The wildest NFL season in recent memory wrapped up with a Super Bowl to match. The game swung back and forth several times and ended with each team having a chance to win it in the final minutes. The Rams came through, and the Bengals did not, which is why Los Angeles is celebrating while Cincinnati is pondering all the little moments that went against them that might have swung things their way.
Here are a handful of thoughts about what happened on Sunday night.
Boom or Bust Bengals
It’s who they were the entire season, so we shouldn’t be surprised they followed this same pattern in the biggest game of the year. But man was it dramatic to watch Cincinnati’s offense on Sunday. When they succeeded, they ate up yards in huge chunks, as they did with the 46 yard pass to Ja’Marr Chase and the 75 yard touchdown to Tee Higgins. And when they failed it was an epic disaster, with the seven sacks that Joe Burrow endured.
It's no secret where to point the finger on this. The Bengals offensive line has been a disaster all year long, and they had probably their worst game of the season against the Rams. In the first half they managed to keep things at least somewhat under control against a fairly vanilla Rams rush scheme. They sent three players at Aaron Donald on every play, and they counted on Burrow to get the ball out before the edge rushers could close in. When they tried to hold on for more than two seconds, either they succeeded and were able to hit a big play down the field, or they let the rush through and the play died quickly.
We all knew this was going to be a problem for the Bengals in this game. The question for their offense was whether their receivers could do enough to make up for it. And the answer ended up being a fairly middling “maybe”. Those two successful deep shots were obviously hugely impactful, and they did a decent job working the weak points in the middle of the Rams defense. Cincinnati moved Chase around much more in this game than they have through most of the season, asking him to run out of the slot on routes cutting across the middle of the field to get the ball in his hands quickly before the pressure could close in on Burrow. And they had moments where they were able to move the ball this way, combining quick passes with effective runs to pick up yards in small chunks working their way down the field.
The problem with this strategy is that it takes only one bad play to sink a drive. And the Bengals had plenty of those. Not just the seven sacks, but a drop by the usually reliable Tyler Boyd, a missed read by Burrow on fourth down, and a couple of contested catch opportunities lost by Higgins. A bunch of little plays that would have been forgotten if the Bengals had won, but now will be looked back on as crucial moments in the game where Cincinnati’s offense fell short.
This boom-or-bust style got them to this point, but any team that wishes to follow this path (including Cincinnati next year) will have to carefully evaluate the costs. Counting the playoffs Burrow was sacked 70 times this season, the third most of any quarterback in NFL history. The fact that he was able to remain standing and functional to the very end is a remarkable achievement, though it’s hard not to wonder how much he was impacted down the stretch of this game by the leg injury he suffered in one of the second-half sacks.
But the fact is that it did almost work for the Bengals. Putting up 20 points on offense isn’t a performance to celebrate, but it isn’t a disappointment either. If their offensive line had been simply bad in this game rather than historically atrocious, the outcome could easily have swung the other direction. And with lots of salary cap space to work with, the Bengals have an opportunity to retool the line and run the offense back next year, maybe with a bit more balance.
Stars in the LA Sky
The Rams approach to team-building has been fairly obvious for a while now. They have gone all-in on a handful of superstar players, paying huge costs in both draft picks and cap space to lock up a handful of the best in the league and counting on them to overcome their lack of depth. And on Super Bowl Sunday this strategy paid off big time, as the biggest names on the Rams stepped up in the biggest moments to win them this championship.
Cooper Kupp and Matthew Stafford had their moments, and I’ll get to them in a little bit. But right now I want to keep the focus on the Rams defense. And, as always, there is only one place to start there. Aaron Donald is the best defensive player in the league, and he was the best player on the field last night. He should have won the game’s MVP, but he’ll have to settle for knowing he was the real key to the victory.
Everything that happened for the Rams defensively flowed from Donald. He finished with two sacks, an impressive performance for any player, but that stat line actually understates his impact on the game. For most of the first half he barely appeared on the stat sheet, thanks to a Bengals protection scheme that was geared almost entirely to stopping him. They sent two or three players his way on every pass-blocking snap, which engineered one-on-one matchups on the edges that gave players like Von Miller and Leonard Floyd opportunities to make plays in the backfield.
