The Los Angeles Rams knew they were going to pay for the gambles they took over the past few years, but the bill has come due with interest now that Cooper Kupp’s injury requires surgery and could be out for four weeks, if not longer.
After the Rams went all-in on their Super Bowl run last year, we’ve begun to see the consequences of their approach. This year, the Rams are 3-6 and at the bottom of their division. Matthew Stafford ranks 29th among passers in net yards per attempt, and the Rams’ defense is distressingly in the middle of the pack.
Despite that, having one of the best receivers in the NFL had always been a bright spot for the team, and the ability to rely on Kupp to dig them out of holes and produce a spectacular play allowed the Rams to feel like they were always in games, even when behind.
Kupp couldn’t solve every problem for them, though – and the holes they have to dig out of this year have been dramatic.
An Autopsy of the 2022 Los Angeles Rams
The trenches are where the differences particularly stand out. ESPN’s “Pass Block Win Rate” metric and its defensive counterpart “Pass Rush Win Rate” measure how often a team’s offensive or defensive linemen beat their man within 2.5 seconds of the snap – a measure that better correlates to passing performance and future win rate than even pressure rate.
Last year, the Rams were first in Pass Block Win Rate and Pass Rush Win Rate. On top of that, they were first in the run corollary, Run Stop Win Rate, and twelfth in Run Block Win Rate. Their Pass Rush Win Rate still remains number one – courtesy of essentially one player – but their Pass Block Win Rate is 24th in the NFL, and their Run Block Win Rate is 30th.
They haven’t been able to convert their pass rush wins into pressures in part because the wins are singular – the product of Aaron Donald wrecking blocking schemes by himself – without talent across the rest of the defensive line to take advantage of it or the coverage discipline to force the quarterback to hold on to the ball when pressure threatens the pocket.
The Rams have essentially no “long pressures” and, as a result, have the fastest time-to-pressure in the NFL at 2.16 seconds, per TruMedia. This would be a good result if they were getting pressure, but they rank dead last in the NFL in pressure rate. All this means is that the only way they can impact the quarterback is if they immediately jump into the backfield – coverage sacks and pressures don’t exist for them.
This is why the defense ranks 9th in fastest opponent time to throw. That inability to extend quarterback time through coverage is a big reason the Rams rank 20th in expected points allowed per opponent dropback.
The defense is a problem, but not the primary issue. The offense ranks last in the NFL in EPA per play. The passing game has been an issue, but what exacerbates that poor passing game is an anemic running game – one that should be better, given the decent run-blocking from the offensive line.
That’s part of the reason the Rams wanted to trade for Christian McCaffrey – the running backs have not taken advantage of the space the line has given them.
The investments they’ve made on both sides of the ball make that particularly distressing; Donald and Jalen Ramsey consume $50 million against the cap, while Stafford and Kupp take up $30 million. In the meantime, they’re liable for $12 million of dead cap space for Robert Woods.
While it wouldn’t be accurate to say that the Rams are “OK” with this, the possibility that they would crash and burn after hitting their goal last year was well within the cards and something that head coach Sean McVay and general manager Les Snead knew would be a possible outcome to their approach.
The last time the Rams selected in the first round was in 2016, selecting Jared Goff first overall. Since then, they’ve traded their first-round picks for Ramsey, Stafford, and Brandin Cooks, and second-round picks for Von Miller, Marcus Peters, and Sammy Watkins.
As a result, the Rams have very little in the way of cheap rookie-contract talent on the roster. It largely amounts to backups without much of a role or players like Van Jefferson, Ben Skowronek, Darrell Henderson, Cam Akers, Greg Gaines, Ernest Jones, David Long Jr., Taylor Rapp, and Nick Scott.
Most of those players are good and deserve to be on an NFL roster. But it lacks the high-end talent of the type often found on high-level rosters — players like Ja’Marr Chase, Creed Humphrey, Ed Oliver, or Justin Jefferson are critical to the roster construction of the teams that drafted them.
They got around this limitation with contract tricks and short-term deals. Many of those deals, however, are not available to them in 2023. They’ve suffered from enormous attrition; Miller signed a deal with Buffalo while left tackle Andrew Whitworth retired. Fellow offensive linemen Joseph Noteboom and David Edwards have been injured while Austin Corbett signed with Carolina.
Receivers Robert Woods and Odell Beckham are no longer around, either. Woods was traded to Tennessee off of injury, while Beckham was on a one-year contract and couldn’t renew – because of injury.
The players that stuck around didn’t get much better; Aaron Donald hasn’t seen too many defensive linemen leave and is still playing like the best defensive tackle in football, but the Rams can’t seem to generate much pass rush at all.
After investing multiple first-round picks for Matthew Stafford, the Rams are on the verge of moving on from him, something that may be wise given the elbow injury that cropped up in the offseason. On top of that, their top receiver won’t be available for at least a month.
Kupp had already been having a somewhat down season – after finishing 2021 as the top receiver by a number of metrics, including yards per route run, ESPN’s new receiver metric or PFF grades, Kupp now ranks outside of the top five in two of those metrics and 27th in ESPN’s metric.
More importantly, the rest of the Rams receiver group was already struggling to provide Kupp and Stafford with the supplementary support both need and now will have to deal with defenses no longer keying in on Kupp.
With Stafford and the running game playing as they were, the only chance the offense stood to keep pace with opponents was with Kupp on the field.
There have been swirling retirement rumors for Stafford, Donald, and McVay, and there are no clear replacements for any of them. McVay has been such a successful coach that he regularly sees his coaching staff poached by other teams, the consequence of which is a lack of experience on the offensive side of the coaching roster.
Donald is irreplaceable, and the Rams won’t have any draft selections to replace Stafford at quarterback. The Rams took out a loan to buy a Super Bowl ring, and the debtors have come knocking.