ClutchPoints
After finding themselves the last team standing in a bizarre year of NFC West football in 2024, the Los Angeles Rams are off to a very good start in 2025, taking care of the Houston Texans and Tennessee Titans with relative ease to maintain a perfect record through Week 2.
Unfortunately for Sean McVay’s club, the road is about to get a whole heck of a lot harder in Week 3, when the Rams have to board a cross-town flight to the City of Brotherly Love for an early-season barometer check against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Now for the Rams’ brass, a showdown against the Eagles is nothing new, as the two teams faced off twice last season. The first contest, a late-November showdown at SoFi, was memorable for all of the wrong reasons for LA, as they surrendered 255 rushing yards to Saquon Barkley in one of the ten-best running back performances in a regular season game in NFL history.
And the second? Well, that came in the Divisional Round of the playoffs, where Matthew Stafford and company came mere plays away from punching their ticket back to SoCal for a showdown against the Washington Commanders, but had those hopes crushed by a dominant Jalen Carter performance.
While Barkley has yet to crack 100 yards on the ground in a game so far this season, will the Rams be the team that unfortunately breaks that trend, allowing the Penn State product to dictate the game on his own? Or will McVay have a major counterpunch for Philadelphia, handing them their first loss of the season while proving they deserve to be in the conversation of true Super Bowl contenders?
Buckle up, football fans, this has the potential to be a good one.
In 2024, the Eagles’ defense was one of the best in the NFL, with a trio of incredible cornerbacks, two great safeties, and enough strength in the front seven to give opposing offensive coordinators fits against the run and the pass.
In 2025, the Eagles’ defense is still very good, but they do have at least one player who is a notable downgrade from the squad the Rams faced in the Divisional Round last fall: CB2.
In the base defense, the Eagles largely run a five-man front, with Zach Baun and rookie Jihaad Campbell off-ball, Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean at perimeter cornerback, and Reed Blankenship and rookie Drew Mukuba holding things down at the safety spots, but when Philly moves to nickel or even the dime? That’s when Adoree’ Jackson comes in at the second outside cornerback spot, and he has been targeted so far in 2025.
In his first two games of action in a midnight green jersey, Jackson has been targeted a team-leading 14 times, allowing nine catches for 132 yards but no touchdowns explicitly credited to him. Jackson allowed 14.7 yards per completion, nearly a first down per target – 9.4 – and as a result,...
