Generic_Bills_Fan

Yes I guess we will lol run blitzes were blowing up enough runs to force 3rd and medium/longs in the second half and forced the rams into some real tough throw/catches they just happened to hit them all. I don’t understand how that objectively wouldn’t have been the better choice all game. despite not getting enough push up front on passing plays throughout things definitely seemed to tighten up where Stafford had a much lower margin of error. I think the philosophy of ‘run a base nickel with dbs giving cushion that’s ok against run and good against pass in ideal circumstances but doesn’t do much of anything in bad circumstances’ maybe gets swayed from in the future. Should be interesting to see how we handle the lions I don’t really understand this ‘too proud to run blitz because front 7s should in theory stop the run without that’ attitude lol. If teams are gonna go run heavy there’s a good shot you blow up a lot of runs in the backfield/at the LOS even with a big mismatch in the trenches

Probably 50/50 each time is a safe bet. Might be a little higher on the first few attempts because you have a few go to plays for that situation and then lower for the final two. That would put it at 6% ish to convert all 4.

I mean most teams usually sell out to stop the run or pass. I’d argue the opposite and say we should’ve started the game doing this ‘selling out’ you speak of 🤣. Second half defense looked much better to me and they were consistently in position but staffords ball placement was so good the rams still made plays. I would’ve forced him to do that for 60 minutes rather than 30 and we probably win. I think that’s what we’re gonna see against the lions

Yea that was a tough one…I think the third down call is different and we go for it on 4th and short worst case if our coaches didn’t think they could turn things around on the defensive side in the second half. Idk if that makes me feel better or worse though 😂

A team that’s scared enough of the opposing offense to roll the dice on that 4th and 5 is very likely opening the full playbook on every play of that final game sealing drive to win it with their offense. I’m not gonna fault people for being worried that that sneak decision could mean something boneheaded could happen in an actual game on the line situation obviously, but I don’t think in this particular game that it was super consequential I don’t even hate the sneak call given how high percentage it has been over Josh’s career but if it got stopped you have to know to line up right away and sneak it again without a timeout.. I think they probably got nervous a second sneak would get stuffed too and second guessed it in the moment.

Second half adjustments were pretty good imo which is why I haven’t lost full hope…probably should’ve started the game that way and maybe next time we will. Should be interesting to see the Detroit game the rams still made plays but they went from routine to incredible/low percentage plays in the second half

Honestly it’s probably good it happened in the regular season…i would argue the problem was we didn’t sell out to stop anything in the first half so the rams could do whatever they wanted pretty successfully the second half felt like guys were at least in position to make plays but Stafford was just playing out of his mind and his receivers were making ridiculous plays.

Milano needs a ton of reps in a hurry….if it ends up being something more than rust I think Dorian will get a bulk of the snaps again

Still don’t get the chiefs loss…if anything I think maybe we focused on beating the chiefs personnel wise a little too much which leaves us susceptible to teams that actually can pound the run. chiefs can’t even run that effectively on light boxes ravens would get our second half adjustments for 60 minutes in the playoffs I think…lots of run blitzes, challenging WRs and so on and given Lamar’s playoff history maybe it would work i do think some of the issue is Milano knocking off the rust and he’s only getting a ton of snaps now so he’s ready to go in the playoffs

Felt like another decriminalized oline holding type game haha I’m sure we got away with some too but the rams got away with a bunch highlighted by von miller getting WWE finishing moved on a huge third down conversion 🤣 This is more searching for a silver lining than anything lol but the defense seemed like it 9 times out of 10 would’ve tightened up in the second half there but Stafford was just on fire. I think the adjustments were good they just made every play

Yea I think you’re discounting the second half more than I am which seems like a personal taste type thing lol

