Rams-Cardinals-Rams Win 27-24. 1-0

[Retroram52]

Hello everyone. On a day of mistakes and missed opportunities, this team took the next step in the emergence from the krap of a decade of weakness, lame football, and FO incompetence by opening the season with a win. The Rams overcame some sloppy play on defense, penalties on both sides of the ball, and missed offensive opportunities to come up big with a win against an immensely improved divisional foe.

The game was one of ebb and flow of momemtum with both teams grasping it from the other. The Rams should have had three additional touchdowns. They failed to capitalize on when the Rams defense provided the offense opportunities twice and they had a freak defensive play that robbed us from yet a third score when a Cardinals defender knocked the ball out of Jared Cook's grasp from behind on a sure score as he was just 6 yards away from the goal line.

The other two opportunities were on an interception return by J. Johnson to the four where the offense gained -4 yards in three plays and the second was a sack/fumble recovery by C. Long on the Cardinal's thirty or so where the offense faltered again and failed to score. Whoever stated that the Rams overall are faster and bigger was absolutely dead-on as that speed was evident today on both sides of the ball.

On offense. Sammie finished the day with 2 TDs and 1 INT which was a blocked pass by a Cardinal's D-Lineman who caught the deflection and scored. Sammie was 27/38 for 299 yards to Palmer's 26/40, 327 yards, 2 TD's and 1 INT. The Rams WRs had the ball distributed evenly among the many except for Jared Cook who was the high man today. This was indeed a great FA pick-up because he is such a big target with great speed. He is going to be a beast for us. After some early jitterbug penalties between the two tackles, the O-line performed flawlessly in pass protection and to a improved level in the run game. Richardson finished the day 20 carries for 63 yards. The offense started the year way better than any year to date. This is a good sign!!

On defense. This bunch started out slowly with some krappy play by the secondary and Olgetree missing a couple of coverages but began to pick it up in the second quarter and the second half where the front 8 defensive lineman simply started playing smashmouth football and they are bad-ass. Long, Langford, Brockers, Quinn, as well as the second unit of Hayes, Conrath, Cudjo, and Sims are excellent on both tiers. There is no drop-off in play from those 8 guys. The linebackers especially Laurinaitus and Olgetree are simply bad-ass studs. Great plays by Larinaitus and Will Witherspoon had astick today that demonstrated he still has a lot in teh tak left. In the secondary, T.J. McDonald will flat out hit you like no tomorrow. Ronnie Lott comes to mind. He is a keeper. McCleod needs more playing time as he and Finnegan got hammered a bit today and Finnegan got called with some bad decisions but I'll take his fiestiness any day!

The two stars on defense today? Robert Quinn and Janoris Jenkins. Quinn had three sacks and two forced fumbles and was everywhere. JQuinn got to Palmer more times than Palmer would like to admit and it usally resulted in something very good. Jenkins had some great plays on D all game long. Kudos to Jermaine Johnson for a pick and he was around the ball all day too. If this defense clears up their sloppy play, they are going to be too bad-ass just like the Rams defenses of old. I got so stoked I almost went out to the garage and threw a few forearm shivers into the wall!!

On special teams. Kudos to Matt Giodano for causing a late-game fumble that we failed to recover on a kick-off return. The other stalwart is none other than Zuerlein. 4/4 on FG's including the game-winner and he allowed just two run backs by putting the ball out of the end-zone on KOs.

Well, after a llllloooonnnnggggg wait, Fisher has put together a very nasty bunch of young tough football players and we are in for some good things this year. I say BRING IT!!!!

 

[ozarkram]

Great recap Retro. It wasnt pretty. But it was a win. We wont beat the 9ers playing like we did today. Penalties and mistakes. All the mark of a young team. Still they must be addressed. Hopefully Fisher will hold their feet to the fire and we will only improve. And of course the Cards came to play kudos to them.

 

[DK7000]

Great job by our o-line to give Bradford time to pick apart the Cards. I was also very happy with Sam's pocket awareness, as he did a good job scrambling away from pressure when it did arrive.

