St. Louis Rams vs. Washington: Perspective After Humbling Loss In Washington

More to come in breaking this one down, especially the first half which doomed the Rams, but I'm not particularly in the mood to delve too deep into today's 24-10 loss to Washington. Here's a cursory rundown of where we stand and what we're looking at moving forward.

Injuries

Didn't seem to be anything too significant, but we'll have to see what was up with Janoris Jenkins. Tre Mason didn't look worse for wear health-wise, though perhaps there's an element of his disappointing stat line that could be attributed to his medical readiness.

Certainly though, we'll have games ahead with bigger impacts to deal with here.

Performance Issues

I don't know that we'll have games ahead with bigger impacts than here, though. All the fears of the offense came true. The first half was absolutely abysmal. The pass blocking wasn't great. The run blocking was worse. Much worse. Tre Mason ran the ball seven times for just 26 yards. Nick Foles was 17/32 for 150 yards. The Rams went 2-for-12 on third down conversions. Tavon Austin, who the Rams swore up and down would be more involved this year, had four rushes and one reception for 46 total yards of offense. Returning to form, the Rams racked up nine penalties. The defense, which was game, allowed Washington to go 50% on third down conversions including sacrificing a crucial 3rd and 13 situation for a 3rd and 8 into a 1st down.

Timeliness is often what separates decent defenses from good ones from great ones.

Standings

Well, as I write this, we're still in the middle of the second group of games. We won't have the full NFC West outlook until after the Seattle Seahawks face the Green Bay Packers in their NFC Championship rematch tonight. Arizona beat the Bears to move to 2-0 and will hold the division lead outright, but the 49ers lost in Pittsburgh and are tied with the Rams at 1-1.

It's still too early to read to much into the standings around the conference.

Schedule

This is where you can begin separating the hopefuls from the pragmatists.

The Rams will host the Pittsburgh Steelers in St. Louis in Week 3 followed by a two-game road trip to face Arizona and Green Bay before a Week 6 bye. On one hand, you could point to the performance in week 1 and see two wins out of the next three. On the other, you could look at today and see three more losses.

The problem today is that this team is one of two perspectives: one of competency and one of utter disarray, especially on offense. The problem is that is where we've been for 3 1/6 years under Jeff Fisher.

The problem is that despite the changes, nothing might have really changed in the end.