From superteam to 2-4 disappointment? Barnwell on what has gone wrong for the Rams

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  Bill BarnwellOct 19, 2026, 08:10 AM ET

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  Bill Barnwell is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com. He analyzes football on and off the field like no one else on the planet, writing about in-season X's and O's, offseason transactions and so much more.

  He is the host of the Bill Barnwell Show podcast, with episodes released weekly. Barnwell joined ESPN in 2011 as a staff writer at Grantland.

It was one thing when the Rams could explain away their losses to good teams with excuses. They lost to the 49ers in Melbourne to start the 2026 season because they tried to reimagine jet lag. They lost to the Broncos in Denver in a close Week 3 game that turned on a pick-six. And they lost to the Bills at home on "Monday Night Football" in Week 5 when their special teams melted down yet again. Losing three games to three of the six best teams in the NFL in terms of win-loss record since the start of 2025 was disappointing ... but it wasn't alarming.

Well, the alarms are now going off in Los Angeles. On Sunday, the Rams lost 18-16 at home to a 1-4 Cardinals team, the sort of defeat that inspires soul searching and painful self-reflection. Any team can lose when the turnovers don't bounce its way or an injury unexpectedly costs it a key player, but neither of those were the case against Arizona. And while the Rams lost new kicker Blake Grupe to an early-game knee injury, special teams weren't really to blame for the loss, either.

Are the 2-4 Rams, who were the prohibitive favorites to win this season's Super Bowl after acquiring Myles Garrett and Trent McDuffie and bringing Aaron Donald out of retirement this offseason, just not very good? Do we know enough after six games to say with confidence that the superteam Rams we expected to see heading into the season aren't ever going to show up on the field in 2026? Is it time to write them off as Super Bowl contenders?

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One thing I can say for sure: To live up to the preseason hype and win the Super Bowl, the Rams will have to do something no NFL team has ever done before. If the Rams even make it to the Super Bowl, they would be the first team in NFL history to post a losing record through six weeks and still manage to win its conference in the Super Bowl era. Playing in an era with a 17-game regular season and 14 playoff teams makes a potential turnaround a little easier for the Rams, but they would have to break 60 years of precedent to overcome this slow start and make it to the home Super Bowl in Inglewood, California, in February.

Do they have any hope of making that sort of turnaround? Today, I'm going to take a deep dive into what has gone wrong for the Rams, how it cost them the game against the Cardinals and whether they can expect things to get better in the weeks to come. There's no single glaring problem, but there are real issues that need to be addressed if the preseason favorites want to get their title chase back on track. Let's run through what our expectations were in August and how things have differed through Week 6 of the season.

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Quarterback play | Playcalling
13 personnel usage | Run game
Pass rush | Special teams
Super Bowl favorites

Expectation: The Rams have an MVP-caliber quarterback.

After seeing Matthew Stafford light up the league in 2025, it wasn't difficult to imagine the Rams' starting QB playing at a high level again in 2026. The Rams were returning everyone who played at least 100 snaps for them on offense a year ago outside of right tackle Rob Havenstein, who retired during the offseason. Stafford was returning as a 38-year-old quarterback, but after sitting out most of the preseason in 2025 with a back issue before delivering the best campaign of his career, there weren't many people projecting a major step backward.

Stafford hasn't been awful or missed time, but he's definitely not playing at the level we saw in 2025. He was fourth in Total QBR a year ago; now he sits 14th in the league through six games. He's 15th in EPA per dropback and 17th in passer rating among qualifying quarterbacks, ranking one spot below Deshaun Watson by the latter metric. While passer rating's a more flawed metric than QBR or EPA per play, Stafford ranking below Watson in any QB metric wasn't supposed to be in the cards in 2026.

Some elements of what Stafford did in 2025 were always going to be difficult to sustain. He threw interceptions on just 1.3% of his pass attempts -- his lowest full-season interception rate as a pro -- with eight picks through 17 games last year. Stafford already has six INTs in six games this time around. While his 2.4% interception rate in 2026 would be on the higher end, it wouldn't in itself be disqualifying; Stafford posted a 2.8% interception rate in his first season with the Rams, when he led the NFL in picks and his new team to a championship.

I don't see any marked change in Stafford's arm strength, which has always been a cornerstone of his success as a pro. Stafford doesn't look compromised as a thrower on a consistent basis in the way that someone such as Peyton Manning was during his final season with the Broncos or Drew Brees was by the time he made it to the postseason in his last season with the Saints. There are throws here and there where Stafford doesn't look like he has the zip of a decade ago, but those plays were present in 2025, too.

