The Los Angeles Rams invited anybody with a spare three hours on Monday night to enjoy a fish fry.
Anybody that gladly took them up on the offer in a game against the Miami Dolphins ended up with indigestion.
It was the offense that was supposed to carry the Rams into a new era, but Los Angeles head coach Sean McVay couldn’t get his group over the line in a 23-15 loss Monday.
With a fourth consecutive victory there for the taking, the Rams did not score a touchdown behind quarterback Matthew Stafford. Any ideas of rallying from a dreadful 1-4 start and into the playoffs have been put on pause with the current 4-5 record.
Stafford has played 50 regular-season games with the Rams. He has now failed to orchestrate a touchdown drive in just two of them.
“It was a little bit of this and a little bit of that,” Stafford said of the team’s issues on offense. “We did some really good things and weren’t good enough in some areas. I would say that we were inconsistent.”
The Rams were supposed to be about the offense this season, and if anybody wondered why, they just needed to look toward the stands Monday. All-superhero defensive tackle Aaron Donald was in attendance to watch his former teammates, looking as chiseled as ever in retirement.
A young Los Angeles defense was supposed to go through growing pains this season, and the offense, filled with elite skill players, was set to move things forward.
Well, if Donald was impressed with any group, it was with his former defense. Miami won with just 238 yards of total offense, well below the Rams’ 327 yards. The Dolphins got the job done despite just 208 yards passing and an interception from Tua Tagovailoa.
So while the Rams have Stafford, wide receivers Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp and running back Kyren Williams, there is a new group of players looking for top billing.
Edge rusher Byron Young and defensive tackle Kobie Turner played as rookies alongside Donald in his final season. Edge rusher Jared Verse and defensive tackle Braden Fiske were drafted after Donald announced that his playing days were done.
The Rams already had a Fearsome Foursome in the 1960s, and while this base defense is not the same as that one, the current young group can still be known as the Ferocious Foursome as it continues to progress.
Can the Rams still make the playoffs? The loss Monday gave them a playoff probability of 13 percent. Just another sign of their bad luck.
Los Angeles built hopes after a rough start that was mostly due to a flood of injuries on offense, including Nacua and Kupp, not to mention multiple starters on the offensive line.
But center Jonah Jackson, left guard Steve Avila and right tackle Joe Noteboom all came off injured reserve to play this week, and yet Stafford was hurried all night by a Dolphins defensive front that had underperformed this season. Stafford was sacked four times, while Nacua and Kupp combined for 16 receptions, but none for TDs.
It was just one loss, and yet it seems inevitable that some kind of change is ahead for the Rams. After all, Kupp was rumored to be a trade possibility, and then the deadline passed with him still in Los Angeles.
The reality is that the front office has signaled they are willing to look at any and all options to build a brighter future.
For all that McVay has done in eight seasons as a head coach, he has yet to develop his own quarterback. Stafford is signed through 2026, with no indications the Rams are anywhere near moving away from their star. But he won’t play forever.
In a season like this one—with games still remaining against the Philadelphia Eagles, Buffalo Bills, San Francisco 49ers and the first-place Arizona Cardinals—there is a hunger to know what happens next.
“There was some execution that has to be better,” McVay said of his offense that he agreed was ‘sloppy.’ “These are the things we have to clean up if we want to be the type of (effective) team from an offensive perspective.”
The Rams are just 1.5 games behind the suddenly-hot Cardinals in the NFC West and a game behind the second-place 49ers. Hope remains.
But as Monday showed, it’s best to be careful about what is on the menu.
