Week 11 - Musing About Softness, the Rams' Season

 

I hear a lot of people talking about certain teams as being “soft”. Namely the Los Angeles Rams.

There seems to be a lot more quibbling about what it means to be soft or whether certain talking heads are willing to get into the “soft” conversation than actual debate about softness, but-- When I hear football players call a team soft, I hear them saying they aren't physical – specifically that they are being pushed around at the point of contact.

All of these men are strong and tough. There's no question about that. The question becomes one of stamina, or a willingness to initiate and win contact for 18 weeks.

I was watching LaVar Arrington's first-ever broadcast this weekend. (Congratulations, by the way to LaVar. He didn't have a lot to work with, but I remember more than a few of his observations and had he not said it was his first, I wouldn't have noticed.) (That's the kind of analysis you're only getting here, folks.) the Lions/Browns contest. Gus Johnson, I learned, is a Lions fan. It was interesting seeing LaVar anchor himself to watch the game through a Lions fan's perspective while still being able to talk about it. Because I would recoil at having to watch the Lions and Browns at this point in the season, too - did, in fact.

But more than that, there was a run by DeAndre Swift in the first half that got me thinking. LaVarr asked (rightly) whether he was going to have the stamina to keep grinding runs like that in the second half. You could sense after he said it that the production team kind of panicked, but it was good analysis.

We just finished Week 10, right? Week 11. Ugh, my life—

Every team has injuries. Every team is missing players. The teams that are going to be playing meaningful football in January and beyond are the teams that are going to be able to gut out those injuries and play smart, physical football.

Young teams are less likely, it seems, to be physical late in the season than veteran teams. This is no doubt why no one is excited about Bill Belichick's drafts (he always drafts low-floor, high-ceiling, ultra-tough dudes) but his roster is (almost) always in contention for the Super Bowl: He knows how to manage a team mentally so they're playing their toughest (and best) football late in the season.

Brian Flores seems to have things turned around in this regard in Miami, too. That's where my thinking about young teams starts from, but I don't want to talk about them. I'm also thinking of the Browns and Bengals, two teams that are flirting with disappointing seasons. And the Steelers and Ravens and how they could steal Playoff berths from their little brother rivals. And the Chargers. Lately, I always seem to be thinking about the Chargers.

Brandon Staley set himself up to look like an asshole by talking about how important the running game is a few weeks ago – and then not being able to stop the run with his defense. But as Chris Collinsworth repeatedly kept telling us during the game against the Steelers, letting the opponent run is kind of the Chargers MO. Which I don't understand even a little bit.

I love defensive football. That should be pretty clear by now. But I also love running the ball. Physical football wins more games than it loses in the aggregate. (See: Bill Belichik)

The Chiefs showed us against the Cowboys this weekend that a physical defense wins football games. Offensive players don't (usually) want to hit anyone. Guys like Jarvis Landry are few and far enough between that we only have a handful of comps for them: Hines Ward, in this case. Being a wide receiver and even a running back, depending on your body type and running style, is so much about staying healthy.

And now I'm thinking about how DK Metcalf is a monster of a man and clearly healthy and can't get the ball from his QB1, but can from his QB2 - but that's a conversation for another piece.

We talk a lot about how the rules benefit the offense. But the rules benefit the offense from the way the game is structured at its core. Getting ten yards is fuckin hard – that's why they get four chances. If the game benefited the defense, you'd get four chances to score, end of drive. But that would be boring, wouldn't it?

Is that how Arena football works? I genuinely don't know – honestly don't know if the league even still exists.

Defensive players, on the other hand, should thrive on the contact. I know I switched from offense to defense as a kid because I got to initiate so much more violence. If you ask me, that's why the first eight weeks of the season can have so much offensive explosion and the latter eight weeks see so many mushy defensive contests: Offenses that aren't bound for the Championship games start to avoid contact or wear down under the constant strain.

That's also why it's so hard to draft and develop offensive linemen.

The key to this whole topic, this whole discussion, seems to be that offensive linemen aren't tough enough – or don't take good enough care of their bodies through a season to keep up with the more athletic, tougher defensive linemen and linebackers. But that's just an artifact of the development of the game over the last thirty years or so.

Because there aren't nearly as many great linebackers as that paragraph might imply.

All the best players in college are in the skill positions. Usually wide receiver. More and more it's tight end. After that, they stack edge rushers. This is why it's so hard to draft linebackers, safeties, and corners and expect them to play at a high level within their first three years.

I'm trying to decide whether I'm indicting the teambuilding of the Rams.

They've certainly sold out for known-commodity talent rather than trying to build through the draft. They feel like they have a wide open window in an ultra-competitive Division and they need to hit it at a sprint. The problem is that the NFL season is a marathon and defenses keep beating them right up the middle. Is that a trend I expect to continue?

Is that what this piece is about? Maybe.

It's definitely reflected in the fact that their three losses feel like six.

The Rams have lost to the Titans, the 49ers, and the Cardinals. Three very good teams built to mush opponents in their interior line and lock down their receivers outside.

I understand now why people are concerned for this Rams offense.

Their next opponents are: The Packers, Jaguars, Cardinals, Seahawks, Vikings, Ravens, and they finish with their rematch against the 49ers. That is a brutal slate. None of these teams is a gimme. Don't be surprised when the Jags catch another team napping and get another win before this thing is over. Trevor's good enough, and that coaching staff want to remain employed, irrespective of Urban.

That slate, though, is a murderer's row. At 7-3, they could easily finish 9-8. They could also finish 13-4 and we're all hyperbolizing their “softness”. But I don't know.

There's a lot of criticism going Matthew Stafford's way.

I wrote a couple years ago when I was doing this last time and studying the Lions before they played the Dolphins that I didn't know whether Matthew Stafford was still actually good at football. Now, I walked that thinking back because I listened to a lot of people I trusted saying that Stafford was hampered by poor playcalling. If playcalling is the problem is Los Angeles, the Rams and their fans have a worse problem on their hands than whether Matthew Stafford is actually good at football anymore.

I don't think that's the case, though. I think Matthew Stafford might just be an extremely gifted thrower of the football who is a limited quarterback. He's still good enough to get this team a Super Bowl win, though. If they can figure out a running game. Maybe they take some cues from the Falcons and the 49ers and start handing the ball to OBJ or something.

Whatever is going on there, I don't have a good feeling about this team. Not when two of the best teams in the Conference are in their Division.

Thanks for making it this far. I think there were some cogent ideas in there. Even if not, I'm back and evaluating how I want to do this thing.

My life has fallen into disarray. That isn't unusual for me. Nor is it unusual for me to lose interest in the NFL between Weeks 8 and 12. But, like I noted about the players themselves, I'm soldiering on past my own exhaustion point. Which is good for me. I need this.

There will be more. I'll talk at you soon.

Probably about the Dolphins' win and how they're in Playoff contention – and how that's enough for everyone to keep their jobs and just throw out the first half of the season.

We'll see. Until then.