LA Rams sending four to Pro Bowl, but Stafford and Whitworth huge snubs

2 Rams veteran Pro Bowlers

Defensive tackle Aaron Donald takes his eighth consecutive Pro Bowl selection because let’s face it, there is no better interior defensive lineman in the NFL today. His 11.0 quarterback sacks may place him into a tie for eighth-place among NFL quarterback sacks, but he is the top interior defensive lineman in that category.

To be even more exact, his 66 tackles for a player with double-digit sacks in only second to Dallas Cowboys rookie Micah Parsons with 76. And his 14 tackles for a loss, while good for sixth place in the NFL, is tops among NFL interior defensive linemen. Why is the position so important? Aaron Donald routinely faces double teams, triple teams, and yes, even quadruple teams each week.  By no means does that work, because he continues to be a wrecking ball to opposing offenses.

While Donald has had better seasons of getting to the quarterback, this may be one of his best overall seasons yet. With three games remaining, Donald is having a well-rounded impact on defense, which simply has not gotten enough notice from fans or media so far this season. With three games remaining on the LA Rams schedule, Donald has:

66 tackles (career-high is 69 tackles set in 2015)
4 pass deflections (career-high is five pass deflections set in 2016)
11.0 quarterback sacks (career-high is 20.5 sacks set in 2018)
14 quarterback hurries (career-high is 32 hurries set in 2019)

As Donald’s reputation grows each season, he attracts more and more attention from offensive linemen. While Donald has 11.0 QB sacks, his teammates have an aggregate compliment of 28 more sacks,  a number that is showing signs of his teammates stepping up more often to bring down the passer.

Ramsey island

The LA Rams watched offensive coordinators simply scheme away from defensive back Jalen Ramsey in 2020. That may have neutralized the best receiver on the opposing team, but the defense discovered that offenses were deep enough to sacrifice their top receiver to neutralize Ramsey. So the 2021 version of the LA Rams defense was willing to counter that counter and purposefully moved Ramsey around in the coverage, oftentimes settling in as the slot cornerback.

But savvy offensive coordinators were able to counter the counter to their counter to the Rams counter by forcing Ramsey into coverage of a poor receiver by motioning receivers in his direction. That has now forced the Rams to go back to best-on-best coverage for the most part.

But even as these boring chess moves took place on the football field, Jalen Ramsey is flirting with a career-high season. With three games remaining on the LA Rams schedule, Ramsey has:

64 tackles (career-high is 65 tackles set in 2016 and 2018)
13 pass deflections (career-high is 17 pass deflections set in 2017)
3 interceptions (career-high is four interceptions set in 2017)
59.2 percent completion rate (career-best is 50.7 percent completion rate set in 2020)

While some fans are less than happy about the way Ramsey has been deployed in 2021, the fact is that the defense has gotten far more out of him this year than at almost any other time of his career.