You are correct...I didn't remember correctly so I went back to the Gamebook to check.
Your view of foot ball is very skewd. You win as a team and you lose as a team. You want to be selective in wy the Rams lost. I *could* just as well blame Goff for not completing one pass in their last drive, where the offense could've tied the game...and those receivers were open on every throw. I don't do that because as a team you pick each other up.
New Orleans is a high powered offense just as the Rams are...and KC is when they play tomorrow. Unless you don't know football you knew going in the Ram secondary was gonna be a problem in that game and they were. The Ram offense still had a shot to win though...and it was because the defense held them to a field goal.
It's all in how one sees a game. No doubt, the Ram defense has to be better, no one denies that. Tomorrow when they play KC I'm again worried about the defense. KC will probably do just as other teams do. They'll max protect against the DLine and go against the Ram secondary and LB's. That's proving to be the book on this team. Each time the Rams D play they get better though and I hope that's the case tomorrow...but I'm never gonna just blame the defense in the Saint's loss because the offense had their opportunities too and the defense did play better as the game progressed.
I'm done
The offense's job is to show oodles of points. They did that.
The defense's job is to stop the offense from scoring oodles of points. That didn't happen.
Therefore, it can be said that the part of the team that didn't do it's job was the defense.
Now it can also be said that the offense should be capitalizing on the opportunities they are given. They failed at that for parts of the game.
I choose to believe that allowing 45 points is an unacceptable defensive performance, even if we win. That's just me. If you are a big fan of defenses that allow 45 points, that's your prerogative.
An offense that scores 35 points, however, is doing an excellent job on even if it isn't enough for that particular game.