5 problems LA Rams must avoid in 2023’s initial roster

From the outset of the 2022 NFL season, the LA Rams’ initial 53-man roster set the team up for the challenges that lay ahead. In truth, the decisions made over where to have more than necessary depth on the team’s roster versus where the team made a conscious and deliberate call to go far too shallow created problems that would plague the team all season.

Do you like to solve mysteries? Let’s take up a whodunnit over the LA Rams’ disappointing 2022 NFL season. Injuries? Predictability? Too rigid play calling? What were the causes of the LA Rams’ plummet from first to nearly the worst in one season?

Of course, the obvious answer here is player injuries and the havoc that those roster impacts caused to the team’s offense. Without consistency on the offensive line, the team’s ability to score points became a fight rather than a steady event.

Did the initial Rams roster set the team up to fail?

But upon inspection of the LA Rams’ first official depth chart, problems already began to surface:

The LA Rams offensive line had no backup to offensive center Brian Allen. Allen would fall to injury in the first game of the season, forcing the team to move right guard Coleman Shelton to center. That would not be a problem, except that the Rams roster had already lost backup rookie right guard Logan Bruss for the season.

That is just the first set of avoidable problems that the Rams experienced in 2022. In fact, I was so alarmed at the Rams’ initial 53-man roster that I took down notes then to be used as guidelines of what not to do in 2023. So here are those guidelines of what not to do when setting up the team’s 2023 initial 53-man roster:

Mistake V: No clear feature running back in the group

The LA Rams entered the 2022 NFL season with running backs, but no clearly featured rusher. It was the problem caused by the team’s failure to extend veteran RB Sony Michel and then amplified by the fact that the team did not play any running backs in the preseason.

While there are valid reasons not to play the starters in preseason games, we cannot fool ourselves into believing that the decision not to allow running backs in preseason competition does not come without its own downsides. Perhaps the greatest problem is the fact that the LA Rams entered the 2022 NFL season without any sense of which running back was the most effective.

Lotta hype, and not much production

The team certainly hyped up the potential of rookie running back Kyren Williams. But he was injured throughout training camp, eventually healing enough to be considered to be a vital offensive weapon in the season opener. But he was injured on special teams and was never able to take an offensive snap in the game.

For the season, the Rams rushed 411 times for 1,681 yards. The team’s leading rusher, Cam Akers, sat out two games and the BYE due to a dispute with HC Sean McVay. He rushed 188 times for 786 yards and seven touchdowns. Six of those touchdowns, and 512 yards, all happened in the final six games of the season.

The Rams runner-up running back, Darrell Henderson Jr., carried the ball 70 times for 283 yards and three touchdowns. But he was outright released. What of rookie RB Kyren Williams? He managed 35 carries and 139 yards in his rookie season.

Mistake IV: Only two tight ends

The LA Rams had found success with 12-personnel packages in the past, but the team made the regrettable decision to go with only two tight ends for the 2022 NFL season. That was a huge mistake on multiple fronts. Here’s why.

The LA Rams had a clear starting tight end in Tyler Higbee. But the LA Rams had never established a true TE2 after former Rams tight end Johnny Mundt was injured during the 2021 NFL season. The Rams trialed both Kendall Blanton and Brycen Hopkins in the role, and Blanton appeared to leapfrog Hopkins into the role for the latter half of 2021.

But Blanton was injured and could not suit up for Super Bowl LVI. Instead, Brycen Hopkins was forced into service and caught all four passes thrown his way.

The LA Rams roster was too light on TEs

So when 2022 arrived the Rams roster opted for just two tight ends: Tyler Higbee and Brycen Hopkins. The problem was obvious in that the Rams did not have a blocking tight end on the roster, and that would create immediate problems. The offensive line began to erode, suffering multiple injuries that created huge challenges for the team as the coaching staff scrambled for ways to create better blocking.

But another problem developed as well. As indicated earlier in discussing rookie running back Kyren Williams, the team’s option for a second tight end to augment the offense delivered next to nothing for the offense. Hopkins was targeted just 11 times for the entire 2022 NFL season, catching seven passes for 109 yards.

The Rams ultimately did re-sign Kendall Blanton and played him in four games with two starts. He was targeted just twice, catching both passes for 35 yards. But he was released with RB Darell Henderson. In the end, the Rams never did develop a second tight end in the passing game.

III: The Rams never distributed passes

The LA Rams are never short of wide receiver talent, and the 2022 NFL season was no exception to that rule. In fact, you could argue that the LA Rams roster had too much talent at the wide receiver position. Certain, the WR skillsets had expanded into areas that the Rams had neglected to address in the past.

The talent was there, and the Rams’ offense had the potential to enter the 2022 NFL season with their offensive guns blazing. Unfortunately, the playcalling remained set on WR Cooper Kupp and TE Tyler Higbee.

In Super Bowl LVI, the Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals on the pass-catching ability of Odell Beckham Jr, Cooper Kupp, and to a lesser extent, Ben Skowronek and Brycen Hopkins. Thanks to that ability to find Kupp in coverage, the Rams came back to win that game and hoist the Lombardi Trophy for the city of Los Angeles.

