ST Coordinator John Bonamego rapid repairs to LA Rams

What about going for three points?

Nothing breaks the spirits of a football team harder than a game-winning drive to set up a field goal, only to have that field-goal fail in the closing moments of the game.  And with the LA Rams falling to the 28th-ranked team in the NFL on field goal accuracy, the Rams needed to make some improvements. Coincidentally, the Rams two special teams coaches and field goal kicker Greg Zuerlein defected to the Dallas Cowboys.  Will the Rams recover?

After all, the plunge of the Rams from a Super Bowl competitor to an NFL team that failed to make the playoffs cannot be attributed to the offensive line nor the defense alone. It was the plummet of the team’s field goal performance. And there is the greatest challenge for Bonamego in 2020. Can he fix the field goal unit? First, we need to determine what that fix looks like.

Improvement plan

For the field goal team, the team measures its success by field goal accuracy. And that is where the Rams failed miserably in 2019. 72.7 percent accuracy is an abysmal rate, no matter which season it occurs. It just happened to occur on a season where the Rams needed special teams to contribute. So the goal for 2020 is simple enough. the team needs to improve field goal accuracy by 10 percentage points, or to 82 percent.  That means instead of making just 24 of 33 attempts, the team must make at least 27 field goals. That just three more.

For defending field goal attempts, the team’s ultimate goal is to block the field goal. But even if that does not occur, simply getting near to the kicker or disrupting the timing of the snapper, holder, and the kicker is enough.  Whatever it takes to create a miss by the opposing team. While this is a difficult element of special teams, Bonamego is savvy enough to have a trick or two up his sleeve.