Some 'other' observations re Saints game

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SteveBrown

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Some different observations:

Yepparoo, I am convinced the Rams were and are the better team. When/if they
meet again this year, I expect the Rams to win because the Saints don’t
Have enough weapons to scare the Rams defense; Wade will play it
totally different—and so will Peters and Talib, lol. If the we play in the dome, Goff looks more than capable of Winning on the road in New Orleans. Goff has been playing as well as any Ram QB ever has played (in 4-5 of his best games this year). Yep, after he wins the bowl, we will all say this: he is better than _______.

*The personal foul penalties by Donald and Saffold in the first half represented the laziness and stupidity of a mentally burned-out team. Rams didn’t have it together mentally or emotionally in the 1st half. Those are 2 Veterans ---who are smart guys. The bad tackling was another sign of this laziness, too. And of course , Peters topped it off with his 9 seconds of looking around for signals while the Saints were at the LOS—before the long TD that sealed it. Reee-dik-you-lus. DOn't forget Saffold dissing Goff....and Goff kept after him--great leader!!!!


*Not kicking the FG at 14-14 in the 1st quarter/early 2nd….stupid; another sign of a team that had a head coach who needs a break---overthinking. IT was a critical mistake in our loss.

*Otherwise: there was a lot to like in the game---not counting those first 5 Saints drives and Goff’s pick at 1:06 left in the half.

*The O line looked great in pass pro. Cam Jordan has dominated all year, and I didn’t see him do much. Cooks, Woods and Kupp did their thing. Everett flashed a few times. The O line was good. Goff is at 9.6 yds a pass---that is amazing—even in this era!


*Goff deserves some extra praise for his play. Goff made a few mistakes, but no surprise, he is in his 3rd year. What 3rd year QB makes so few mistakes? Goff is an artist through and through with his choices and execution on his throws---and he is already near to better than Warner away in my opine. Yep, I know era to era comparisons are hard. Goff is taking almost no risks in his throrws, while averaging 9.6 per throw, while Warner Had no constraints, making it much easier for Warner; and thus he threw a lot of Interceptions (22 in 2001)….while Goff is not as tough and savvy yet, he shows some things that Warner never could. Oh, wait, I forgot, Warner was perfect, lol.

*Fowler had some flash plays; he looks like a closer from the film I have seen. He has some moves, and a great first step, and a very good motor. He will makes some huge plays for us, in big games, against the Seahags, Eagles and hopefully against the Chiefs.

*Considering the Saints mostly made Gurley disappear,the offense was great.
Whilet watching the game, it looked like the Rams were the better team in the 2nd Half, My only disappointment, outside of Wade and Peters is that the offense totally failed on the last 2 drives. Goff could have waited for Woods in 1 on 1 coverage on that one series (on 4th down I think), but threw it up for Cooks. Bad call.

Some Defense talk:

*Rams were an all time bad ‘top 10’ defense through 8 games---all the good QBs on our schedule so far have made our defense look bottom 10 at best; I am not sure how so many fans Ignored that during our 8-0 run---but not many study the game. Can you study with a beer in the hand(?)—yes, I think so! (IDK what the D is ranked now).


*The defense doesn’t look physically tough. Littelton (who I love) and both safeties, who I like, don’t look tough; Barron is tough but very small. So, I don't think we scare anybody if you knwo what i mean. And Peters looks like a tackling wimp; Peters is the worst tackler in the NFL. The effort doesn’t look very good; Samson and Longacre and Fowler look tough, but the former 2 have not really made any big rushes/plays. Fowler will help a lot!!!!!!! More on him later.

*Overall the defense has more than enough talent, even with Peters poor play, to allow the Rams to beat any team, except the Chiefs. And, if Peters and Talib ‘return to form’, then we can beat the Chiefs, too.


*The Rams D may be embarrassed vs the Chiefs unless each Ram plays his career game. The Chiefs speed will make us look silly. The Rams chance to win is if the offense can control the ball by running 40 times, and Goff can have another great game, and so we can, maybe, control the game to get a win….if the ball tumbles the right way. We may need Bud Carson back to help Wade, though.

*When A Donald goes against very good guards we can expect a pretty quiet game. The 1984 Rams shut out the Bears in the sack department (the year they had 72 sacks). Pro Bowl guards Kent HIll and Harrah along with 5 step passing game did that to the Bears---like Brees did to us. Most pro bowl level guards will hold the fort against Donald for 2.5 seconds. The Saints have one pro bowl level guard, while the others is pretty ok. Donald still made plays, though….he just wasn’t awesome because of the competition was so much better.

