5 keys for LA Rams for Week 15 win

The LA Rams have been swapping parts on their roster throughout the season. Whether by a need to replace injured contributors, or simply an opportunity to improve the depth or production of the roster, the team’s front office has been very active all season long.

But come on now. This past week has seen the removal and restoration of players occur at such a pace that we were compelled to discuss which starters were missing, and who were not. Of course, the moment a list is published, a new team transaction makes it all null and void. A bit like trying to clean the dishes.

But while that will mean good things for this team eventually, it has proven to be something of a challenge to get these players ready and synched up. Well, at least until the LA Rams had the chance to tune up against the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 13. That led to a short-handed, but remarkably similar, victory against the then-NFL’s-best Arizona Cardinals.

Suddenly the Rams are on a two-game winning streak, and the proclamations of doom-and-gloom have settled elsewhere in the NFL. For now, at least. But there are new forces at work for the LA Rams. One is the simple tendency of things to revert ‘back to normal,’ after the watchful eyes of virtually every NFL analyst and prognosticator stop focusing on every minor detail of the team.

On the other hand, there is the risk of playing the new strategy too long, and therefore creating a new ‘norm’ for the team in terms of offensive play creation and defensive strategies. This newfound commitment to run the football often enough and with enough commitment to force the opposing defense to prepare to stop it has allowed the Rams offense to show a bit of sleight-of-hand trickery that has opened the gates of offensive production once more.

The LA Rams are in a bit of a nebulous place. The team faces playing a very important game with key starters among the 18 players remaining on the Reserve/COVID-19 list. Yet this team shook off being short-handed and was able to win in Week 14. So let’s try to take what we learned worked in the past two victories and apply them to Week 15, shall we?