As the game wore on, the Rams began to change up their pass rush plan in order to take advantage of Cincinnati’s unusual protection designs. With multiple linemen so focused on Donald, that opened up easy rushing lanes on the inside for creative stunts and blitzes. And they have the perfect rusher to take advantage of these opportunities in Miller. He’s been one of the best in the league for a long time thanks to his flexibility and explosiveness, and when he comes around on an inside loop opposing linemen have essentially no time to adjust if they take even a single step out of position. He finished with two sacks as well, both on opportunities created by Cincinnati’s obsessive focus on Donald.
As the Rams found success with these pass-rushing schemes, the Bengals were forced to adjust to a more balanced protection setup. This meant that Donald suddenly found himself in true one-on-one situations, and he took full advantage. He registered two sacks in the second half, and he got the pressure that was as good as a sack on the fourth down play that decided the game. This came one play after he helped stuff Cincinnati’s running attempt on third and short, one of multiple plays in the game where he managed to stop a running back just by sticking out a single arm and using his impossible strength to halt a grown man in his tracks.
This is where I should mention the one superstar on the Rams who didn’t have a game he’ll want to remember. If Los Angeles had lost, much of the conversation that followed the game would have pointed the finger at their star cornerback Jalen Ramsey. He was in coverage on both of the huge plays for the Bengals I mentioned above, which isn’t what you want to see from a supposed shutdown cornerback.
It wasn’t the best game Ramsey has ever played, but the criticism of him is probably unwarranted. Those two plays came on a spectacular one-handed catch by Chase and on one of the worst missed offensive pass interference penalties I’ve ever seen on Higgins. And while Ramsey allowed a couple of deep opportunities, he was lights out slowing down the quick passing game underneath. He made multiple plays on slant routes where Burrow tried to get the ball out of his hand quickly, and his ability to take away these passing lanes gave the Los Angeles pass rush the time they needed to collapse the pocket.
Of course, this only worked because Ramsey could trust the pass rush to close in on most plays. He played extremely aggressively and only got burned two or three times, because those were the only plays where the receivers actually had time to generate separation from him. Perhaps the most underappreciated part of the performance by the Los Angeles front was the discipline they played with. Not only did they get pressure on Burrow, they did so without giving him any lanes to escape through. He is a quarterback who excels at making plays outside the pocket, but he rarely had a chance on Sunday night. The pass rush closed in from all sides, leaving Burrow nowhere to go and no hope of escape.
The Year of the Wide Receiver Continues
A
couple weeks ago I wrote about how this postseason was demonstrating the value
of the wide receiver position, and I’m happy to say that the Super Bowl only
reinforced my argument. Obviously I’ve already mentioned the importance of the
plays the Bengals made on the outside, but the real key to the game was on the
Rams offense, which swung wildly based on the performance of its receivers.
After the first few drives, it looked like the Rams were going to run away with the game. They marched down the field with relative ease on two of their first four possessions, scoring a pair of touchdowns to put them up 13-3. They then proceeded to score only three points over their next seven drives, which is how they found themselves trailing in the final minutes of the game.
It isn’t some great secret what changed. On the drive following their second touchdown, Matthew Stafford threw a short crossing route to Odell Beckham. Beckham had been their most effective receiver in the early part of the game, with a contested catch for a touchdown for their first score and a 35 yard reception on their second touchdown drive. He was open once again with room to run on this play, but a step before the ball arrived his knee gave out and he sprawled onto the turf.
Beckham was later diagnosed with a torn ACL that ended his Super Bowl with just those two impactful catches. And from that point on, the Rams offense was basically dead in the water. The Rams picked up one more first down on that drive following the injury before Stafford threw his first interception of the game. And from that point until their very last drive, Los Angeles could do basically nothing with the football.
There were other issues that I will get into below, but the lack of depth at receiver played a significant role in their offensive struggles. The Bengals came into the game with a clear plan to take away Cooper Kupp, and in the early part of the game that just meant they left lots of space for Beckham to run into. With him out—and with Robert Woods and Tyler Higbee already sidelined—there was no one left on the Rams to step into the gap.
