Pro Football Focus midseason highlights: Rams offense

[CGI_Ram]

Pro Football Focus midseason highlights: Rams offense

A look at some of the top Rams offensive performances individually and as a unit according to Pro Football Focus halfway through the season.

www.therams.com

Pro Football Focus midseason highlights: Rams offense

The Rams' bye week comes at an optimal time, exactly halfway through the 2019 season. In the first of a three-part series this week, theRams.com takes a look at Pro Football Focus' top evaluations of Los Angeles' offense through the first eight games.

Best overall grades: Offense (70.2, 16th) and running (79.2, ninth).

L.A.'s offense continues to produce at a high level, grading out in the top half of the league. The running game, which has gotten contributions from Todd Gurley, Malcolm Brown and Darrell Henderson Jr., also grades out as one of the NFL's 10 best.

Perhaps coincidentally, the unit had its two best performances in each of the last two weeks, according to PFF, as the Rams have mounted a two-game win streak. Their offensive grade of 78.0 against the Bengals and 78.6 against the Falcons bested the previous top two marks of 77.5 against New Orleans in Week 2 and 75.2 against Seattle in Week 5.

Additionally, L.A. has a top-10 run game in the eyes of PFF despite facing four of the scouting service's top 10 run defenses so far this season: the Saints (83.5, fourth), the Buccaneers (80.8, fifth), the Seahawks (77.4, ninth) and the Falcons (77.1, 10th). Its top performances came against the Panthers in Week 1 (76.1) and Saints (73.8).

Top-graded individual performances

QB Jared Goff: at Seattle, 77.5 passing grade. Statistically, Goff finished 29 of 49 for 395 yards with one touchdown and one interception. With the Rams having their second-best performance of the season in the game contest, he was 20 of 29 with no pressure and 18 of 27 without getting blitzed.

RB Todd Gurley: at Cleveland, 79.5 run grade. Gurley tallied 14 carries for 43 yards, but his directional yards per attempt likely played a bigger role in the grade he received. He averaged 2.7 yards per attempt or better between the gaps and off the tight end lined up on the right side.

WR Cooper Kupp: vs. Cincinnati, 91.1 offensive grade and 91.3 receiving grade. A 90.0 or higher is considered "elite" by PFF. This was also the game that Kupp set a new career high for receiving yards in a single game with 220.

WR Robert Woods: vs. Tampa Bay, 83.4 offensive grade and 82.3 receiving grade. Playing a season-high 87 snaps, Woods caught every target thrown his way by Goff, finishing with 13 catches for 164 yards against the Buccaneers.

WR Brandin Cooks: at Cleveland, 76.4 offensive grade and 77.4 receiving grade. Cooks caught 8 of 12 targets for a team-high 112 yards with only one drop.

TE Tyler Higbee: at Seattle, 92.9 offensive grade and 93.8 receiving grade. Also received a pass-blocking grade of 77.4. Higbee hauled in all three of his targets from Goff for 47 receiving yards.

TE Gerald Everett: at Seattle, 90.1 offensive grade and 90.5 receiving grade. Everett grabbed 7 of 10 targets for a team-high 132 receiving yards. He was most effective between 10-19 yards from the line of scrimmage, collecting 90 of his receiving yards in that range with 47 yards after the catch.

The offensive line: pass blocking, at Atlanta, 89.0; run blocking at Seattle, 72.4. Goff compiled 291 passing yards and two touchdowns, but it was the third time this season that the Rams' offensive line didn't allow a sack. The Rams' run game averaged 4.6 yards per carry against the Seahawks, third-best in a single game this season.

 

[yrba1]

Not surprising on the TEs getting an elite grade vs SEA; Seahawks defense covers WRs and stuffs the run effectively but covering TEs is a glaring weakness of theirs; especially with Earl Thomas gone

 

[Merlin]

Calling our run game top 10 demonstrates how bad PFF is. It is in fact the single biggest area of dropoff from 2018 that has led to our offensive inefficiency, as well as something that is not considered when they talk about Jared Goff (who is adjusting to it quite well with an underrated performance this season).

Anyway when it comes to measuring the run game going with yards is not the way to do it. What matters with a run game is your success rate, i.e. how often you can get 4+ on first down, convert the yardage for a first down, etc. So the advanced stats are much more meaningful and when you look at "success rate" in particular it passes the eyeball test in that it ranks our run game where we know it should be ranked.

I've included the image below from Football Outsiders who do a great job with this. The image is also sorted by success rate ranking, where Gurley slots 15th. Some of their other stats are really cool but IMO the SR is where you get the no-nonsense look at how a run game is producing it just gets sorted by individual players. Also read the banner information and see how the relationship between DVoA and SR and whatnot work together.

 

[Merlin]

Looking at the above and using two NFC running games as examples...

Minnesota gets big gainers from Cook that have put his DVOA at the top of the list. But in success rate it demonstrates he gets stuffed a lot, and has trouble converting wins consistently snap to snap where he is more of a "top 10" guy than an elite back.

Or New Orleans, where we see that Murray has been a huge part of their resurgence post-Rams game in his ability to give the offense consistency.

Last year, incidentally, Gurley was ranked 1 in DYAR, 1 in DVOA, and 4 in SR. What a season that was.

 

[OldSchool]

Calling our run game top 10 demonstrates how bad PFF is.

Or it demonstrates how bad or inconsistent running in general is across the league. I know we aren't happy with our OLine but you should see fans from about 25 other teams who have it as bad or worse.

 

[Merlin]

Or it demonstrates how bad or inconsistent running in general is across the league. I know we aren't happy with our OLine but you should see fans from about 25 other teams who have it as bad or worse.

I don't disagree with what you said there, as there are a lot of teams struggling to run the ball and you could extrapolate that with a lot of strong defenses or even go into discussion re: the influx of more DL talent than usual in last year's draft. Which continues this year too and is another whole conversation tbh. But all that aside those stats are the best way to gauge run game potency and demonstrate that PFF continue to be out of whack with reality.

But some teams are running the ball very well and they're winning because of it. Saints are the best example of this, take away that run game and there is no way Bridgewater would have kept them on track like he did. And now that they have Brees back they have grown into what might be a powerhouse of a team. They can thank Murray for that as we can see on the chart too, he's doing a hell of a job for them.

Rams meanwhile as we know have been changing up their scheme on the fly with other than outside zone runs. Which has also affected personnel since guys like Blythe are even worse in the power and trap type looks we've had as they've tried to get that interior run game going. So IMO our run game is middle of the pack but the nice thing is we have plus talent at the RB position so if and when they sort things it can take off.