Rams 38, Texans 13-Third win Blow-out

[Retroram52]

After getting beat by two consecutive teams who score 30+ against the Rams, the Rams have scored 30+ points against two consecutive opponents beginning last week against the Jags and continuing this week against the Texans. This was a total team effort in all phases of the game for a complete dominant performance that no one expected and the Rams took another step in the positive direction with a convincing win on the road which we have not done dating back to 2006 against the Raiders.

Overall, the offense, the defense, STS, and playing calling all performed great today and even though we had a couple of mental mistakes by isolated players, we overcame them all and completing ran over the Texans.

On Offense. The positives. We scored first in the early part of the first quarter after our first offensive series went three and out. Sammie had a pedestrian 12/16 for 117 yards, 3 RDS and no INTs (QB rating of 124.3) compared to Schaub who finished his day going 15/21 for 186 and Yates filling in for an injured Schaub going 11/15 for 110 yards and 2 INTs. The story of the day was Zac Stacey and the Oline blocking that emerged as the Rams finding the RB they have have been searching for and the fact that the running game opened up the passing game as we went deep three times that it paid off with opponent penalties. Stacey finished the day going 18 carries for 79 yards with help from Richardson and Cunningham. We had big plays in the run game and in the passing game as Quick, Cook, Givens, and Kendricks all redeemed themselves after making some mistakes that were obvious.

The negatives. Not too many here except for Chris Williams having a false start right before the half that may have cost us a TD and Wells screwing up late in the game with a miscue that did not matter at that time. Givens missed a nice deep ball from Sammie early on that he could have caught if he stretched it out. Other than this not much else.

On defense. WOW, is all that you can say. We had INTs by Jenkins and Olgetree, the latter returning his pick for six that I believe set a new return record for the Rams of 98 yards. There were two fumble recoveries, one on special teams that Bates returned for a TD and Laurinaitus returned his for 40 yards. Laurinaitus has been close for a while now and he finally got a return on a miscue. We had five sacks with Brockers getting 2, Jenkins, Long, and Quinn all getting 1 each. Just a badass defensive effort today with everyone having a great game except for Cudjo.

The negatives. Not many here except for two mental mistakes by Cudjo and the defense continues to give up big rushing yardage as Foster finished he day 20 carries for 141 yards.

On Special Teams. The positives. The big play of the day was rookie Darren Bates getting his first Pro TD on a fumble recovery on kick-off duty. That was sweet retribution for all the krap the STs have been producing the last couple of games. Zuerlein continues to amaze with nearly every kick-off put out of the endzone for no return and be was 1/1 in FGs. The other big story here was the STs had no penalties on punt returns because the defense kept shutting Houston's offense down with turnovers and we only punted twice ourselves.

The negatives. None here.

Onward we go to Carolina to take on a sporadic Panthers team. This game was very enjoyable for all of us and it was sweet in the sense of what SJ76 has been vehemently screaming about for a long time. Pound the Rock, defend well, don't do game-killing mistakes, do your job and execute, and the win will be there. We even got a great gamed called by Shottenheimer. The momentum continues next week and hopefully, this win will be the model we continue to fall back on as we continue through the season.

 

[Silas]

Yeah!! Rams win. They deserve credit when it's due and they earned it today.

The run defense wasn't great, but Foster is no ordinary RB. Wish the Rams had him.

I want to see Austin more involved in the Offense. The Rams are wasting his skills. Are the Rams ever going to play Bailey?

Great job today, overall.

 

[Ramtim]

Retroram You stated exactly what I thought

You nailed everything that I saw and was thinking about during and after the game. Especially when you mentioned the false start penalty that gave us 3 instead of 7. If the players van eliminate those type of mistakes and play take away this season can really get interesting especially in the NFC west where I feel the Rams now will be a lot tougher and if this carries over we are going to see some attitude!