Even Kupp struggled until the very end of the game. When Beckham went down, Kupp had two receptions for 31 yards and a touchdown. Over the next seven drives he had only two more receptions for another 22 yards, before his performance on the final drive earned him the game’s MVP award.
For 90% of the game the Bengals were able to contain the best receiver in the NFL. The cost of this was to leave them exposed for anyone else who might step up to beat them. We saw this same thing three weeks ago when the Chiefs manage to shut down Stefon Diggs, which resulted in 200 yards and four touchdowns from Gabriel Davis.
It is possible to take away an elite receiver. And if that’s all an offense has to offer in the passing game, that can be enough to slow down the entire offense. A series of freak injuries to a crucial position on the team that has been the healthiest in the league for the past several seasons was almost enough to cost them the game. The late-game heroics of Stafford and Kupp, combined with the solid consistency of the defense for the entire game, was just enough to overcome this obstacle.
The Erratic Quarterback Hits Big
Stafford is the exact same quarterback he was in Detroit, and that was enough to win a Super Bowl with this Rams team. He found himself in an almost perfect situation with a proven defense, a star wide receiver, an elite offensive line, and a (schematically) intelligent head coach. And on the biggest stage of his career, he played the most Stafford game imaginable, in that I’m not entirely sure it was good but am almost certain it wasn’t bad, even if it did have plenty of bad moments I can point to.
Let’s start with the good. Stafford started extremely hot, with nine completions on ten passes over the opening four drives that resulted in two touchdowns. And he finished mostly strong as well, making several key plays on the final drive to get the Rams in the endzone. Most notable was the no-look pass he completed over the middle of the field to Kupp that will be on highlights for decades to come. This is the sort of spectacular play Stafford’s been making for years, the sort of play that only he and a few other people in the world can make, the sort that can make you overlook his shortcomings and believe he is truly one of the best in the league.
Now, for the bad. Stafford led the league with 17 interceptions this season, so it’s reasonable to start there. He’s always had a propensity for throwing the ball to the wrong team, and Sunday was no exception, even if his two interceptions weren’t the most egregious in the world.
The first came on a third and 14 play where simply throwing it away likely would have led to a Rams punt, and it was deep enough down the field that the end result was basically the same as if they had just punted the ball away. It’s the sort of chance I don’t mind a quarterback taking, even if it never had much hope of being completed with Van Jefferson showing little interest in playing the football. There’s always a chance that Jessie Bates might have panicked instead of turning to play the ball and picked up a pass interference penalty to give the Rams an easy 40 yards. It’s a play that looks bad on the stat sheet but really had no downside.
The other interception is a bit more complicated. The ball went off the hand of Ben Skowronek and set up the Bengals in tremendous field position, already sitting on a four-point lead and in Rams territory. Some heroics from Donald kept them from making it into the endzone and minimized the damage, but still this interception came close to sinking Los Angeles’s championship hopes.
So how much is Stafford to blame? It’s hard to say. People tend to excuse quarterbacks for interceptions that go off a receiver’s hand, ignoring that balls are far more likely to be deflected if they come in off-target. The throw certainly wasn’t in a place where Skowronek had a realistic shot to catch it, but that may have been as much due to a poor route by him as it was to Stafford.
This was in the stretch of the game when every pass he made seemed to come in off the mark. And this certainly shouldn’t be a surprise for a quarterback who has struggled with accuracy his entire career. But also at times it seemed like his receivers weren’t hitting their marks. Some were clearly on Stafford, like the miss of Jefferson wide open in the endzone on the final drive. Others might be easy to write off as a product of replacement level targets.
It was an uneven night for Stafford, as it’s been an uneven career. But he made the plays they needed him to make down the stretch, the plays that Jared Goff certainly wouldn’t have made in his place. I’ll still fight tooth and nail if people start trying to put Stafford into a Hall of Fame conversation, but there’s no question I was wrong about him being a crucial piece on a Super Bowl team.
