St. Louis Rams Defense Must Create Turnovers

One group that has been underachieving in 2014, surprisingly, is the St. Louis Rams defense. Twice this season they have given up over 30 points at home and in the last one, they gave up a 21 point lead. With how much talent the Rams have on the defense, they should be able to rely on that group more than they are able to.

The Rams don’t have an offense that is able to march up and down the football field. This isn’t the Denver Broncos offense in St. Louis. Therefore the defense needs to help the offense out, and they need to do it with turnovers.

Since taking over the Rams in 2012, Jeff Fisher is 10-1 when the Rams win the turnover battle, the only loss coming in his first career game as a Ram. On the other side of that, the Rams are 1-14-1 when they lose the turnover battle and 4-4 when the turnovers are even.

What this means is that the Rams  have a 90% chance of winning when coming on top in the turnover column compared to a 4% chance when they don’t. That’s quite a substantial number.

Creating turnovers basically takes away a possession from the other team and when you have a handicapped offense like the Rams do with Austin Davis or Shaun Hill at quarterback, giving the offense as many times as possible to score is very important.

When the Rams brought in Gregg Williams to be the coordinator of the defense, turnovers were thought to have a big emphasis and the Rams defense was supposed to be opportunistic. Although we saw flashes of that last week against the Dallas Cowboys, through three games the Rams still only have three turnovers and have a turnover differential of -2.

The St. Louis Rams must do better, especially given the fact that the toughest part of the schedule lies ahead. The Rams need to give themselves more opportunities, the results and statistics speak for themselves.  When Fisher and Williams were together for four years in Tennessee, two of their best seasons were when the defense created 30 or more turnovers.

In 1999 the Titans created 40 turnovers and went 13-3 and made the Super Bowl. The very next season they created 30 turnovers and once again went 13-3. As of right now the Rams are on pace for only 16 turnovers for the season.

Obviously turning the ball over is a key part of winning, and if the Rams want to win, especially given the circumstances on offense, the defense must start creating more turnovers and the offense must take care of the football.