No real vent here. Bummed for sure, but not angry.
We just did not adapt on offense today. Their defense had answers for everything, we did not have answers for what they were doing for most of the game. That being said, I'm convinced there is more to the story with Gurley, and not having your best offensive weapon at full strength or at least good strength certainly affected what we could do. Would have also been great to have Kupp in this game. Mostly, we just got outcoached, and while I am disappointed, I know McVay is the type that will really dig into what happened and figure out how to counter it eventually. It just wasn't done tonight, unfortunately.
Defensively, I'm pretty damn proud of their effort. They played good enough to win. They just held the Patriots to 13 points in a Super Bowl, and did it on a day when they were getting little help from the offense. Nobody who watched that game can credibly blame our defense for this loss, even with some of the plays toward the end. They made things very uncomfortable for Brady much of the game and forced him into a number of bad throws. And to single one guy out, I thought Marcus Peters played a pretty damn good game. He looked like the guy we traded for last offseason.
Hopefully they can keep enough of their nucleus together to make another run next year. I do expect some turnover on the defense, which concerns me a little given how well they have played in this postseason. But some changes might need to be made nevertheless. If we can field a solid OL, we will have a talented offense again, getting Kupp back but with the benefit of other guys having gained a lot of valuable reps.
Overall, I'm still very happy with the way this season played out, undesired ending aside. Two years ago we were 4-12 and in the last year of The Great Suck. But the Rams are 24-8 in regular season since 2017, 2-2 in post season and have a Super Bowl appearance. And a lot of the guys that got them there are still on the ascending side of their respective careers, many under contract for several more. So despite the loss today, I'm still looking at the glass as half full - hell, well more than half.
