It’s week 9 of the NFL season and the 2-4-1 Washington Commanders will be facing a 4-4 Rams team at home at Northwest Stadium on Sunday at 1:00 p.m. ET. The Rams started the season hyped as the best team in the NFL and presented as likely Super Bowl winners, but have struggled with consistency since then. At the same time, the Rams are a talented and well-coached team, having blown out the Giants 28-6 in Week 2 and the Chargers 24-9 last week.
On offense, the Rams are coached by head coach Sean McVay,
offensive coordinator Nate Scheelhaase, and assistant HC Kliff Kingsbury, with McVay calling the plays. Two of those three coaches should be familiar to Washington fans as they were former playcallers here. This offense is built around one of the NFL’s best offensive lines, a gap-scheme run game that favors power, and the NFL’s highest use of 3-TE sets. It’s an offense that sets up to bludgeon opposing defenses in the run game, but also uses their heavy personnel tendency to force opposing defenses to go heavy and set up star WR Puka Nacua to feast on heavier, slower defensive matchups. This kind of offense funnels the ball to Nacua, who currently leads the NFL with a 37.9% target share. A ruptured hamstring by WR Davante Adams will only increase the likelihood of the Rams going heavy and throwing the ball to Nacua. Overall, the Rams have the 3rd-ranked passing offense and the 6th-ranked rushing offense in terms of yards per game.
On defense, the Rams have been led by DC Chris Shula, who has worked his way up from being the assistant linebackers coach of the Rams in 2017. Shula has typically employed a 3-4 front with heavy use of zone coverage on the backend, though he is also known for extensive use of disguise, both on his pressure packages (faking a blitz from one direction while actually bringing pressure from another), and in his coverage (rotating coverages post-snap to confuse QBs). This year, after the Rams traded a 1st-round pick for shutdown CB Trent McDuffie, they have occasionally been using him to shadow star WRs, which allowed him to erase Malik Nabers in their Week 2 matchup. However, McDuffie’s status is uncertain this week after sustaining a back injury against the Chargers. The Rams also just lost star CB Jaylen Watson to a season-ending shoulder injury, which could leave the backend of the Rams defense weakened. At the same time, Los Angeles may be getting back star pass rusher Myles Garrett this week, which would be a tremendous boon for their defense. Overall, the Rams have run one of the NFL’s best defenses this year by many metrics, though it has ranked better against the pass (7th) than run (15th).
I asked Kenneth Arthur of Turf Show Times five questions to better understand the state of the Rams and what to look for in this game.
1) The Rams entered the season widely considered an elite team and Super Bowl favorite, but sit at 4-4 and on the outside looking in to win their division. Why has their season started off much slower than expected?
I’d start with revisiting why the Rams were considered such heavy favorites. A perennial contender under Sean McVay, the reigning MVP, then they add Myles Garrett, Trent McDuffie, and Aaron Donald, right? Garrett hasn’t played since Week 1. McDuffie has missed a couple of games. Donald isn’t more than a rotational option at this point in his career.
But that doesn’t explain everything, right? Well, the Rams are the perfect example of an “Achilles” or a “Goliath”. They look dangerous but they always have the same weak points. I wasn’t convinced the Rams were Super Bowl favorites going into the season because they didn’t fix special teams, they didn’t use the draft to make their team better now, and they have too many players who are on the precipice of another injury, such as Puka Nacua, Davante Adams, and Matthew Stafford. Nacua has been banged up, Adams is out 6-10 weeks, and Stafford is dealing with elbow soreness. Jaylen Watson, another big free agent addition, has also been banged up and aggravated a shoulder injury on Sunday.
Special teams is awful, the receiver corps is thin, and the defense has predictable holes at linebacker. The defensive line was further weakened with injuries to Kobie Turner and Poona Ford.
Overall, it’s a banged up team with bad special teams and they were very close to wins over the Broncos and Bills anyway. I think the bigger concern is losing to the Cardinals. However, Garrett is returning to practice this week, so it’s possible we see the closest thing to the version of the Rams people thought they’d be when those predictions were made.
2) The Rams have had a disastrous performance on special teams so far this year. What are some of the specific problems the Rams special teams have faced, how are they dealing with them, and what do you think they will be like going forward?
The Rams have had bad special teams almost since McVay took over. He fired popular coordinator John Fassell a few years into the job and it’s been downhill since then. L.A. won’t focus any effort on finding a reliable kicker. They had Matt Gay and then let him walk in free agency over money. Now they’re on their third kicker–but last week they had TWO active kickers, so they’re almost on their fourth. Not locking down a good kicker is a big reason that the magnifying glass is on L.A.’s special teams.
Kickoff coverage has always been weak and the Rams don’t even really try to understand the new rules. They are 27th in kickoff yard average and 32nd in punts that land inside the 20. Punter Ethan Evans has a big leg but won’t be known for technique or accuracy, nor does he have good coverage. Special teams coordinator Bubba Ventrone (fired by the Broncos last season) is just the latest in a long line of people to have that job. He probably won’t last long either.
