The Rams lost on Sunday to the Packers 30-20. The Rams are just too young, and have too many needs to win games against teams like the Packers.
But every game the Rams play, the more players stick out, rather it's a good thing or a bad thing, and honestly it's hard to find time to watch every snap of a football game, but the folks at www.profootballfocus.com, find time to write a Re-Focused article, from every NFL game played.
So, writer Sam Monton talked about the Rams vs. Packers game, and since these refocused articles are too good to keep for myself, I decided to share the important quotes and stats from the article. This week, it's about the Rams defense, and Sam Bradford
Robert Quinn is slowly coming into his own. He's been getting into the backfield all season, and is turning into the passrusher that the Rams drafted him to be last season. He's leading the team with 7 sacks this season, and he should end up with more than 10 sacks this season.
Newhouse ended up surrendering a sack, two knockdowns and three further pressures, as well as being flagged for holding on a play where he allowed the pressure anyway. This was by far his worst performance of the season and the only time he has really graded negatively as a pass-protector (-0.2 against Seattle in Week 3 his only other performance under 0.0, still well in average territory). This was a look at the Newhouse that we thought he might have developed beyond, and though Quinn is a talented athlete and a handful to deal with, Newhouse looked to be capable of handling players like that this season. A performance like this will be a worry until he can show it was just a bad day at the office.
Chris Long has been a disappointment this season, he signed his big contract this off-season, but he hasn't lived up to the money yet. Long has his games where he show up, but when he doesn't show up it's noticeable.
Chris Long (-4.3) may be the more experienced of the pair, but it was Quinn (+4.3) who shined in this game while Long found himself struggling to even make an impact. In 38 pass rushes, Long was completely blanked by the right side of the Green Bay line, and the only time he really showed up in the game was when he was jumping offside, trying to gain an advantage in a battle he was badly losing.
Speaking of players with a new contract, James Laurinaitis is getting back to his playmaking ways. Honestly, I was slightly disappointed in James this season he lost weight to play better in this new defensive system, but he didn't look like the same guy. Against the Packers, he regained the swagger that he lost
Laurinaitis had his best game of the season. He recorded 11 solo tackles & 8 defensive stops. Stops constitute an offensive failure. #rams
— Tyson Langland(@TysonNFL) October 22, 2012
This last nugget on the defense is about Janoris Jenkins, once a fabulous player with a lot of hype, now just a player with a lot of hype.
It started last week when the Dolphins picked on Jenkins, connecting on 9/9 of their passes on him. This week, it was more of the same, Aaron Rodgers had a field day with the young rookie.
Things have been going pretty well for the Rams’ rookie corner since being drafted, but in this game he went up against the league’s premier timing offense and the league’s best quarterback, and he was taken to task. The Packers went after Jenkins a lot in this game, throwing his way 11 times, and he coughed up nine receptions for 121 yards and a touchdown. He was beaten by all three of the Packers’ top receivers before the game was over.
Jeff Fisher has made excuses for Jenkins the last couple of weeks, last week, Jenkins saw something he recognized, but stood there waiting and got a long pass thrown over him, and this week, Chris Long's offside flag caught his eye. He will improve, but you figure that Tom Brady and the rest of the quarterbacks that the Rams will play will focus on him, so hopefully, he picks up his play this week in London.
Last, but not least, everyone's favorite argument Sam Bradford. Rather you think he will be a good player, or a bad player, it would be a surprise if the Rams go in another direction at quarterback next year. But is Sam losing some f that great accuracy?
Though his raw numbers weren’t terrible in this game — he completed 61.8% of his throws for 255 yards with a touchdown and an interception — the number of simple, routine throws where he was off with his accuracy was just unacceptable for any quarterback, let alone one with this reputation for accuracy. Several of these throws resulted in incompletions, but his receivers caught a lot of passes in this game that were way off the mark in terms of ball location, which limited the work they could do after the catch and often made the catch far tougher than it needed to be. Bradford has a lot to work on, but he needs to retain the skills he had to begin with, otherwise he’ll only ever go backwards.
Lot's of the national media are giving up on Bradford developing into an elite quarterback, but like I keep mentioning, waiting worked for the Giants and Eli.