Calling on that arm strength for consistently accurate throws, though, has been a concern. Stafford's accuracy wasn't necessarily his calling card as a pro, but his ball placement has grown more scattershot, even on plays where he isn't under duress and operating out of a clean pocket. ESPN tracks a metric called precise pass rate, which measures how often a quarterback delivers throws that hit his target in stride in the torso area. Stafford was 18th in precise pass rate when unpressured in 2025. This season, he's all the way down at 28th. His off-target rate on those throws has fallen from 20th to 25th.

Stafford usually makes up for those misses by creating chunk plays more often than other quarterbacks. Yet here, again, the Rams are struggling. Stafford averaged 15.5 yards per attempt on his deep pass attempts last season, the fifth-best rate in the league. This year, that's down to just 9.7 yards per attempt, which is 25th.

While the Rams didn't have Puka Nacua for a stretch, Stafford's at least partly to blame here. In 2025, his completion percentage over expectation (CPOE) on those deep throws was at plus-5.8%, one of the best marks in the league per NFL Next Gen Stats. This year, his CPOE on deep pass attempts is at minus-8.5% -- a 14.3-percentage point swing. Stafford has already thrown four interceptions on deep shots in 2026 after tossing just one all season in 2025.

Misses can feel like turnovers, and Stafford will look back and rue a critical miss against the Cardinals on Sunday. His only deep pass attempt of the game came in the third quarter, when Nacua torched Max Melton with a double-move. Nobody was within 11 full yards of Nacua by the time the ball arrived, but Stafford was under pressure and took a hit from Josh Sweat and Roy Lopez as the ball was released. What should have been a 65-yard touchdown turned into an incompletion, and the drive ended without points.

Given their playmakers and Stafford's ability to diagnose blitzes and get the ball out to the right spot, defenses should be terrified of blitzing the Rams. A year ago, Stafford ranked sixth in the NFL in QBR against the blitz. This year, with the quarterback perhaps a step slower and the offense not humming at quite the same level, he's 22nd. He was even lower in the ranks (26th) before going 12-of-14 for 123 yards with a touchdown against Arizona's blitzes Sunday.

What made Stafford so appealing to coach Sean McVay as an alternative to Jared Goff was his ability to create outside of structure and produce as a dropback passer when defenses weren't compromised by the play-action game. We've seen a few no-look passes or sidearm throws from Stafford this year, but as plays have gone on, he has generally gotten worse. His 65.7 Total QBR when throwing after four or more seconds was the 12th-best figure in the NFL last season. This year, Stafford has a 2.8 QBR on those throws, which is 31st out of 33 quarterbacks. It's not a huge sample of dropbacks, but Stafford's one of the least mobile quarterbacks in the league, so perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that he's struggling out of structure.

Scrambling under pressure and moving as part of a designed play are two very different things, and the Rams had a lot of success using Stafford on designed bootlegs and nakeds as part of their play-action game a year ago. They're still having success there, but McVay isn't calling them quite as often. The Rams are using those concepts about 30% less often this season, which might be a product of simply wanting to keep Stafford fresh and avoiding potential hits amid a long season. And indeed, Stafford's not getting hit a lot, as he has been contacted at the fifth-lowest rate of any quarterback so far.

It would be wrong to say that Stafford's a completely different passer than the one we saw a year ago. He's just worse across the board. In spots where Stafford was elite, he has been solid. In spots where he was getting by, he has been a mess. Throw in the inability to pick up first downs with his legs and some interception variance, and we get a quarterback who has been far closer to average than special this season.

If you go along with Bo Nix's theory and say that there's really nothing like good or bad quarterback play, you could argue that Stafford's not materially different than the guy we saw during his MVP campaign. He's a foot away from linking up with Nacua on that deep shot, and if the Rams bring that in for a touchdown, they probably win the game. Stafford was still good enough late to lead a touchdown drive that put the Rams up, although the defense then blew the lead.

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Stafford finds Parkinson for a go-ahead Rams TD

At 38, though, the expectation should have been that there was a lower floor for Stafford than what his 2025 play would have suggested. I'd expect the accuracy to bounce back a bit as the year goes along, but Stafford's also more likely to be banged-up later in the season, as well. I'm optimistic that we get something closer to his average performance with the Rams moving forward, which would be a very good quarterback, without necessarily reaching the heights we saw from him a year ago.

Expectation: They have an elite playcaller.

I would argue that McVay bears some blame here, too. The Rams can be frustrated with Stafford's accuracy on throws at all levels, but McVay is the offensive architect, and the Rams have had too many stretches this season where the offense simply hasn't been able to move the ball. After taking a lead against the Broncos, the Rams gained a total of 3 yards across their next four drives combined. They had seven drives with no more than one first down against the Eagles before scoring a pair of late touchdowns to win the game. On Sunday, the Rams had just one of their five first-half drives rack up more than 12 yards. This came against a Cardinals defense that had allowed six touchdowns in a seven-drive span to the Lions the previous week.