 

[Retroram52]

Thanks OzarkRam and good to see you and that awesome avi. I also agree as well.

 

[Retroram52]

Agreed DK7000. Sammie is looking way better than last year.

 

[ANGELAKERAMS]

Couple of thoughts on the game.

Cook is going to be big for this offense. Can't believe Tennessee didn't utilize this guy.

I expected the Rams to do more with Austin. Only went deep once which resulted in a PI. Ran one sweep with him that had negative yardage. Everything else was short slants. I thought he was supposed to provide a home run threat to this offense? Not if they keep using him like that.

Quinn was unbelievable. Enough said.

Givens was shut down by Peterson. You can't be a #1 WR and get shut down like that regardless of who is defending you.

Richardson had a solid game. Nothing flashy, but productive.

OL was solid today. Just what this offense needs- to keep Sam upright with time to throw.

Glad they got the win because the next 3 games will be tough to win. I hope they can get 1 win at least out of the 3. More would be even better

 

[UnrealTerm04]

Hey Retro,

Great analysis as always. I missed from the 2nd quarter on because I had to work a night shift. Glad we got our first opening season win since 2006!

GO RAMS!

 

[Vitamike]

Well it's been an f-up week-end for me. First my Brother from another Mother called this morning and said his Mother in law passed away and then later this afternoon I got another call that my Father in law had passed away. Fuk, life happens.

This is why sports is soooo important. It helps us all deal with the realities of life.

Thank GOD for Sports!!!

Now that's off my chest, and now y'all know why Vita wasn't on the game thread today. I had to laugh at y'all on the game thread. I knew you folks would be crying out load when we all know this is a very young team going up against a pretty veteran team in the Cards. To add to the fact we were coupling a 4K yard QB in Carson Palmer with Bruce Araisns and the whole NFL will find it hard to stop the AZ Cardinals this year no doubt.

Hey let's face facts, we were the youngest team last year and this year we are even younger. I thought the offense looked great! I thought the defense looked great! I thought Sammy looked great! We all need to understand that we are going to make a lot of mistakes. Some will even be by our vets like with Long getting that holding call early on and Cookie getting he ball stripped at the goal line. Those things happen, couple that with that the other youngins we have here and here we are.

I think this young team stood tough in the face of adversity and came out with the win.

That is great.

We certainly have a lot of work to do and we will obviously lose a game or two based on our inexperience however we will continue to improve over the season and we have an experienced QB who can continue to improve along with his OL and WR corp.

That is a beautiful thing!

We have a tough schedule and reside in a tough division however I have faith in Coach Fisher and think overall, regardless to the outcome of this season we have much to look forward to.

Still undefeated!!!

Still in the hunt!!!

 

[Retroram52]

We have a real good chance to beat Atlanta but we have to improve on the mental mistakes and you are right ALR on Givens and Shottenheimer's use of Austin. Other than that, we have to get point production from this offense and again, we still have an aversion to the redzone relying on field goals to bail-out our offensive ineptitude.

We did not captilize twice when the defense gave the ball to the offense on turnovers. Those sorts of opportunities cannot be squandered in away games because that will absolutely kill us. That is the next piece of the puzzle we will need to improve on is our away games winning percentage.

 

[Retroram52]

I am sorry to hear about your misfortunes Vita. Two phones calls like that on a Sunday would dampen anyone's approach to a day. Sometimes a little diversion like a football game is an excellent salve to ease the shock of things in life. Hang in there my good man!!

 

[piss-tons]

At least on the positives Bradford wasn't sacked once. I think for the first time in his career he has a capable offensive line. Our offense was pretty good, even if they couldn't find the end zone off a few TO's. Remember this Cardinals D is pretty fucking good, and their offense is MUCH better compared to last year with Palmer. We didn't play a great game but we won. Next week we play the Falcons who don't have a great defense, but an explosive offense. If the D can put pressure on Ryan and stop the offense from exploding then we got a real shot at the upset.

 

[piss-tons]

Also the man on my avi Quinn is simply a beast. He will be getting national attention very soon.

