The Los Angeles Rams dominated when pushing the ball down the field in their Week 2 win. Specifically, Matthew Stafford and Davante Adams dominated the New York Giants when pushing the ball.
They will likely meet more resistance to that plan in Week 3 against the Denver Broncos.
With Puka Nacua set to miss his second game in a row, Adams will be the featured piece in the pass catcher corps again this week. He was tremendous in that role against the Giants, posting eight receptions for 195 yards and
two touchdowns, his best game since joining the Rams last year.
He was especially good when working downfield. Next Gen Stats defines a “downfield target” as a pass of 10+ air yards. Stafford targeted Adams eight times on downfield throws, and Adams hauled in seven for 191 yards and both of his scores. He wasn’t just dicing up the Giants’ secondary, he was hitting home run after home run against them.
It would be fantastic for L.A. if the 33-year-old receiver could do that again, but, unfortunately for him, he’s got a tougher matchup this week than New York cornerbacks Greg Newsome II and Colton Hood.
Instead, he will likely see a lot of Denver cornerback Patrick Surtain II. That means he’ll battle arguably the best cornerback in the NFL on Sunday night. Only three cornerbacks have won AP Defensive Player of the Year in the last three decades: Surtain (2024), Stephon Gilmore (2019) and Hall of Famer Charles Woodson (2009). It goes without saying that he’s a special player.
This season, he’s only allowed three receptions for 20 yards over two games, a blowout loss to the Kansas City Chiefs and a close win over the Jacksonville Jaguars. More pertinently, according to Next Gen Stats, Surtain hasn’t allowed a downfield reception in his last 213 coverage snaps. Since the start of 2025, he’s only allowed three of them. It is extremely hard to create explosives through the air against him.
Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s unbeatable. Adams, in fact, has been as good as anyone in the league when matched up on Surtain, though they haven’t dueled since 2023.
The Rams’ receiver has run 70 routes against Surtain in four games, 40 of which have come with man coverage. Adams has been targeted 22 times in those matchups with 13 receptions for 172 yards and two touchdowns. Those are the best numbers for any receiver against Surtain in the cornerback’s career.
Not for nothing, the quarterbacks throwing to Adams in those four games were Derek Carr, Jimmy Garoppolo and Aidan O’Connell.
That brings us back to Sunday’s matchup. There’s good reason to believe Adams can still produce against the NFL’s best corner, but the opportunities to take the top off the defense with vertical concepts will be more limited. You can probably deduce the most likely way the Rams’ best active receiver will have to win this time around.
Stafford is obviously one of the league’s best at pushing the ball and using all portions of the field, while Adams’s technical ability as a route runner is especially deadly in the intermediate and deep levels of the defense. But that doesn’t mean those two can’t play a more underneath, conservative game this week. If someone with that kind of separation ability is getting the better of such a dominant corner, you’ll take those wins any way you can get them.
It should be noted that the Rams don’t want to give up entirely on taking shots down the field. There should be opportunities for others whenever Surtain is occupied, and this could be another chance for tight end Terrence Ferguson to show off his field-stretching ability. It’s also generally a smart gamble to attack Denver No. 2 cornerback, Riley Moss, who’s a good player in his own right but also led the NFL in penalty yardage committed last season.
The Rams don’t have to concede everything to the Bronco defense this week and settle for a dink-and-dunk passing attack. But the same downfield opportunities likely won’t be available for Adams, so they’ll need to find a different approach to picking apart the Denver secondary.