*Suh is pretty good against the run. Is that worth 14 million? No. But, he is smart, makes some nice rushers at LDE, and so he may be a 'cog' for us this year. No way he is back for more than 10 mill next year....how can any team justify that??

*Peters will be back next year, I think, lol. BUt, I think the Rams go corner in te first round. OBo might pan out, and then resign Fowler at 8-10 million...that is a plan, I think. We should have gotten Snacks Harrison while we could have...stash him away, and play in 2019 with him in place of Suh.

Still think 70% Rams go to the bowl this year. Saints won't. I would take Carolina over them. Brees won't last...til the end, this year.





 
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I like Rams

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As bad as Peters is, I believe the saints D is worse. We had less first downs bc we didnt need them, we had less time of possession due to scoring faster, and of course the 2nd half where we came back and they couldnt stay away until the last minutes on a questionable play on 3rd and 2 and Peters blowing his coverage.

I wouldnt say their run D is as good as advertised. They stopped Gurley but we didnt see many creative plays with Gurley used as a receiver, pitched out, or fake jet sweeps. If i remember correctly he ran it up the middle most of the time.

All in all i felt the Saints had to use quite a bit of trick plays in the beginning to get their score up and after the terrible first down that "wasn't" and the pick, they got too far ahead. We didnt have to pull out the trick plays until we got behind.
 

Ellard80

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Another thing was there was a 3 and 10 play (That led to their FG late in the 4th)

Brees had foreeeeeeeever to throw and picked it up.
 

fearsomefour

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The fake FG was strange given it was off of a turnover....that's why McVay pulled it out I think. He saw that as an opportunity for a "cheap" 7 and didn't want to squander it. It was a pass. The defenses played disciplined and covered the TE. Running that fake also let you know he didn't trust the D.
I don't know what "looking tough" is supposed to mean. Do you really think players at the NFL level get intimidated? Like physically intimidated? I don't. Rarely. Especially now when guys aren't allowed to hit.
Thendefense doesn't need to be "tough". They need to be disciplined on the backside (very lacking) and tackle well....lacking everywhere.
I would expect a re focus and much better effort versus Seattle this week.
The D has superior talent in a few spots and holes in other spots.
 

SteveBrown

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I don't know what "looking tough" is supposed to mean. Do you really think players at the NFL level get intimidated? .
They (Joyner, JJ, Littleton, Barron et al ) can not stick their noses in there against a 300 lb pulling guard and do anything to stop him--watch the Ravens and you see it constantly...safeties and LBers are stickin' people. We aren't them, I know, but still we are too slight too much of the time. By the way, Archulleta did do that at 200 lbs, or whatever he was.....we have no one like that
 
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tklongball

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Hard to say that the fake field goal was stupid, when he got enough for the first down. Now, the spot was stupid, and it not being overturned on the challenge was indefensible by the NFL. But Hecker picked up enough for the first down, so I can't be mad at a coach for a play that worked.

Also, I know everybody is down on Peters right now, and he has gotten burned on some double moves for sure, but the play you are talking about, I think he was trying to communicate with the other DBs, trying to communicate something to somebody. I, personally think he was trying to get someone aligned correctly, and I can't blame him for that.
 

SteveBrown

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Hard to say that the fake field goal was stupid--it might have been good, but it wasn't good enough to stop the refs from cheating....so, margin of error was too small.

Also, I know everybody is down on Peters right now, and he has gotten burned on some double moves for sure, but the play you are talking about, I think he was trying to communicate with the other DBs, trying to communicate.
I would say 3-5 seconds is ok....but 9 secons before the snap....bad timing, stupid to think he could play up on a man, and look around for almost 10 seconds....
 

Merlin

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Well the game that will send you home is the one in the playoffs. So for now all that matters is they fix as many of their issues as possible and try to win out and get that #1 seed. And if that happens it probably means they've grown a lot down the stretch and might well win the matchup that matters most.

Look at last year. We beat the Saints at home but they were probably a better team come playoff time than we were. Atlanta knocked us out but tbh I think the Saints would have too if we had drawn them. It's about growth through the entire sched, not just half of it, so yeah there's plenty of room for the Rams to achieve everything they want still.

