Turf Show Times
The Los Angeles Rams are heading to the NFC Championship after yet another Matthew Stafford game-winning drive in the playoffs. It was the ‘Thiccer Kicker’ who sent the Rams to the NFC Championship Game with the game-winning kick in overtime as the defense forced three turnovers. For the Rams, it didn’t come easy, but they were able to find a way in the cold when many counted them out. Let’s get to our 10 takeaways as we try to process what happened.
It’s hard to talk about this Rams win without first mentioning the defense. This group was absolutely phenomenal in this game. Time and time again, they showed up in the big moment. On the opening drive, they got the stop on fourth down with an interception from Cobie Durant. The Bears went 3-for-6 on fourth down. Multiple times in third and fourth-and-short situations, the Rams defense won at the line of scrimmage and got the stop. Winning in those moments affected Ben Johnson’s decision to go for two at the end of the game. For the most part, they played good situational football and won in the high-leverage moments.
However, it goes beyond the stops on fourth down or even the turnovers. In the third quarter, the Rams had 19 yards of total offense. Following the opening drive touchdown and taking away the field goal drive at the end of the half, the offense had 42 yards of offense going into the fourth quarter. The offense had a success rate of 35.5 percent. It was their lowest since the Brett Rypien game. In a game that was expected to have a lot of points, the Rams defense continuously showed up while the offense struggled. Chris Shula is going to be a head coach for a reason. His group got three turnovers, had three stops on fourth down, and held the Bears offense in check throughout the game. The Rams do not win without this group.
This may have been one of the worst called games from Sean McVay. Coming into the game, the Bears had a bottom-five run defense. However, McVay could not stop throwing the ball with his quarterback that clearly just wasn’t feeling it. At one point the Rams had run 44 plays and only 11 of them were runs. The Rams leaned into 13 personnel throughout the back-half of the season. They used it on just 9.1 percent of their offensive plays on Sunday night.
With the season potentially on the line, McVay called a toss play to Blake Corum on third-and-1 to the short side of the field. Outside of Puka Nacua’s fourth down conversion on a jet sweep, the Bears had shown the ability to stop those outside runs. McVay had zero feel for this game from a play-calling standpoint and some of that is credit to Dennis Allen. The Bears blitzed the Rams heavily which is what they...
