John63":3fzlw0nb said:
So you disagree and your way to prove it is the what if game. The reality is this the Rams had the #2 scoring team in the league, we were not in 2013 so still not a great comparison. Mostly because they play to win from the start, they don't play to keep it close and hope to win at the end now you want what if, what if we did that? Let's play what if, what if we played from the start of the game as we did in the last 22minutes on offense of the Dallas game? The answer we probably win. The difference in philosophy is one plays to win from the beginning and one plays to win at the end. Though you might disagree the problem is you can't really since its the fact that the HC Pete himself has said over and over again. They play to keep it close and win in the 4th, The Rams play to win from the start of the game. Imagine that playing to win form the start, not wanting to win at the end. By the way, I love you boxing analogy except once again it is a what if you really don't know what would have happened. What we know for a FACT is PC plays to keep it close and try to win in the 4th, while the Rams play to win from the start. ONe leaves littel margin for error and th eother leaves plenty.
The idea that Pete isn’t trying to win the game early is silly to me. Pete’s philosophy is about limiting possessions which ties into his defensive philosophy of taking away big plays and making the offense consistently march down the field. This shortens the game which sometimes gives the appearance that they are playing passively when they are not. In this case, you are using a rallying cry (you play to win the game in the 4th) as evidence of Pete’s philosophy when it’s just a rallying cry.
The Rams are a volume offense, that is trying to get as many possessions per game as they can. You can say it leaves plenty of margin for error, but really the only major difference between the Seahawks and Rams this season was that the Rams blew out bad teams with a cake opening schedule. There is no statistically quantifiable margin for error anywhere else.
The Rams were 4-3 in the regular season against playoff teams, of those 4 wins 3 of them were decided on the final drive for a combined -4 point differential. Contrast that with Seattle who was 2-4 against playoff teams with 3 losses ending on the final drive for a combined -4 point differential.
Dig deeper into those games and you'll find the Rams overcoming some pretty ridiculous odds to win a few of these games; like in week 5, where they had a 30% chance to win in the 4th quarter but managed to overcome those odds with the help of 3 50/50 penalties, and a 4th down QB sneak in their own half of the field; or the Kansas City game which saw the Chiefs hit with a record amount a penalties in the first half, and Mahomes complete inability to put together a game-tying/winning drive, despite getting 3 opportunities to do so in the final 4 minutes.
Seriously, 7 points separate us from the Rams in the standings and there is a strong case to be made Seattle lost those games because they didn't finish the game in the 4th quarter; not because they didn't try to win it from the start.