The Rams Finally Stopped Beating Themselves. Then Kyren Williams Finished the Job.

By Jason Burrell | South Bay Black Journal

PHILADELPHIA — In the immortal words of Terrell Owens, “Who can make a play?”

Kyren Williams had an answer Sunday.

I can.

Give me the ball.

Need four yards? I got you.

Need a checkdown? I got you.

Need somebody to settle this offense down while everything around it seems determined to go sideways? I got you.

Need seven yards, three broken tackles and a touchdown to finally get out of Philadelphia with a win?

Yeah.

I got that, too.

Williams was the Rams’ Mr. Consistency in a 24-20 comeback victory over the Eagles that was equal parts impressive, frustrating, physical, and revealing.

He carried 16 times for 80 yards and two touchdowns. He caught 10 passes for another 67 yards. That’s 147 yards from scrimmage on an afternoon when Los Angeles spent much of the game searching for somebody who could simply make the next play.

Williams kept making them.

He was water against a rock.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Eventually, something had to break.

With 1:17 remaining and the Rams trailing 20-17, Williams took the handoff from Matthew Stafford at the Philadelphia 7. One Eagle hit him. Then another. Then another.

Williams kept going. Touchdown.

Afterward, Williams explained his mentality during the FOX broadcast.

“Getting in that freaking end zone,” he said. “Coach McVay called my number, and there was no other option.”

Williams said he lives by a motto: BAM. By any means.

That was more than a catchy phrase Sunday.

It was the Rams’ afternoon.

Plenty of reasons they shouldn’t have won this football game.

And the Rams created most of them themselves.

Los Angeles outgained Philadelphia 415-172. The Rams defense held the Eagles to 0-for-12 on third down. Philadelphia didn’t score a single point in the second half. The Eagles managed only 172 total yards.

Read those numbers again!

Now explain how the Rams were trailing by 10 points in the fourth quarter.

That’s the part Sean McVay and his staff need to spend some time examining this week.

Stafford threw two interceptions. Davante Adams dropped what should have been a touchdown. Harrison Mevis missed a field goal. Penalties wiped away productive plays. Protection broke down at critical moments. And after the Rams drove 98 yards to cut Philadelphia’s lead to three, Los Angeles shot itself in the foot again, kicked the ensuing kickoff out of bounds, and handed the Eagles the ball at their own 40.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Actually, Tom Brady explained it better during the FOX broadcast.

“You can’t win until you can keep from losing.”

That’s it.

For most of Sunday, the Rams weren’t simply trying to beat Philadelphia.

They were trying to survive themselves.

Stafford admitted as much afterward.

“Any way you can shoot yourself in the foot, we were doing it,” he said.

But this is where the story gets interesting. The Rams kept shooting themselves in the foot, and their defense kept handing them another bullet.

Philadelphia couldn’t sustain anything.

 Rams Defensive Coordinator Chris Shula kept applying pressure. His secondary held up behind it. Nate Landman flew around. Kamren Kinchens showed his versatility. Omar Speights got home. Braden Fiske generated pressure. Kam Curl made plays in coverage.

And Byron Young was a menace. Kamren Kinchen played physical the entire game; go ask Eagles receiver Makai Lemon!

Young finished with 2.5 sacks, five pressures, three quarterback hits, and a forced fumble. With Philadelphia getting one final opportunity, down four with 1:10 remaining, Young came screaming around the edge twice on the Eagles’ final possession.

The second one knocked the football out of Jalen Hurts’ hand.

Philadelphia recovered, but the clock kept disappearing.

One desperation fourth-down throw later, Curl knocked the football away.

Game over!

The Eagles finished 0-for-12 on third down, the first time the Rams have held an opponent without a third-down conversion since 2017.

This wasn’t a defense waiting for somebody else to save it.

For most of the afternoon, the defense was doing the saving.

McVay understood that.

Late in the game, while his defense fought to keep Los Angeles alive once again, McVay gathered his offense around him on the sideline.

It was one of those moments television cameras capture without microphones telling you exactly what was being said.

Afterward, McVay explained it.

“Guys, we’re capable. You got to believe, and we got to just string good plays together. Our defense is doing everything that they can to keep us in this game.”

That might be the most important thing McVay said all afternoon.

Because the Rams’ problem wasn’t that they couldn’t make good plays.

They had made them all day.

Their problem was making one good play and then another, and another. Football games aren’t usually lost because a team can’t execute anything.

They’re lost because they don’t sustain execution.

McVay said the Rams were getting many of the looks they wanted. They simply weren’t consistently taking advantage of them.

“You just stack good play after good play,” McVay said. “You don’t let previous things affect your ability to be able to move forward.”

Eventually, they did exactly that.

Philadelphia had an opportunity to put the game away and couldn’t.

Leading 20-10, Nick Sirianni elected to go for it on fourth-and-goal rather than kick the field goal.

I questioned the decision in real time, and I still question it.

A field goal doesn’t change the number of possessions Los Angeles needs, but it changes what those possessions must produce. At 23-10, the Rams need two touchdowns. At 20-10, a touchdown and field goal can tie it.

Sirianni tried to finish the game.

The Rams defense stopped him.

To his credit, Sirianni didn’t hide afterward.

“You go for it, and you don’t get it, that’s on the head coach,” he said. “And we didn’t get it, so that’s on me.”

Fair enough, but Sirianni said something else that summed up this entire game.