The Rams have signed a few special teamers during the year in an effort to improve, like Grant Stuard and Alex Bachman, but it’s not much and not having an impact.
They will continue to be bad moving forward. That’s what I predict.
3) The Rams have been really efficient in the draft, with late-round gems like Puka Nacua, but at the same time have seemed to devalue high draft picks and preferred to trade them away for known NFL quantities. What do you think of this approach of GM Les Snead in recent years with respect to draft picks and roster construction?
I would disagree that the Rams have been “efficient”, or even successful, in the draft. I think Puka Nacua is doing all the heavy lifting in that argument, but I’ll give two more: Kyren Williams in the 5th and Quentin Lake in the 6th in 2022.
L.A. drafted three starting quality players on day two in 2023 (Byron Young, Steve Avila, Turner), and then RT Warren McClendon and Nacua on day three, and a couple of role players. That’s all fine.
The biggest issues start in 2024, which is why the Rams are so thin at certain positions now. First-round pick Jared Verse was very overrated and that’s proving out in Cleveland. Second-round pick Braden Fiske (the Rams traded a future second-round pick to move up for Fiske, one of the biggest day two overpays in history) has regressed. Third-round picks Blake Corum and Kam Kinchens are “OK”. Then the Rams made six day three picks and none of them are consequential players, if they’re even still on the team.
The 2025 draft saw the Rams pick six players, with second-round pick TE Terrance Ferguson on IR and yet to contribute much. Third-round OLB Josaiah Stewart contributes here and there, but we’ll see how much higher his ceiling is. Four day three picks aren’t contributing and two of them are off the team. Then the Rams drafted five players in 2026 and none of them contribute. One didn’t make the team and two are healthy scratches.
So these last two draft classes include 11 players and the only ones even really playing are Stewart and seventh-round receiver Konata Mumpfield, merely out of necessity because of injuries.
These are picks that we may look back on in 2027 and say “Good job, I didn’t respect your vision Les Snead.”
This would imply that first-round QB Ty Simpson is playing next year and looks like a worthy pick at 13, which was much higher than most experts believed he should go. This would mean that L.A.’s two second-round tight ends in the last two years (Ferguson, Max Klare) are playing like an exciting 13 personnel duo. This would mean that they don’t keep parting ways with the guys they draft within 1-3 years, as they’ve been doing a lot of recently.
The trades (2 firsts for Stafford, 1 for McDuffie, 1+Verse for Garrett) make sense to me really. I think late first-round picks are overrated. But it’s times like this being 4-4 and struggling in certain areas that definitely call into question the Rams’ draft and trade philosophies because they haven’t been to the Super Bowl since 2021 and have only come close once. The Rams need to see a better return on investment, and fast.
One more note: I’ve been one of the biggest Puka Nacua fans in the world since he debuted in 2023. The fact that he’s not certainly part of L.A.’s future at this point is concerning, to say the least, both because of what Puka has done to make the team doubt him and because the Rams don’t seem to realize that they’ll be one of the worst teams in the NFL without him.
4) Who is one Rams player on offense and one on defense that Commanders fans probably don’t know much about, but should?
Nothing on offense is going to surprise you. Stafford, Nacua, and Kyren Williams are still the big three. The only other player who pops is Corum and I just assume everybody knows about him by now because of fantasy football. Corum is a more dynamic runner than Williams, but McVay hasn’t lost any trust in Kyren. There might be a few extra passes to Tutu Atwell this week.
Quentin Lake is someone who doesn’t get enough credit as an actual star. He plays deep safety, linebacker, and slot, in addition to lining up nearly anywhere else. He has three picks and 11 passes defensed. Good against the run and the pass. Lake deserves as much credit for his value as Nick Emmanwori in Seattle.
5) How should Washington gameplan for this matchup on both sides of the ball?
Defensively, if you contain Williams and Corum on early downs with heavy fronts and get the Rams to third-and-medium+, you really limit Stafford’s options because the offense is so one-dimensional without Davante Adams. Keep a linebacker or safety down in the box on those plays to try and take away Puka’s underneath routes because despite Puka being a very talented downfield threat, most of his production actually comes on short passes. Force Stafford to use his secondary passing weapons like Tyler Higbee, Colby Parkinson, and Mumpfield because they’re inconsistent and unreliable.
Offensively, use quick throw passing plays to get the ball out of Jayden Daniels’ hands quickly and avoid third-and-long plays where the Rams pressure has a chance to get home. No free points, so protecting the ball is probably more important than scoring touchdowns–if you give the Rams enough time, they will end up making a mistake or two on special teams and turn the ball over once or twice. Those are Washington’s best opportunities to capitlize.
A companion article to this with my answers to Kenneth’s questions will be linked here when it is available.
Thanks again to Kenneth Arthur for taking time out of his day to answer our questions about the Rams.
