Copyright Baton Rouge Advocate
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Start with the coin toss, one of the last moments that the outcome between the New Orleans Saints and Los Angeles Rams was still in question. After winning the toss, the Saints elected to receive the opening kickoff. It was an aggressive choice made by a team looking for any sort of advantage against one of the premier teams in the NFL. The idea, in a vacuum, is to take control of the game early by jumping out to an early lead. Instead, the Saints gained nine yards on their first three plays and lost their stomach for aggressiveness, punting the ball away. Los Angeles took possession at its own 12-yard line and showed the Saints what it meant to start fast. The Rams’ first four plays gained 10, 9, 20 and 16 yards. Whatever the Rams wanted to do on a 12-play, 88-yard touchdown drive, they did. It ended when the Saints defense sold out against the run at the 1-yard line, only to watch Tyler Higbee catch a touchdown after a play-action fake with nobody in his zip code. The rest of the game — a 34-10 drubbing that dropped the Saints to 1-8 on the season — followed much of the same script. Whatever lever the Rams wanted to pull offensively worked in their favor. They put the Saints defense on skates with its play action passes. Stafford carved them up in the pure dropback game, picking apart the Saints’ zone coverage. When the Rams decided to run the ball, they found little resistance — no matter who was carrying the ball. Kyren Williams had 25 carries for 114 yards, and his backup Blake Corum had 13 carries for 58 yards. The Saints offense, led by rookie quarterback Tyler Shough making his first career start, could not keep pace. Shough struggled to get much of anything going against a tough Rams defense. Each of the Saints first three drives went three-and-out, and New Orleans didn’t start showing any signs of life until Shough briefly came off the field and Taysom Hill took a keeper for 29 yards to flip the field. That was the Saints’ first first down of the game, and they were already trailing 13-0 by that point. The drive ended with a 39-yard Blake Grupe field goal — a kick that was only attempted because the Saints committed a false start when trying to convert a fourth and 1. Los Angeles took the ensuing kick and went on a too-easy three-play, 65-yard touchdown drive capped by a 39-yard strike from Stafford to Puka Nacua. Shough’s best moment came during a two-minute drill to close out the first half. He connected on 4 of his 6 passes on the drive, including a 27-yarder to Chris Olave on third down when he scrambled out of pressure, extended the play and found Olave down field. With seven seconds left in the first half, he hit Juwan Johnson for an 11-yard touchdown that cut the Rams’ lead to 20-10. It offered a brief moment of hope, and the Rams quickly snuffed it out. Los Angeles took the opening kickoff of the second half and went on a methodical 16-play, 80-yard touchdown march that bled nearly 10 minutes of game clock. Stafford closed it out with his fourth touchdown pass of the game, and second to star wideout Davante Adams. The Saints’ response was to fumble the ball away on the second play of the ensuing possession, when Rams linebacker Nate Landman punched the ball out of Alvin Kamara’s hands. New Orleans will travel to Charlotte next week to face the Carolina Panthers in its final game before the bye week.
