3 unresolved offensive decisions keeping Rams from being Week 1 ready

The depth of the Los Angeles Rams roster is one of the key strengths as the team prepares for Week 1 of the 2025 NFL season. Their first opponent is the Houston Texans, a team that has enjoyed some success of late, led by HC Demeco Ryans. While the team has managed to clear the most difficult part of the offseason, resetting the regular-season and practice squad rosters, there are many more hurdles to overcome in the next week.

This is the year of innovations, an offseason thought experiment over the strategies to improve the team. While there are improvements in store across the roster, it’s this year’s offense that has the most to prove. It’s an expensive group — the third-most expensive offensive unit in 2025. All NFL teams hope to get a return on their investment.

This team is no different. For several years, money has been abundant, but production has been in short supply. That’s a bad return on investment, and one the team hopes to correct here and now. This may be Matthew Stafford’s final season, so the offense will be under tremendous pressure to protect the quarterback while being optimally productive. Here are the three most critical offensive decisions facing this team before Week 1:

3 critical offensive decisions Rams must solve before opening kickoff

(3) - Will Rams truly mix up workload for running backs?

The team cannot possibly hope to find success by handing the football off to Kyren Williams over 300 times this season. That will hard-halt any growth and development for younger players. It also emphasizes the drop-off when the team finds the need to give Williams a rest during games. Finally, it sets up ineffective performances in the postseason.

The team needs to view this season from the offense’s perspective, not from one player’s viewpoint. It’s less about breaking rushing records on the back of one rusher than it is about having a dangerous rushing attack. To better the team, all three running backs must get their touches. Hopefully, this is not another coachspeak mantra to placate fans, and the team will finally follow through.

(2) - How often will Rams use 12- personnel?

The team’s decision to retain four tight ends on the roster may be the right one, but only if they follow through by emphasizing 12-personnel much more frequently this season. The team carried three to four tight ends last year, but failed to use two-tight-end sets on more than 15 percent of total offensive snaps.

Most fans agree that the swap of Hunter Long for rookie Terrance Ferguson is an upgrade, one that begs the offense to get Ferguson involved early and often. He won’t pry snaps away from Tyler Higbee, so his best chances for contributing rely upon the offense creating more opportunities for tight ends as a whole. The strategy is sound, and the team finally has the right personnel to make it make sense.

(1) - Who starts at left tackle - DJ Humphries or Alaric Jackson?

There will bound to be some weighing of the trade-off between DJ Humphries and Alaric Jackson. But it will involve subjectivity. Will some less-than-100-percent version of Jackson outperform Humphries? And if so, what is the threshold where a limited Jackson outperforms a fully healthy Humphries?

At some point, the team has to make that call. It’s unfair to either player to toggle reps from one to the other without a decision being made. And by rights, the longer the decision is delayed, the worse the outcome for the team, because the first-string offensive line, one of the most important units for cohesiveness and continuity, will suffer as a result.

There will be time to plan a final strategy and commit to the either/or decisions that could play huge factors in the outcome of Week 1. But time flies by quickly now. And the sooner these decisions are made, the longer the team has to bake them into practices.

As always, thanks for reading.

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