Week 14 has entered the chat, and it seems like every game is starting to take on more meaning now that the playoffs are within view. Divisional games are stacked across the slate, and a couple of teams could see drastic swings to their playoff odds with a loss this weekend (looking at you Chiefs). Even with multiple teams on bye this weekend (great idea by the NFL to give guys a break right at the end of the season when things are ramping up and fantasy teams are looking to make their playoff bracket, so smart), there are still multiple matchups that have our attention.
However, you know our focus will always be on the Rams. After a very disappointing loss last week, the now-2nd seed Rams take their show on the road to take on a Cardinals team that always seems to be in it, but have rarely been able to close. While everything favours the Rams on paper – you know how these divisional games go. The teams know each other very well, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a close game where either team has a shot to win it in the end. We’ll run through the matchups (offence vs defence for each team), and end things off with a few props that look good based on the analysis.
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Without further ado, let’s get to the game.
Game: Los Angeles Rams (9-3) @ Arizona Cardinals (3-9) – 4:25 PM EST
Notable LAR Injuries:
- DB Quentin Lake (IR)
- CB Roger McCreary (IR)
- OT Rob Havenstein (IR)
- TE Tyler Higbee (IR)
- WR Tutu Atwell (likely to stay on IR and not play)
- CB Darious Williams (Doubtful, unlikely to play)
- DT Poona Ford (Questionable, LP Fri, likely to play)
Notable AZ injuries:
- QB Kyler Murray (IR)
- RB James Conner (IR)
- WR Zay Jones (IR)
- OG Will Hernandez (IR)
- LB Mack Wilson (IR)
- CB Sean Murphy-Bunting (Out)
- S Dadrion Taylor-Demerson (Out)
- RB Trey Benson (Out)
- DT Walter Nolen (Out)
- CB Max Melton (Out)
- WR Greg Dortch (Out)
- WR Marvin Harrison Jr (Out)
- RB Emari Demercado (Out)
- OT Kelvin Beachum (Questionable, LPs Thurs and Fri, likely to play)
Projected Temperature:
- Dome
Game Lines:
- Rams -9.5, 47.5 O/U
Lord almighty, and I thought the Rams injury situation was getting bad. The Cards are missing two of their three best WRs, one of their best defensive talents in Walter Nolen, their three best RBs, and a starting CB in Max Melton. Not to mention the impact players they’ve had out for a while, which you can see from that list, includes quite a few guys (on both offence and defence). Nonetheless – they’re fielding a competitive team this weekend, and we’re gonna start the breakdown by looking at the Rams offence vs the Cardinals defence.
Los Angeles Rams Offence vs Arizona Cardinals Defence
Well shit – did Stafford just sink his MVP candidacy with that Panthers performance last week? I personally don’t think so, but with Drake “The Schedule” Maye leading the Pats to another win with some decent numbers on Monday Night Football, it’ll be an uphill battle. But we know these things happen in the NFL – teams have bad games, and it’s hard to complain about Stafford and Co. when they’ve been one of the most consistent teams in the NFL this year. No harm done – it wasn’t a divisional game, and the Rams are still the class of the NFC if we’re taking a season-long view on things.
That being said, things need to tighten up this week. The OLine actually had a pretty good game against the Panthers, racking up their best PFF pass blocking grade of the season (by a significant margin) and their 3rd highest PFF run blocking grade. PFF grades aren’t the be-all-end-all, but just watching that game back, I didn’t have many complaints. Stafford was pressured a mere 4 times through that one, his lowest mark of the season, which shouldn’t really be a surprise seeing as the Panthers have the 2nd lowest QB pressure percentage in the League (14.7%). Which makes it all the more surprising as to why Stafford struggled. The Panthers secondary is decent, right around league-average. But three turnovers (two interceptions and a fumble lost)?! We can chock the deflection at the LOS up to a bad bounce, but there’s no excuse for the rest of it.