Sure would be nice to have us and them in the NFC Championship game and whoop that @$$ on the way to the Super Bowl. I'm hoping that's how it goes, but for now we have bigger things to worry about like fixing the basic defensive issues that still plague this team.
 

fearsomefour

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They (Joyner, JJ, Littleton, Barron et al ) can not stick their noses in there against a 300 lb pulling guard and do anything to stop him--watch the Ravens and you see it constantly...safeties and LBers are stickin' people. We aren't them, I know, but still we are too slight too much of the time. By the way, Archulleta did do that at 200 lbs, or whatever he was.....we have no one like that
This is why I wanted T Whitehead to come over to the team. He is a physical two down LB.
 

James Otto

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I've seen several say Donald had a "QUIET GAME" against the Saints. Asinine ...

He had FOUR QB HITS, 3 additional pressures, and 2 TFL in the run game.
 

REV3NGE

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Hard to say that the fake field goal was stupid, when he got enough for the first down. Now, the spot was stupid, and it not being overturned on the challenge was indefensible by the NFL. But Hecker picked up enough for the first down, so I can't be mad at a coach for a play that worked.

Also, I know everybody is down on Peters right now, and he has gotten burned on some double moves for sure, but the play you are talking about, I think he was trying to communicate with the other DBs, trying to communicate something to somebody. I, personally think he was trying to get someone aligned correctly, and I can't blame him for that.
Agree 1000%
 

Elmgrovegnome

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So much of the defense being bad is due to poor pass coverage, especially on longer throws. Talib will help clean that up. Wade had it easy with Talib, Harris and Roby.
 

Ram65

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*The personal foul penalties by Donald and Saffold in the first half represented the laziness and stupidity of a mentally burned-out team. Rams didn’t have it together mentally or emotionally in the 1st half. Those are 2 Veterans ---who are smart guys. The bad tackling was another sign of this laziness, too. And of course , Peters topped it off with his 9 seconds of looking around for signals while the Saints were at the LOS—before the long TD that sealed it. Reee-dik-you-lus. DOn't forget Saffold dissing Goff....and Goff kept after him--great leader!!!!

I agree that the Rams had some burnout with this being the 4 out of 5 road games.

Donald has been a bit of a hot head when he gets frustrated. Didn't see the penalty but, he has been known to get some. Too often the defense hasn't been set but, Peters should just be concerned with his man and let the others figure it out.

*Not kicking the FG at 14-14 in the 1st quarter/early 2nd….stupid; another sign of a team that had a head coach who needs a break---overthinking. IT was a critical mistake in our loss.

It's a great call if it works. I was leaning more toward the three points.

*Otherwise: there was a lot to like in the game---not counting those first 5 Saints drives and Goff’s pick at 1:06 left in the half.

Hard not to count the first five TDs and the pick.

The comeback was a big positive with Goff and the O Line leading the way. All in all I give the first half failures to being a tired team against a ready team that already had a bye week.

*The defense doesn’t look physically tough. Littleton (who I love) and both safeties, who I like, don’t look tough; Barron is tough but very small. So, I don't think we scare anybody if you know what i mean. And Peters looks like a tackling wimp; Peters is the worst tackler in the NFL. The effort doesn’t look very good; Samson and Longacre and Fowler look tough, but the former 2 have not really made any big rushes/plays. Fowler will help a lot!!!!!!! More on him later.

It's a smaller defense that can be overpowered.
 

SteveBrown

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They just put up 45 points on the Rams defense.
LOL, I saw the game......I counted to 45, too :)

The 2nd game will be drastically different. The 2nd half the Rams D did well until Peters mental snafu....we will win, and we won't allow more than 35 :)
 

Loyal

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They just put up 45 points on the Rams defense.
An Aqib Talib-less defense. Being able to drain completion after completion over Marcus Peter's @ss, in such FAST fashion..took our strength away. Our interior defensive line was taken out by quick completions, because virtually no Dline can get to the QB in two seconds or less.....Talib can be beat, but not even close to what Peters is giving up...

Talib will make a critical difference for the whole defense, by adding a second (or more) when he takes away the #1 WR. After Talib comes back, no one is scoring 40 points on the Rams...period.
 

Varg6

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One thing that I truly believe in is this: ALWAYS take any points you can get from a turnover. Frankly, I walked away from the TV at the time, thinking I'd be walking back to a 17-14 game. In the playoffs, we can't afford to make mistakes like this. Even though we did technically get the 1st down, I'm not a fan of the call. I get why McVay did it. Let's keep Brees off the field as much as possible. And of course, we needed TDs keep pace with the Saints. Nevertheless, I think this is something McVay will learn from and hopefully from now on it'll be more of an automatic decision: take the points.