LA Rams whiffed with no offense boost at the NFL trade deadline

No trade was a mistake

The LA Rams had a chance to make a move. They chose not to swing at a trade.  From our perspective, that was a huge mistake.  These teams improved at the trade deadline this year.

The fact is that while the LA Rams defense is improving, it’s the offense that is the concern right now. The offense is falling into nasty bad habits, and the more rutted the offense becomes, defenses will be all too happy to continue to push them into it.

The LA Rams have plenty of talent on the roster as is to change course with their playbook. The problem is that the head coach, Sean McVay is very meticulous. In fact, when it comes to young players, he is too demanding, too exacting. That is why they are not featured on offense. While rookie RB Cam Akers can do marvelous things with the ball in his hands, he won’t see more playing time until he impresses the coach with his play without the ball in his hands

Shake up the receiving corps

The LA Rams needed to shake up their receivers. Whether the quarterback, the players, or the play-calling has become too predictable, it’s quite clear that for the most recent games, the advantage seems to have been with the opposing defense. While that is a clear sign that the Rams offense needs to transfer the play-calling assignments to offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell, that may not happen.  The only other way to change the Rams’ offense is to change the personnel.

The Houston Texans were willing to trade receivers by the NFL trade deadline, and the Rams would have benefitted from either Kenny Stills or the return of Brandin Cooks. But the Rams held fast.  Was that the right call?

While it’s never a wise choice to make a trade just for the sake of trading, the malaise of the Rams offense right now won’t clear by itself. The Rams receivers are all trying. But some are succeeding and some are not.  The struggle is not in their talent but in the ability of defenses to guess where the Rams are going with the ball. Just as 2019, defenses have once more discovered that overwhelming the Rams offensive line results in huge quarterback mistakes. And that the offense is too rigid, it does not adapt to the numbers at the line of scrimmage in time to make a defense pay the price.

The Rams had a chance to alter the season’s trajectory, and didn’t. Now they are forced to do so the manual method.