“When you got a team down, you gotta finish it.”

Philadelphia didn’t; and Los Angeles finally did.

From its own 2-yard line, Stafford took the Rams 98 yards, and Williams scored.

The defense forced another Philadelphia punt.

Then Stafford got the football again with 2:55 remaining at his own 21.

This time, the Rams didn’t need another opportunity.

Puka Nacua made plays. Tyler Higbee made a beautiful back shoulder sideline catch. Stafford used his legs when nobody was open. Kyren moved the chains and finished the drive. 

That’s what made Stafford’s afternoon so fascinating.

He wasn’t great for four quarters.

He threw two interceptions. He missed throws. One interception was an overthrow. Stafford described the other as being “too aggressive” and said he put the football in a bad spot.

But Stafford also completed 32 passes for 317 yards and, when Los Angeles needed him, he led two fourth-quarter touchdown drives.

The comeback became the 40th fourth-quarter comeback of his career and his 51st game-winning drive.

Great quarterbacks don’t erase their mistakes. They respond to them.

“If you don’t have belief, then what are we doing?” Stafford said afterward. “That’s what we put all this work in for.”

That belief showed up when the football finally became heavy.

The officiating.

The Rams deserved many of the problems they created Sunday.

Let’s establish that first!

If you commit a penalty, drop a football, throw an interception, miss a field goal, or kick a kickoff out of bounds, don’t blame the officials.

Own it!

But players’ and coaches’ accountability shouldn’t exempt officials from accountability.

Sunday’s judgment calls deserve scrutiny.

A pass-interference call against Trent McDuffie late in the first half was particularly difficult for me to accept. The contact appeared incidental as McDuffie’s arm became entangled with the receiver’s shirt while both players were competing for an overthrown football. That flag helped turn what could have been an empty Philadelphia possession into a touchdown before halftime.

I questioned other calls as well, but that’s not why the Rams were losing; ultimately, it isn’t why they won.

But the standard for officiating shouldn’t be that they didn’t decide the game.

Officials are part of the game, too.

The players are four weeks into a new season. Coaches are adjusting. Teams are developing chemistry. Officials are working through the beginning of their season as well.

I understand that.

But while everybody works through the cobwebs, judgment calls can erase explosive plays, change field position, and alter momentum.

The philosophy should remain simple: call what materially affects the play and avoid becoming part of the story unnecessarily.

Players have to improve. Coaches have to improve, and Officials should be expected to do the same.

The Eagles certainly have things to fix.

Their offense was putrid on third down. Sirianni acknowledged that coaching and execution both contributed. Hurts repeatedly returned to one phrase afterward.

Poor execution.

But Philadelphia also deserves some context.

The Eagles were dealing with injuries. Saquon Barkley left early. They were missing other important offensive pieces. Their defense created two Stafford interceptions. Britain Covey’s 41-yard punt return created a short field. Darius Cooper made an outstanding concentration catch for one of his two touchdowns.

Philadelphia didn’t accidentally lead 20-10.

The Eagles capitalized when Los Angeles gave them chances.

They simply couldn’t finish.

And that’s what makes McVay’s postgame observation about Philadelphia so meaningful.

He remembered the Rams’ playoff loss there in the snow two seasons ago.

“Weren’t able to finish it,” McVay said. “We were able to finish today.”

Sometimes football is that simple.

The Rams have played better games in Philadelphia and walked away with losses.

Sunday, they played a far messier one and walked away 2-2.

There might be a lesson in that?

Four weeks ago, everybody was trying to figure out what these teams would become.

Now there is actual evidence.

That’s where Brady made another point during FOX’s postgame coverage that shouldn’t be overlooked.

“Now you get four games into the season, you get a real self-scout,” Brady said.

He explained that this is when good coaching staffs can start identifying what they do well, eliminating what hasn’t worked, and attacking weaknesses opponents have consistently shown.

That’s where the Rams are now.

They have played enough football to stop guessing, and perhaps enough evidence to ask a more interesting question.

Last week, I wrote that despite being 1-2, I believed the Rams were the most dangerous team in the NFC.

I’m not going to pound my chest after one victory and tell everybody I was right.

It’s October.

Nobody has won anything yet.

But Sunday didn’t make me back down!

It made me more curious about the answer.

How dangerous could this team become if it simply stopped making winning so difficult?

The Rams generated 415 yards Sunday.

Puka returned and caught nine passes for 125 yards.

Williams produced 147 yards from scrimmage.

Stafford threw for 317.

The defense surrendered only 172 total yards and didn’t allow Philadelphia to convert a single third down, and Los Angeles still needed three broken tackles from Williams with 1:17 remaining to win the football game.

That’s not something to celebrate blindly.

That’s something to study.

The Rams’ ceiling isn’t the question; their consistency is.

McVay knows it, and Brady, watching from the FOX booth, saw it too! 

Now comes the hard part.

Turning flashes into habits, execution into consistency, and belief into something more than a postgame word. The Rams don’t need more talent; they need to stop making their talent work so hard to rescue them.

Williams understood that better than anybody Sunday.

When everything else became complicated, his assignment remained beautifully simple.

Get the football.

Move forward.

Get hit.

Keep moving.

Get hit again.

Keep moving, by any means.

The Rams spent most of Sunday searching for a way to win.

In the end, they put the football in the hands of the one man who had been showing them the answer all afternoon.

Drip. Drip. Drip, and eventually, the Eagles broke.