but Samson Ebukam had provided some heat with 17.5 hurries and a couple of sacks coming into Week 9. Donald led the NFL in hurries through Week 9. Suh was in the top 15. Even though they shored things up with Fowler, the Rams came into Week 9 with the No. 1 defensive pressure rate in the NFL, hassling the passer on nearly 40 percent of their dropbacks.
It should be noted that this does not necessarily mean that the Rams played well in this particular game. Drew Brees wasn't sacked at all, and rarely ran into pressure. Donald alone accounted for all four quarterback hits.
Instead, the issue for Los Angeles has been coverage. The major issues for the Rams have come from this swap of players:
IN: Marcus Peters, Aqib Talib, Cory Littleton
OUT: Trumaine Johnson, Kayvon Webster, Alec Ogletree
Talib played three games before being placed on IR, which has forced many snaps for backups Troy Hill and Sam Shields. Marcus Peters, meanwhile, has been an enigma-and-a-half for the Rams.
Peters was an interesting fit coming over from Kansas City specifically because he's not a press-man specialist. In fact, he was better known for his off-man coverage with the Chiefs. Raw talent was expected to make up for that -- and Peters did show fairly well in small sample sizes of man coverage in each of the last few years -- but instead the fit with the Rams has been a disaster. Coming into this game, Peters' 2017 and 2018 stats looked like this:
So ... slight declines across the board. Peters memorably pick-sixed Oakland in Week 1, but has otherwise been responsible for a lot of the struggle.
He was flagged twice early against the Saints. And on the biggest play of the game, Michael Thomas' dialed up home run ball, Peters was turning his face at the line of scrimmage before getting burned.
Here's another one where Peters simply couldn't deal with Michael Thomas inside.
Now, this is the best of the best. Brees and Michael Thomas in the middle of the field would make a fool out of many NFL corners. But, simply put, a lot of Los Angeles' focus with an eye towards the playoffs has to be on fixing Peters. He has clearly not adjusted to his new responsibilities yet (or he's playing hurt).
Another area where the Rams have been destroyed this year is against the play-action pass. After allowing 6.7 yards per pass against play-action in 2017, the Rams had allowed a league-worst 10.2 yards per play-action pass in 2018 coming into Week 9 (subscription required). Here's how that played out for the Rams on the touchdown to Benjamin Watson in the second quarter:
Motion puts John Johnson and Littleton on Watson's side of the field. Johnson reads Watson as blocking on the snap and goes to engage him. However, when Watson fades to the end zone, neither Littleton nor Johnson are able to recover from the initial read to pick him up. Easy walk-in score.
The Rams defense still has the potential to be quite good if they get their ducks in a row -- disruption is production, and they have that in spades -- but the Saints were able to expose their issues on the big stage on Sunday, and time is running out to fix their coverage problems.
