There are polarizing ways to look at the Los Angeles Rams defense so far this season. On one hand, in a 1-2 start they’ve given up 27 and 30 points to the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos, which aren’t especially encouraging totals.
On the flip side, advanced metrics have been higher on L.A. so far, with the Rams finding themselves well into the top half of the league in several notable statistics.
This week’s game with the Philadelphia Eagles should be a chance for defensive coordinator Chris
Shula’s group to make a positive statement.
There’s a hint of desperation for both squads going into this game. The Rams are off to a disappointing start considering their lofty aspirations this year, while the Eagles are 2-1 but have two less-than-decisive wins over supposedly inferior teams and were just blasted by the Chicago Bears on Monday night. It’s early, but this feels like an important tilt for both sides.
The Eagles, however, are in an especially tight spot offensively. Philadelphia is trying to ride out the early season growing pains that come with a new offensive coordinator and scheme (at least to some degree the scheme is new, anyway), while its pass-catching group is in flux heading into the weekend. Devonta Smith isn’t expected to play, taking away the Eagles’ best receiver and one of the more underrated receivers in the sport. Tight end Dallas Goedert has also missed time this week, as has receiver Hollywood Brown, and first-round pick Makai Lemon hasn’t been productive through his first handful of NFL games.
Jalen Hurts, to his credit, has played well enough to start the year. But that’s a lot of question marks, at best, in terms of his offensive weapons.
Depending on where you look, the Rams are on the fringes of the top 10 around the league in defensive EPA/play so far (RBSDM.com’s calculation has them 10th, while SumerSports has them 11th). The passing defense has been especially solid according to some advanced metrics. Per RBSDM, the Rams defense is 5th in dropback EPA and 11th in dropback success rate. They are making things challenging for opposing passing attacks, especially when it comes to generating chunk plays.
Run defense, however, has been a different story for Los Angeles. While its rushing success rate currently sits 13th in the league, it ranks 26th in rush EPA/play. That tells you that L.A. is allowing too many big gains while being decent on a down-to-down basis.
Thankfully for the Rams, this matchup should, in theory, allow them to dedicate more resources to stopping the run while still limiting the passing game. With such a banged up corps of pass catchers, it is likely going to be even more challenging to move the ball through the air for a team that is already struggling to do that (the Eagles are 25th in dropback EPA/play through three weeks). Now, the Eagles have been decent at generating explosive pass plays, but the Rams have trusted their cornerbacks on islands this year, playing man coverage on 29.5% of snaps, the ninth-highest rate in the NFL per Next Gen Stats. Even without Jaylen Watson this week, Los Angeles can probably afford to keep trusting those cornerbacks.
It’s important to mention trench play here as well, which is admittedly more concerning with Aaron Donald now out for the matchup. He would have been especially valuable against the Eagles’ offensive line, which has been solid in pass protection this year overall but exceptionally poor at the guard spots in particular (see the embedded post below).
If your guards are grading out worse in pass protection than the ones in Green Bay, something is going heinously wrong.
Donald would likely feast in that matchup, but it’s a golden opportunity for Braden Fiske to bounce back after having one of the least productive games of his career in Week 3. Against Denver, Fiske posted just the second game of his career without a single pressure.
Shula will likely try to create as many favorable interior matchups as possible, so even without Donald there’s an optimistic case for the Rams to win plenty up front.
As mentioned above, the pressure point in this game for the Rams defense will likely be its ability to stop the run. They’ve struggled in that department this year, but the Eagles haven’t been unstoppable, either. At 10th in the league in EPA per rush, the Eagles are solidly good on the ground, but not elite so far this season.
If the pass defense indeed controls the game through the air, it could allow Los Angeles to put heavier personnel on the field more often to help buoy the run defense. The Rams are playing dime 36.3% of the time this season per Next Gen Stats, the highest rate for any team in the last three years. That’s understandable, given the quality of talent in the secondary and the comparative lack in the linebacker corps. But if they add another front seven/six player just a little more often it could pay major dividends.
There are plenty of “shoulds” and “coulds” above, because yes, we won’t know any of this for sure until the teams actually take the field. But in terms of forecasting this matchup, in a world of zero guarantees, there’s reason to believe the Rams are in position to have a strong defensive showing on Sunday.