The sky isn’t falling though – as I have confidence that we’re in for a bounce back game. While the Cards haven’t given up as much production through the air as of late, they’re still in the bottom half of the NFL in pass yards allowed per game (233.5). Brock Purdy just put up a near perfect game against them going 19/26 for 200 yards and 3 TDs in Week 11 (running an offensive scheme that’s very similar to the Rams), and Bucs QB Baker Mayfield had an efficient day of close to 200 yards and a TD last week (where he was a Chris Godwin drop away from 200+ and 2 TDs). Further, it should be another week of Stafford having some time in the pocket, as the Cards are also in the bottom 10 of the NFL when it comes to pressure rate (18.9%), and they’re missing their highest graded pass rusher (Walter Nolen, DT).
When it comes to their secondary, the Cardinals don’t play a lot of man coverage (10th lowest man coverage rate at 17%). The Rams have been on both sides of the coin when facing teams that play less man (Panthers and Seahawks are both below 20% man coverage rate and led to mediocre Rams passing performances, but so are the 49ers and Jaguars which led to prolific Rams passing performances). That being noted, Puka Nacua is PFF’s 2nd highest graded WR vs zone with the 4th most receiving yards vs zone, so I could see him having a game. If Adams is somewhat healthy, and Puka is his usual self, I expect this pass attack to get back on track, especially with TEs also finding recent success against this Cardinals defence (JAX TE Brenton Strange and SF TE George Kittle both had 67+ receiving yards against this defence in the last 3 weeks, and this Cardinals LB core is not good in coverage based on any grading system).
But, where I really think the Rams can win this game is on the ground, as the two-headed monster of Kyren and Corum have been pretty damn good this year. Kyren seems a little banged up with an ankle injury, but McVay said he should be fine, and it’s not like he’s locked in for 20+ carries a game like he used to be. Over the last four weeks, Kyren has 282 rush yards on 51 carries (5.53 yards-per-carry), and Corum has 171 rush yards on 35 carries (4.89 yards-per-carry). If you have two backs getting decent volume and still averaging around 5 yards-per-carry, you’re in pretty good shape. And a lot of this success has to be attributed to the OLine, as they lead the League by quite a bit in PFF run blocking grade, with C Coleman Shelton, OG Steve Avila, and OT Alaric Jackson all among the Top 15 graded OLinemen.
And this Cardinals defence against the run …. not great. They had a better day against the Bucs last week, but Bucky was just coming off injury and the Bucs OLine are in the bottom 10 in run blocking grade. The three games before that? Over 100 rush yards allowed to Jags RBs, 49ers RBs, and Seahawks RBs. Each of those RB rooms were over 4.5 yards-per-carry, and things aren’t getting better with the injuries to the Cards front seven.
If I was McVay, it would be a heavy dose of Kyren + Corum early to get after this defence physically while moving the sticks and controlling the clock. From there, you can move on to play action and motions to get the defence moving laterally, opening up the middle of the field and further softening boxes to run the ball even more. Last week the Rams got away from a gameplan that was working because they got a little too confident with the pass attack and had to keep up with Carolina’s offence (7.2 yards-per-carry by the Kyren/Corum RB duo, but only 21 rush attempts). My thoughts: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and run the damn ball all the way down the field if you’re going off at over 7 yards per carry. That’s what I see them doing here.
Arizona Cardinals Offence vs Los Angeles Rams Defence
You’ll notice above that I didn’t really touch on Kyler Murray’s absence as notable. Jacoby Brissett is the reason why. Not only has the offence as a whole moved the ball better since Kyler was put on the shelf, but individual skill players have benefitted as much as I’ve ever seen. Trey McBride? Still a Top 8-10 TE with Murray at the helm, but clearly the #1 TE in the League with Brissett tossing the pigskin. Michael Wilson? An afterthought with Kyler dropping back, and JaMarr Chase when Brissett’s going and Marv misses time. Even the run game has been more effective, despite the Cards missing their top two/three backs.
