Los Angeles Rams: The long-term future is bleak in LA

The Los Angeles Rams were mauled by the Baltimore Ravens on Monday night, likely ending their playoff chances in the process.

The Los Angeles Rams hosted the Baltimore Ravens on Monday Night Football and despite the recent struggles, this looked to be a fun matchup. The problem is that those struggles continued and the Rams were thoroughly beaten by the Ravens, 45-6.

These are no longer struggles for the Los Angeles Rams, this has become a new norm. An offense that was once so electric has been figured out. Todd Gurley is not the same Todd Gurley and Jared Goff has shown his colors as a mediocre quarterback.

Suddenly, Sean McVay does not seem to be as big of a genius as we all thought. The Rams have scored no more than 17 points in each of the last three games and only one of their six wins has come against a winning team and that was in the game in which Drew Brees was injured.

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This may feel like an overreaction as the Rams are only two games out of the wild-card picture and fans are still holding onto the hope that they can find the same spark from last season.

The problem is that this offensive line is young, beat up and flat out poor. Goff is already a mediocre quarterback as is and he has shown how much of a system quarterback he was in the last two years with his poor play this year.

Goff has thrown more interceptions (12) than touchdowns this season (11) and has completed 61.2 percent of his passes. And for some reason McVay keeps calling on Goff to throw the ball despite his struggles; Goff is on pace for a career-high 596 passing attempts this season.

It has been frustrating to watch the play calling as well. I get that Gurley is not his same self but the Rams do have other running backs. Remember Darrell Henderson? The Los Angeles Rams opted to draft him in the third round of the 2019 NFL Draft instead of drafting offensive line help.

How has that worked out? The offensive line is nothing short of terrible and Henderson averages three carries per game. If you are going to use a third-round pick on a running back, why aren’t you using him!?

If the Rams had no plans of using him this year they easily could have waited a season and drafted just as good of a running back in the 2020 NFL Draft.

There is no better way to put it, the Los Angeles Rams are screwed. They just locked Jared Goff down to a massive four-year, $134 extension and already have their hands tied with the salary cap with Aaron Donald, Brandin Cooks and Todd Gurley.

They still have a good enough core to build around, they just need the all-important pieces such as the offensive line. The problem is that they do not have the draft picks to supplement their core! The Rams have been notorious for trading away draft picks and doesn’t have any first-round picks in the next two years because of the Jalen Ramsey trade.

Heck, the team has not had a first-round pick since trading up to select Jared Goff in 2016. By the time the Ramsey trade is done paying off, the Rams will have gone five drafts without a first-round pick.

And while Ramsey’s a great player, he might not even be part of the long-term future! Ramsey is a free agent after the 2020 season. This means that Ramsey could very well walk away and the Rams would have traded two first-round picks for a season and a half of a cornerback when the offensive line was the main issue.

As I said, the core is good enough to compete with the necessary pieces around it. Unless the Rams get really lucky in the late rounds of the draft, they physically won’t be able to add the pieces that they need.

The core will be good enough to keep them in mediocrity, but thats it. Unless Jared Goff suddenly turns a corner out of nowhere, the Rams will continue to float in the middle, which is exactly where you don’t want to be in the NFL.

As for this season, that two-game gap to a wild-card spot is a massive one. The Rams would have to win out and hope the Vikings, Packers or Seahawks will lose out, which simply won’t happen.

The Los Angeles Rams still have to play the San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks and Dallas Cowboys. Based on how the team has been playing, we have no reason to believe that they can win even two of those games.