The Los Angeles Rams beat the Philadelphia Eagles by a final score of 24-20 in Week 4 of the NFL season. Matthew Stafford threw two picks in the first half (he’s thrown an interception in every game this year) and Philly took a 20-10 lead into halftime. The Rams showed life in the second half as they put up 16 unanswered points to make the score 24-20 with just about one minute left in the fourth quarter.
The Rams struggled to find a rhythm on offense today as Stafford missed some throws while his
players also failed to haul in some of his stronger passes. The special teams was a low point with penalties, poor coverage and a missed field goal by Harrison Mevis after being perfect in Week 3.
The Rams defense kept the Rams in the game, and they were rewarded with a victory. Chris Shula bailed out Sean McVay today.
The First Half
Quarters one and two ended up badly for L.A. Their defense jumped out to a hot start, sure, but the offense struggled with Stafford turning the ball over twice, and Kyren Williams getting stuffed on a third and one early in the game, forcing a punt.
The rainy weather and Vic Fangio’s defense did a lot of the heavy lifting for Philly, who was without DeVonta Smith. Saquan Barkley also left this game in the first quarter, yet, Philly seemed to overcome as Jalen Hurts found Darious Cooper for two passing touchdowns before the first half came to it’s close.
The special teams for the Rams also gave up a big return to Britain Covery who at one time had a chance to make the Rams roster. L.A. may be regretting their decision to let Covey walk after seeing his big return today and they’re lack of consistency in their return game.
Hurts had less than 100 passing yards after the first half, but still had two passing scores. Credit Hurts’s nice play to make that happen, but the Rams have to take some blame for allowing that.
The Second Half
The Rams came out the second half with the ball on offense and trailing 10 points. Stafford had a chance to connect with Adams deep, but overthrew the ball. To be fair, earlier in the game Stafford had hit Adams seemingly on the hands in the endzone, but Adams failed to haul that one in.
Point being, there was plenty of blame to go around for why the Rams were trailing to their NFC East opponent.
To the team’s credit, they kept fighting on defense, but the offense and special teams continued to let them down.
Harrison Mevis missed a 40+ yard field goal which would have cut the Philly lead to one score. Stafford and the offense failed to get anything of substance going. Seemingly anytime the Rams did put together a strong play, it was negated or pushed back by a penalty.
Finally, with less than 5 minutes to play, the Rams made the score 20-17 when Kyren Williams found the endzone, but then Mevis kicked the ensuing kickoff out of bounds setting up the Eagles at the 4o-yard line.
It was another example of the Rams getting in their own way.
The Officiating
Rams fans are going to say the officiating was poor, the Eagles would say the same.
Either way, it’s worth bringing up that for the second week in a row some very questionable calls went against McVay and his boys.
Trent McDuffie was called for a weak pass interference call towards the end of the opening half when his glove became caught on a jersey. The Rams had a player run into an official on the sideline. Puka Nacua was called for what looked like a phantom blindside block.
Officiating in any NFL game is typically worth discussion because calls can be so subjective, but the Rams cannot say they lost this game due to officiating. They were outplayed more than not over the course of 60 minutes, but the officiating is worth noting.
The Final:
A “super team” this team is not. Through 4 weeks the Rams are 1-3 and they don’t look good enough to make noise in the playoffs right now. They don’t look good enough to compete against the best teams in the NFL.
The defense has been their best unit, but they’ve haven’t been able to cover up for all the team’s errors.