 

[ksudodger]

Our defense and special teams got healthy yesterday on a floundering Texans squad. The young defenders pressed on the outside and forced mistakes. No penalties on punt returns!!!!!
Great play by Bates...good anticipation by Ogletree on the pick 6...

Bradford was steady and efficient yesterday. I will take a stat line like that every week.

Carolina is hitting their stride but still very mediocre defensively... could be interesting Sunday. Do NOT look ahead to the Monday night game on the 28th with the Seahags

 

[Retroram52]

Thanks Ramtim. Yes, those types of penalties are just killers and we seem to routinely do them. KSUDodger, I don't think the Rams will be looking any further than the Panthers as our confidence is just being built and as the commentator stated yesterday, going south can happen real fast in the NFL as we all know.

 

[Vitamike]

Retro, great post game analysis as always my man!

It's good to see Zack out there doing his thing, what nearly 5 yards per carry? What's going on that we couldn't have figured this out earlier? Is it because we are giving those like Pead and Richardson the nod because of tenure? This OL can run the ball with a back that is patient to hit the holes at the right time. Man I loved seeing Zack getting his body low hitting those holes yesterday!! They had a great shot of it on the game feed, maybe I'll take a screen shot! It was so freaking awesome!

So how many times was Sam sacked in this one, last week?

I think we are getting better!

Still not sure what we need to do on defense to stop the run. We were fortunate to get all those turnovers & the defensive and ST scores.

We wont always get those so there is still a lot of work to be done stopping the ball on third down and getting our opponents to punt.

Oh hey, I'm beginning to think Quick may just turn out to be a nice fit. We all knew he was a project, with his problems residing mostly between his ears. He had a very nice game yesterday save the pass that hit him in the back.

So okay, onward and upward we hope!

Next week we face a pretty good opponent even at 2-3 and a victory will be no easy task. The Panthers have quietly put together a very stout defense in both department however their run defense is no joke. They've been giving up 88 yards per game and have faced A Peterson, CJ Spiller and Marshawn Lynch in 3 of their 5 games!

Oh well, let's enjoy this one for the now!

Sitting at 3-3 is about where a lot of us thought we would be 6 games in. The difference is clear however, like Junkie has pointed out, we are finding out that we are not that high powered pass offense we thought we were going to be coming into the season and have come to the reality of being that smashed mouthed grind 'em out and run it type team that opens up the pass through the run.

 

[Caynine29]

Onward we go to Carolina to take on a sporadic Panthers team. This game was very enjoyable for all of us and it was sweet in the sense of what SJ76 has been vehemently screaming about for a long time. Pound the Rock, defend well, don't do game-killing mistakes, do your job and execute, and the win will be there. We even got a great gamed called by Shottenheimer. The momentum continues next week and hopefully, this win will be the model we continue to fall back on as we continue through the season.

I think you've got your credit mixed up a bit here. That was actually me saying this. All SJ76 was saying was "Bradford sucks."

Seriously, though... I do take exception to one statement here that seems to be getting grossly overlooked. That's the "great game called by Schottenheimer". Check the tape. The game plan on Sunday wasn't wildly experimental... or even remotely, for that matter. The playcalling was pretty much identical to the first 5 weeks of the season. The great game you saw was the same game we've seen... except it was run as it was actually drawn up, for once.

Bradford didn't go downfield all day (he actually, only did 3 times), his passes were the same check-downs and dump-offs we've seen (and complained about) all season. Tavon Austin wasn't forcing matchups, or playing in space. The playbook wasn't "opened up" at all. The difference in this one, is that the players actually played.

Sure, you're not going to win a ton of games or light up the scoreboard with Schotty's offense. But, there's no reason why a team shouldn't be able to have at least some measure of success running it, as long as it's actually run properly. As I've been saying all along, our problem this season has been execution, execution, EXECUTION. And the Rams proved me right, on Sunday.

I just hope that this means that we're starting to turn a corner and that Sunday's effort marks a trend rather than simply fizzling out as an isolated incident.

