THE TABS":3jdbdmp4 said:
Quick question; if the Rams scheme is so simplistic, why have they scored 111 points in the last 3 meetings against us?
If their offense is that simple, shouldn’t it be easy to stop?
Todd Gurley is one of the best RB’s in the league, but I don’t consider Jared Goff an elite QB, or those receivers to be elite. They’re pretty good, but not great, by any means.
I don't have a quick answer.
So to answer your question... Why have the Rams scored 111 against the Seahawks? Because the Seahawks much like the rest of the league has yet to figure out the most effective way to stop the Rams offense. Also, you have to consider that the Seahawks defense is the least talented it's been in years and you sort of cherry-picked games. For instance, half of our defense was either injured or on IR when the Rams put up 42 on us. So if you factor that game out, and only look at games where the Seahawks defense was healthy(ish), they've held the Rams to 25 points per game, with their most talented unit holding the Rams to 10 points.
I think you are misinterpreting the term simplistic here. The Rams run a very simplistic offense in a sense that it's easier for players to learn and not overly complicated schematically. They are not running a complex offense with multiple sets and route trees for their offensive players to memorize and execute. That doesn't mean it's easier to stop.
What the Rams do is line up with the same personnel package on just about every play. They do this to make every play look the same or similar pre-snap in order to mask their tendencies. If your defenders can't read and react, they play slower, or worse they read the play wrong and the offense gets a chunk play.
Here's the problem, in order for a team like the Rams to maintain that edge they have to constantly be innovating and masking their tendencies. Game theory tells us that other teams will incorporate aspects of the Rams scheme that works which will minimize the gap they have over other teams in the league. This also leads to saturation, the more teams using a variant of the Rams offense the more defenses will become accustomed to the picking up on the tendencies and the less effective they will be. Because they run a less diverse scheme they have fewer ways to continue masking their tendencies which is why it's a race against time.
We saw a perfect example of this with Chip Kelly. The Eagles were a top 5 offense in Kelly's first 2 years. After a rough stretch in his first year, they went 21 straight games scoring 20 or more points and averaging 30 points per game. Kelly's scheme was simplistic and other offensive coordinators stole what worked and put it into their scheme. Suddenly more and more teams were trying to run as many plays as possible, spreading the field out to give their QB easier throws underneath, and using presnap motion to open windows in the passing/running game.
In his second season, Kelly ran into two teams. The first team was the 49ers, who set out to stop the running game by staying on the line and not biting on presnap motion/fakes. It worked they held Kelly to a career-low 213 yards, 200 yards below their average. The only other team up to that point to hold them under 300 yards did so in the snow.
Then they played the Seahawks for what many thought would be a battle for the 1st seed. Seattle much like the 49ers didn't respect any of the presnap motion, they sold out to stop the run and take away the short screen game, essentially daring the Eagles to throw the ball vertically. Unfortunately, the Eagles vertical passing game was elementary compared to what most NFL offenses were running and the Seahawks held them to just 139 total yards. The Eagles went on to lose their next 3 games and miss the playoffs at 10-6. In his third season, just about every team adopted a variation of the Seahawks and 49ers strategy and Kelly's offense dropped to 13th. Pretty soon the "greatest" offensive genius in modern football was out of the league.
McVay's offense is nowhere near as simplistic as Kelly's. I think McVay is a better coach than Kelly but the parallels between them are worth considering. McVay's offense turned a bad rookie QB in Goff into one of the most efficient QBs in the league. Goff put up 28TDs to just 7 Int in his second season. Chip Kelly, turned bad rookie QB in Foles into a world beater with better stats than Goff, 27 TDs - 2 Int, and that's in 10 fricken games. Both guys had defenses that got progressively worse the longer they were there. The Eagles defense went from 13th to 19th to 28th. The Rams have gone from 12th to 19th despite having a fricken all-star team on defense this season.
I wrote way more than expected.