 

[ANGELAKERAMS]

Sorry to hear about your day Vita.

Stay strong and keep your chin up.

 

[mikey728]

Sorry to hear of your losses , makes for a real long and sad weekend...Rams won a game when their play was a bit sloppy and lacking against the pass, but they got the W...They will need to bring a lot more to beat the 'Hawks, 9ers or any of at least 6 other solid football teams...Upside is that they would not have handled the adversity like they did today over the past several seasons...Nice change...Excellenrt overall game for Bradford, would like to see the way I envisioned Austin being used....I didn't see it today...A win is a win, especially to start the season...I would be satisfied with 1 more win in the next 3, 2 would be a long shot IMO...Hope I'm wrong there....

 

[Jermaine133]

Hey Vita, sorry to hear about your loss dude but you are right thats why we have sports! I missed the whole game but spot checked the score board from time to time and i started to panic when i saw we were losing. Glad to see Quinn go off with 3 sacks; my concern is still with the running game but I will take the 1st W of the season coming in week 1!

 

[RobBase]

I watched this game on NFL Redzone (greatest invention ever). Statement win for the Rams. You guys were dead in the water after that pick 6 Bradford botch. But you showed great resilience coming back for the win. I was impressed with how the D played after breakdown. I'm hoping you guys set up the Cards to be rolled by the Lions next week. Their spirit must be crushed after blowing that lead.

 

[blk4x499]

I thought Mcdonald had a solid game as well. He is one heck of a hard hitter.

 

[shopson67]

Quinn did have a great game, but Levi Brown is just terrible. I think the Rams are going to need to do more to get similar pressure on their next opponent. The talk about their vanilla schemes (offensively and defensively) in the preseason being intentional doesn't seem to carry water now, as they seemingly carried those schemes into this game. Loved seeing Jared Cook blow up, even if it was at the expense of my fantasy football team lol.

 

[mutigers1fan]

Condolences Vita.

Arizona impressed me, they are much better than I gave them credit for. They could do some damage against some pretty good teams.

Rob, thanks for the kind words. I watched the Lions win in its entirety and was very pleased with what I saw(I got laughed at for predicting they would win 8+ games this year).

Now to my thoughts on the game: This team is unpolished but very talented. They have a lot of fight in them though and believe in themselves which can be the most dangerous attribute to a team(Saints SB team comes to mind). The O-Line looked as strong as we've seen in a long time and Cook looked fantastic. I expected to see more out of the vertical attack but that could have been due to the pretty good AZ secondary. Tavon got a lot of touches but they had a hard time getting him in space which limited his abilities quite a bit. DRich looked pretty good. He's no elite back, but he found the yard stick on multiple occasions and looked good coming out of the backfield in the pass game. His protection needs work but this is nothing we didn't know. And then there's Sammie, as many of you know I've been a big supporter of this guy all along and yesterday he showed what I've been hoping to see. Give the guy some weapons and time to throw and he looks really good. I fully expect this offense to continue to get better as the season progresses and will be able to do some real damage by the end of the year. We could be seeing some 40's on the scoreboard at some point.

On to defense, Ogletree worried me in pass coverage in the preseason and that showed at times again. He's a rookie so mistakes are expected but this needs to improve. I have full confidence that it will. Witherspoon looked good and I'm glad to see he still has fuel in the tank and tread on the tires. As retro pointed out the front is stellar. I really like everyone up there and it may be as good as any front in the league. I wasn't really watching for it but does anyone know if Long was getting doubled? This could explain the lopsided sack numbers weighing heavy on the right side. You can't double both of those 2 which bodes well for those wearing horns. I thought the secondary looked alright. To be fair AZ has some good WRs and Palmer and chuck the ball around, might be the greatest NFL QB to never win a playoff game. They weren't perfect but in the end the D gave up 17 points and set the offense up with 2 short fields. If they do that consistently then the Rams will win a lot of football games.

 

[mutigers1fan]

Another take away from week 1: That is a fun team to watch. They may not with the division but I'm going to enjoy the heck out of watching them play.