 

[Retroram52]

Sorry Caynine29. You are the rightful originator of the "Execution" argument. And you are right about the Schottenheimer playcalling. It just seemed to be more brilliant primarily because of the player execution in primarily the run game which set everything else up and the follow-up execution. Duely noted and I'll try to get the kudos straight next time!!

 

[fastforward]

A very nice day for the Rams. It's difficult to gauge where we are because pretty much everything went right for us and wrong for the Texans. Things I did notice: We used Harkey aggressively as a FB. We kept TEs close to the OTs to chip block and kept the WRs wide. We threw the ball deep a few times and whilst we didn't connect it opened up the underneath. The Harkey TD was from a 4 TE formation. The Kendricks TD also had McNeil on the field. It indicates that we spotted a short yardage weakness in the Texans defense using 'bigs'. The play i'll remember was a pass to Cook in left field where Bradford hung in there and took the hit. It put us in the redzone for our 2nd TD. A very good day for our TEs. Bradford had only 4 incomplete passes from 16 throws. 1 was a deep pass that Givens got hands to. 1 hit Quick in the back. 9 different players caught passes. Defensively we gave up a lot of yards but we stiffened up near the endzone and held them to FGs. Congratulations to the defense for the 4 turnovers and the hidden 160 yards on turnover returns.
There are still offensive questions. I don't believe our interior OL dramatically improved overnight so maybe we caught the Texans at a good time. Stacy had a good game but in pre-season he looked slow going to the outside and he struggled as a receiver. He's part of a RB committee but i'm not ready to call him a #1 RB with those limitations. Quick scored a TD but he's still really only playing the basic go, back-shoulder, and slant-in routes. Blocking on passing routes isn't good. lol.

 

[Vitamike]

Well a lot of us were talking about execution maybe in different terms. I've been stating through our struggles that we are a young team, developing and learning which of course implies a lack of execution. Not just of the offensive game plan however with all there phases of the game.

I've said in many a post one of our goals were to improve our field position average from last year (And we were destroying that goal only in the wrong way!). Field position is accomplished by executing in all three phases of the game. (Something we did in our last two games).

Once again, we are a young team still on a learning curve, failure to execute is almost a given considering all the new moving parts and inexperience.

I don't think Caynine cares if he is credited here or not however to his point ... it was who you actually attributed it too.

That said, SJ's and you retro, made good points about Sam needing to make better decisions on the field and that was a huge contributor as well vs the Texans garnering 24 offensive points and 3-3 in the redzone proves that.

Geez when you break it down, Sam had one less TD than incompletes!

 

[fastforward]

Geez when you break it down, Sam had one less TD than incompletes!

We had 12 completed passes. We got 9 1st downs by passing and 3TDs.

 

[Vitamike]

We had 12 completed passes. We got 9 1st downs by passing and 3TDs.

Is that true?!?!

Wow I don't think I've ever heard a teams passing efforts getting either a first down or touchdown with every completed pass!

 

[Retroram52]

Yep Vita, those stats FastForward quoted are true and thanks for the kind words dude!

 

[Smed55]

Is that true?!?!

Wow I don't think I've ever heard a teams passing efforts getting either a first down or touchdown with every completed pass!

Actually we had 3 passes that were completed that did not result in a TD or first down. I believe in the NFL you are also credited with a first down no matter where you score from or what down it is, I think?

I do know that we had three completions that did not result in first downs, never the less it was a very efficient game by Sammie! See I can be nice to Sammie

 

[fastforward]

Smed55 is correct.
We had a 7 yd pass on 2nd & 7 that left 3rd & 1. We had a 5 yd pass on 3rd & 6, (back-to-back, followed by the FG). There was also a 6 yd pass on 1st down.

 

[Vitamike]

Okay that makes a lot more sense. I was going to look it up before I started spouting it off to all that would listen.