Los Angeles Rams: Are the Rams due for an offensive setback?

The Los Angeles Rams were the most explosive team in the National Football League last year, so there might not be any way to go but down.

The Los Angeles Rams were the most exciting team in football last season, or at least one of the top two. There is no better example of this than the team’s 54-51 Monday Night Football battle with the Kansas City Chiefs last season.

Head coach Sean McVay has been touted as an offensive guru and has so much respect around the league that he appears to be primed to be the next Bill Belichick, just on the offensive side instead of the defensive side.

McVay still has a long way to go before he is on the same level as Belichick but his impact on the Los Angeles Rams and the league as a whole in just two years is unprecedented.

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Heck, he made Jared Goff go from looking like a potential bust to being one of the top-five quarterbacks in the league, in terms of stats, over the last two years. It is not all McVay, as Goff still has to go out there and sling it, but a lot of credit has to go to McVay.

One thing that McVay supporters and Rams fans as a whole do not want to hear is that the team is potentially due for regression in 2019. While it is hard to get better than a 13-3 record, we are not talking about the record.

The Rams could potentially be due for an offensive regression and the signs are there to potentially prove it.

No, we are not using the team’s two preseason games as a merit for this argument. The Rams stress on resting the starters during the preseason and overreacting about the second-stringers losing a meaningless game is not what this article is about.

Instead, we can look at things like the offensive line, which is likely going to be worse in 2019 than it has been the last two years. The team lost both John Sullivan and Rodger Saffold and left tackle Andrew Whitworth is entering his age 37 season, which quite possibly could be his last.

This is not to say that the line is going to be bad, but it has more uncertainty this year than it has in years past.

And as we saw with Goff in Super Bowl LIII, when the decisions aren’t quite clear and he has pressure he is not the same quarterback. Belichick and the Patriots made Goff beat them with his decision-making and he didn’t do it. The Rams only scored three points.

Todd Gurley‘s situation could make it harder for Goff as well. Even if Gurley is completely healthy, the team is going to look to use him less to keep him fresh for the playoffs. Without the explosive running back at his side, the play-action bombs that make the Rams so successful might not be as easy.

And this is where we will turn to the preseason, as rookie running back Darrell Henderson has not been all that impressive. He was good in the passing game in his second preseason game but he has not turned heads against second-string defenses.

This is the guy that was drafted to take some of the pressure of off Gurley. These two preseason games should not be overstated, but perhaps we were overestimating the impact he will have in his rookie year.

Weapons wise, Goff is still set. A receiving corps of Robert Woods, Brandin Cooks and Cooper Kupp certainly is good enough to be successful and it will be what keeps the Rams as a top-10 offensive team.

However, instead of being one of the best, if not the best, offenses in the league, the Los Angeles Rams are going to look a lot more human in 2019 and be somewhere in the 7-10 range.

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That does not mean that they will be bad, as they will most likely still be a playoff team, but things won’t come quite as easy in 2019.

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