Sean McVay Blew It, And Then He Didn’t
The
last section of my Super Bowl preview addressed my worries about the two
coaching staffs in this game, so it’s good to circle back here again,
especially after one of the most frustrating performances I’ve seen from a
coach in a long time. Three years after his offense got absolutely suffocated
in the Super Bowl against the Patriots, McVay nearly let it happen again, and
was only bailed out by a complete reversal of his gameplan in the final
minutes.
Cincinnati’s defense came out with an excellent plan for slowing down the Rams. As I mentioned above they focused on Kupp in the passing game, sending multiple defenders his way to keep him in check. They followed a similar blueprint to the one they used against Kansas City two weeks ago, relying on coverage to frustrate the quarterback and rarely sending extra pressure up front. They sacked Stafford a couple of times, but for the most part he had a clean pocket to work from the entire night, and just didn’t have anywhere to go with the football.
Even more impressive was what Cincinnati did against the running game. With so many defenders dropping back into coverage, you would expect them to be a little weak in the box. But they came with a plan for that as well. They had a good feel for the Rams snap count that allowed them to shift their front right before the snap, messing up the blocking rules for the Rams offensive line. And at the back end their linebackers and safeties filled aggressively whenever they saw run, charging downhill to make plays in the backfield.
This approach allowed the Bengals to essentially erase the Los Angeles running game. If you just look at traditional runs by running backs the Rams finished with 19 carries for 30 yards. Three different running backs saw carries, and none of them averaged even two yards per attempt. The Rams running game was absolutely suffocated from the start of the game to the end.
And yet, even as Cincinnati proved over and over again that there was nothing to be gained by running against them, the Rams didn’t give up. As troubling as the 30 yards stat was from the paragraph above, the 19 attempts were the real issue. The running game wasn’t working at all, but McVay remained stubbornly committed to it, regularly throwing away plays and sticking his offense in disadvantageous situations on second and third down.
It was frustrating to watch an offense that is capable of so much creativity be rendered so bland by their own doing. There are definitely ways to counter Cincinnati’s gameplan, and for most of the game the Rams simply didn’t do them. On their second touchdown drive they found success with play action to take advantage of the aggressive fills from the Bengals back seven. They got Kupp wide open in the endzone with a simple play fake. And then they didn’t come back to that for most of the remainder of the game.
It's possible that the injury to Beckham scared McVay away from leaning more on his passing game. But even if he didn’t trust his other receivers, slamming the ball for no gain into the middle of the line of scrimmage was hardly a good alternative.
The best solution was the one they didn’t figure out until the final drive of the game. The Rams offense is typically built around a lot of tight formations, using congestion to confuse defenses to create running lanes and open receivers. This works well when everything is running in perfect rhythm, but it doesn’t work when you lack receivers who can play with precision and when the defense is a step ahead of you.
The entire game the tight formations of the Rams fed directly into what Cincinnati was trying to do defensively. It allowed them to play light boxes to entice Los Angeles into running, while still keeping defenders close enough to come down hard in support. It allowed them to send multiple defenders to Kupp at every opportunity, robbing him of one-on-one matchups where his route-running is so deadly. And once the Rams were down to the bottom of their receiver depth chart, their ability to create confusion backfired, as their receivers started tripping over each other just trying to get out on their routes.
It's both puzzling and frustrating that it took McVay almost an entire game to figure this out, but when he did he pointed the team towards the perfect solution. On the last drive, when they absolutely needed to move the ball, the Rams went away from what they typically do on offense. They spread the field with their wide receivers, robbing themselves of the ability to create easy separation with well-designed plays but giving their best players opportunities to create space on their own.
That’s ultimately what it came down to. For the first 55 minutes of the game, McVay refused to get out of his own way. It was only at the end when he decided to trust his players over his scheme that the Rams were able to overcome the issues that had plagued their offense all night. Kupp was let loose to work on the outside, and Stafford was freed to feed the ball to the only reliable target he had left. It was very nearly too little and too late, but in the end the Rams were able to do just enough offensively to make their defensive effort worth it.
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