With all that being said – Brissett still leaves a lot for the taking. 9 turnover-worthy plays in his last four starts, only 3 big-time throws over that same span, and 2 fumbles lost in a recent game against SEA. He may be over 300 passing yards in each of his last three games, but most of this is due to the Cardinals playing from behind the majority of the time, as they’ve lost each of their last four games, two of which were losses by 17+ points.
It’s clear that despite the passing yardage totals, Brissett has faced a lot of pressure, in large part due to his OLine. Brissett has the same time-to-throw average as Drake Maye (2.75 seconds), but has been pressured 24 more times and sacked 7 more times than Maye over the last four games. OT Paris Johnson and C Hjalte Froholdt are the only Cardinals OLineman with an above average PFF blocking grade, and now they go up against a Rams pass rush that has to answer some questions after last week.
Watching the Panthers game, I was floored to see a usually stellar pass rush give what seemed to be a suboptimal effort (based on the standard they’ve set). Credit to the Panthers OLine for playing well, but it really looked like Fiske was the only guy with a motor in that defensive front. The PFF grades correlated with what I saw, as Fiske had a 75.8 pass rush grade while everyone else was at 60.2 or lower (including Verse with a 57.4, his 3rd lowest grade of the season). With an easier matchup on deck from an OLine point of view, and an offence that is likely to pass the ball more often (Panthers only passed the ball 20 times last week, Brissett has 40+ pass attempts in each of his last 4 games), it’ll be key for Young, Verse, and Fiske to disrupt Brissett’s rhythm with constant pressure.
And if that’s the case, the Rams secondary shouldn’t have too many issues. The loss of Quentin Lake has been significant, but with CB Akhello Witherspoon getting reintegrated last week, some of those concerns are offset. The issue last week didn’t really seem to be with the secondary, as Bryce Young had way too much time to get the ball out of his hands for the coverage to hold up. Now, they go up against a Cardinals offence without 3 of their top 4 WRs, and though Michael Wilson has been a threat, they can only do so much at the WR position with their limited personnel. With all that being said, McBride might be a bit of a pressure point here, as the Rams have recently given up some notable production to TEs (Kittle 9 receptions for 84 yards, AJ Barner 10 receptions for 70 yards).
So, McBride should get things going, but can the Cards keep the Rams honest with their ground game? Answer: probably not, especially if Poona Ford plays. I’ve seen McVay say that Ford should be good to go for Sunday, but you never know. Ford was only able to get in for 16 rush defence snaps last week (Kam Curl played the most with 40), and if he wasn’t so banged up going into that game, I’m sure it would have been more. He’s so instrumental to the Rams rush defence, as he’s by far the highest graded run defender on the DLine, and he’s one of the best at taking on blockers to open things up for Landman at the second level. Even on a limited snap count, his playing would do wonders for this Rams defence that still leads the NFL in rush defence grade as a whole.
Even without him playing much, it’s hard to see the Cards getting things going on the ground. Their OLine is the 6th lowest graded run blocking OLine in the NFL, and their RBs haven’t combined for over 100 rush yards since the Cowboys game in Week 9 (when the Cowboys rush defence was still trash). I just can’t see them breaking the century mark in this one, something they need to do if they want to have a good chance in this game.
Overall, I’d expect this game to play out similar to the Cardinals’ recent games. They try to establish the run early, without much success. They fall behind the eight ball on the scoreboard, and have to transition to a pass-heavy offence without much for weapons (and with a Rams front bringing a lot of pressure). All told, I think the Rams get this one done, but the Cards could make it interesting late with a valiant comeback attempt.
Betting Props
- Rams Over 114.5 Rushing Yards as a Team (-110)
- Puka Nacua Over 94.5 Receiving Yards (-110)
- Trey McBride Over 7.5 Receptions (-115)
- LA Rams Total Sacks Over 2.5 (-120)