Rams’ 8-track offensive playbook

Unfortunately, the Rams’ offense became stuck on that play selection. Even as the Rams flooded opposing secondaries with plenty of pass-catching options, the Rams continued to target WR Cooper Kupp and to a lesser extent, TE Tyler Higbee. Even WR Ben Skowronek rode the wave of his Super Bowl performance.

But as for the team’s other receivers, like Allen Robinson, Tutu Atwell, Brycen Hopkins, and even TE/WR Jacob Harris, they were thrown to only a handful of times. Opposing secondaries did not have to play well, they simply had to cover Kupp and Higbee and wait for the inevitable mistake of an overthrown or underthrown football. It was not until the Rams lost Cooper Kupp to injury after nine games that the offense began to spread the ball around.

Curiously, Kupp’s nine games resulted in 98 targets, more than any other receiver not named Tyler Higbee on the Rams’ roster. The Rams’ offense showed almost no deviation from that rut, and defenses were delighted to exploit the very predictable nature of the offense.

II: Too few outside linebackers

The LA Rams were unsuccessful at extending veteran outside linebacker Von Miller. So the team decided to sign WR Allen Robinson and ILB Bobby Wagner instead. But what of the Rams outside linebacker position? Well, it seemed as though the team was comfortable enough with an outside linebacker room that boasted Leonard Floyd, Terrell Lewis, Justin Hollins, Chris Garrett, and rookies Daniel Hardy, Keir Thomas, Bradon Thomas, and Benton Whitley.

The Rams even signed OLB Takk McKinley to bolster the pass rush. But the Rams cut the following players over the course of the 2022 NFL season:

Chris Garrett
Benton Whitley
Justin Hollins
Terrell Lewis
Takk McKinley

That’s five of eight players, right? So how did the Rams manage to play a 3-4 front with so few outside linebackers?

The Rams got lucky despite their mistakes

For starters, the Rams cross-trained defensive lineman Michael Hoecht into an outside linebacker, a transition that allowed him to sack the quarterback 4.5 times in a limited number of games at the position. But even with Hoecht’s miraculous ability to play outside linebacker, let’s not ignore the fact that the Rams’ roster hit on a last-second Hail Mary effort to staff the role.

In 20/20 hindsight, it was clear that the Rams were dissatisfied with a number of their outside linebackers long before cutting them. It was the need to await the healthy return of rookie Daniel Hardy that triggered the opportunity to waive both Hollins and Lewis. The Rams got very lucky, but cannot hope for lightning to strike twice for their OLB needs.

I: Carrying only eight offensive linemen

This was the most alarming decision made for the 2022 Rams roster. As we were quick to point out in April 2022, the LA Rams’ decision to start Joe Noteboom at left tackle and Brian Allen at the center did not come without risks. Over the course of their careers, Allen had a durability rate of just 59 percent, while Noteboom’s durability rate was just 50 percent. That meant that the Rams should factor in playing a backup for nine games at left tackle and eight games at the center.

How close did we come? Brian Allen played in just seven games, meaning that the Rams had to start a backup at the center position for 10 games. Joseph Noteboom played in just six games. That meant that the LA Rams had to play a backup at the left tackle position for 11 games. If I was able to anticipate the Rams’ offensive line struggles six months into the future, then why were the Rams so confident that they opted to carry just eight offensive linemen on their 53-man roster?

Rams failed to anticipate reasonable problems

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in professional sports or a crystal ball to have the ability to anticipate the perils of starting three new players on the offensive line in 2022. And complicating that was the fact that two of the Rams’ three new starting offensive linemen had a history of not being able to suit up for their games. The result? The Rams had burned through their backups by the second game of the 2022 NFL season.

That is a problem that could have been easily avoided.

What did occur is the outbreak of injuries forced the LA Rams front office to sign more than a handful of free-agent offensive linemen just to be able to keep the offense afloat. Over the course of the season, the Rams signed IOL Oday Aboushi, Matt Skura, OT Ty Nsekhe, OT Zachary Thomas, and finally IOL Cole Turner. The shortcomings of the Rams’ offensive line were a huge mistake, as it forced the Rams to start veterans who had to crash course the Rams’ offensive playbook with limited time.

Had the Rams carried more offensive linemen, they would have had more options than starting OT Bobby Evans out of position as the offensive guard. At season’s end, the Rams had 466 snaps for Matt Skura, 423 offensive snaps for Ty Nsekhe, and 339 offensive snaps for Oday Aboushi, none of whom benefitted from a Rams training camp.

Could a larger OL complement have solved the Rams’ offensive line woes in 2022? Not at all. But carrying 10 instead of eight offensive linemen on the initial 53-man roster would have given the front office a fighting chance to reload quickly enough to a point where the Rams may have won a few more games.

That’s all I have in my notebook from the LA Rams’ initial 53-man roster from 2022. Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments section.