Im talking about how much cushion the corners were giving throughout the game. This mcd soft zone criticism makes sense to me when the safeties are super deep and corners are giving a ton of cushion all game essentially gifting underneath stuff but that did not look like how it went to down to me at all I’m not trying to say we blitzed a ton lol I’m sure we would’ve if it was more effective though. And got desperate for a whole half of football? Isn’t that just a negative way of saying adjusted at halftime 🤣 I think the disagreement makes sense to me now at least haha if we’re gonna discount the whole second half then maybe my opinion would change a bit. I wouldn’t say we stubbornly stuck to the same thing all game long though

Missed this comment but it kind of ties into what we’re talking about now haha. The lions were hitting big plays because Douglas was giving less cushion than your typical mcd game the way I saw it.. this didn’t feel like what you’re describing as a typical mcd game to me at all. They didn’t run the ball particularly well either which forced them into a lot of 3rd and mediums or longer but they hit them all

I guess my gripe is with this ‘soft zone’ term that gets thrown around…even when it wasn’t a man blitz the corners were playing pretty tight it seemed like. I think we didn’t want to make things easy for their supposedly bad oline so we were trying to make Stafford hold the ball longer and hit deeper throws consistently and he did. To me it was pretty different than your typical mcd game and seemed pretty inspired by how Miami beat them almost to a fault lol

I don’t even mean the blitz plays…seemed like our corners were really challenging their receivers and Douglas had a bad game…pretty sure nacua at least was manned up for a lot of the game it wasn’t like they were hitting drag routes and quick outs all the way down the field because our corners were playing soft lol that’s why I don’t get the label. Everything was coming in chunks. I noticed an extra safety in the box a few of the times I was looking for it too in the second half

Did they sit in soft zone all game? Lol I really didn’t get that vibe at all. I guess I have to watch again but it seemed like we tried to play a lot of man to me and staffords ball placement was insane even when the coverage was good I feel like our corners were overly aggressive almost to a fault…didn’t seem ‘soft’ to me at all. Or when people throw ‘soft zone’ out around here are they specifically talking about safeties?

What have been? Seemed like we tried a lot of different things on the defensive side throughout that one but Stafford played so well that nothing worked. This didn’t feel like your classic let them run the ball/get dinked and dunked all the way down to the red zone type game to me at all personally belichick is one of the best defensive coaches of all time and threw everything he could think of at us and Allen still had a perfect offensive performance against him in the playoffs…sometimes you’ve just gotta tip your cap and move on

If you slowly work him in I don’t think he’s at 100% for the playoffs which id argue is more important than the somewhat slim chance we chase kc down for the 1 seed Stafford was possessed that was like Angels in the outfield if you’ve ever seen that movie 😂 they weren’t losing to anybody yesterday

I’m sure this is a minority opinion haha but I’m actually a little more confident in the lions game after this one. Even if our defense plays exactly the same I don’t think Goff makes some of those throws Stafford made without turning the ball over once or twice People are hung up on the ‘the rams had the 20th ranked offense’ thing for some reason. All their impact offensive players missed a bunch of time The lions would not have beaten that rams team yesterday Stafford was absolutely on fire. They met week 1 and went to OT but Stafford was not as on in that one

I hate giving the defense credit for anything after that one haha but I have to say the coverage was pretty tight at times and forced Stafford to hit ridiculous throw/catches despite absolutely 0 pass rush. He hit them all anyway but still 🤣 if we can force Goff into those kind of situations I don’t think he’ll be close to as successful as Stafford was.. I just assumed everything would look super easy with a game that bad from our dline

Lions remind me of a better 2023 dolphins…they throttle bad teams but are consistently locked into super tight games against good ones. I’d be pretty shocked if it’s not a close game

This rams game was pretty different than those imo. We’ve watched those chiefs playoff games where guys were running around wide open all night long but this one was mostly Stafford making incredible throws and guys making incredible catches for 60 straight minutes

Rams were missing basically their whole offense for most of the season so I don’t think their season ranks are super relevant. Lions got a full strength rams week 1 of the season and the game went to overtime for comparisons sake

The rush defense was actually pretty decent yesterday surprisingly the rams just had so many rushing attempts that it seems worse than it was lol

Hard to tell when we fell that far behind lol That was a dream game for a team that can’t stop the run 🤣