The Rams are scoring on only 35% of their possessions, the eighth-worst rate in the league. A year ago, only three teams scored more often on a per-drive basis. In part, that's a product of subpar field position. The Rams' offense is inheriting the fourth-worst average starting field position in the NFL, forcing them to go further for touchdowns than most other offenses. They enjoyed the eighth-best starting field position in 2025.

McVay has to help sustain drives, both by making the right calls on early downs and dialing up the right stuff when the Rams need to move the chains. This is usually where McVay is at his best; I'm not sure any coach in football is better at using motion and leverage in short-yardage situations to create easy, quick passing opportunities for his quarterback. McVay has also used Nacua as a jet sweep option, which slows down opposing pass rushes and gets the ball in the hands of his best offensive playmaker.

I can't say that same thing about the Rams' two fourth-down failures against the Cardinals, where it felt like the legendary architect outthought himself. The first one came on a fourth-and-1 in Cardinals territory, where the Rams might have kicked a field goal if not for Grupe's injury. With three tight ends on the field and an offset I-formation in the backfield, the Rams brought Nacua in motion for a potential jet sweep, but the angle of Nacua's motion made a handoff unlikely, and the Cardinals didn't really seem to budge or widen to account for the motion.

Instead, with one of the best sets of playmakers in football, McVay dialed up a fullback belly handoff for backup tight end Davis Allen. Misdirection's one thing, but it's tough to argue that a handoff to a player taking his first career NFL carry was the best use of McVay's ample resources on offense. The Rams didn't do a great job of blocking the play up, and Allen wasn't able to fall forward to squeeze out the yard the Rams needed. The drive ended without points.

In the final quarter, the Rams initially faced a fourth-and-3 in Cardinals territory, only for right tackle Warren McClendon Jr. to false start. On the fourth-and-8, McVay lined up Nacua, Davante Adams and Tyler Higbee in a stack to the right side of the line. The Cardinals, showing a blitz look at the line of scrimmage, had only two defenders over the three receivers, suggesting they were likely to drop out and play some form of zone coverage.

McVay again tried to use his star receivers as a decoy, running them downfield while dialing up a slip screen to Kyren Williams out of the backfield. And again, the Cardinals were not fooled. Three defenders chased down the Williams screen before the ball even arrived, and when it did, Budda Baker prevented the running back from bringing the ball in cleanly. Williams has been a threat for McVay over the past year on option routes out of the backfield, but a slow-developing screen proved to be the wrong call. The Rams again handed the ball over on downs in Arizona territory.

The Rams picked up 65% of their fourth-down attempts in 2025, as the oft-conservative McVay got more aggressive with one of the league's best offenses. They're at 50% so far this season, which isn't a massive drop-off over a 10-play sample, but those failures might be the difference between scoring seven or scoring zero, as the Rams did on both those drives.

McVay has done plenty to earn the benefit of the doubt as a playcaller and architect, and these plays against Arizona aren't necessarily representative of what I would expect from him on a weekly basis on fourth down. But the Rams have a much smaller margin for error than they did a year ago. Nacua hasn't been as dominant (or available) as he was for most of last season. And the counterpunch McVay had last season hasn't been quite as painful for opposing defenses ...

Expectation: The Rams would continue to pace the league in 13 personnel.

One of McVay's most exciting and surprising schematic choices of 2025 was borne out of necessity. With Nacua injured for a London game against the Jaguars, McVay abandoned the 11 personnel groupings he had used for the vast, vast majority of the offensive snaps in Los Angeles and leaned heavily into 13 personnel, getting three tight ends on the field. The gambit worked, and even after Nacua returned, the Rams made 13 personnel a focal point of their offense.

While anyone can line up three tight ends on the field, what made it work for the Rams -- as I wrote about over the offseason -- is that they remained incredibly efficient while working out of those groupings. The Rams generated 0.22 EPA per play out of 13 personnel, which was light years ahead of the rest of the league (minus-0.01 EPA per play) and better than their league-best 0.14 EPA per play figure out of all personnel groupings.

The Rams have scaled back their 13 personnel usage this year, using it 30% of the time after they were up over 40% following the Nacua injury in 2025. Terrance Ferguson, who was often used as the vertical "move" tight end to stretch teams that responded with base defense, got hurt against the Broncos and is on injured reserve. Colby Parkinson, who caught what looked like the game-winning touchdown against the Cardinals on Sunday, missed the win over the Eagles. Second-round pick Max Klare has played just one snap on offense.

More concerningly, when the Rams have gone into 13 personnel, it just hasn't been as effective this season. They're averaging 0.03 EPA per play using 13 personnel this season, which is solid, but only good for 13th in the league and just a little bit better than the league-average EPA on any given snap. Teams are still responding to these groupings with their base defenses, which is what McVay is hoping to see, but the Rams haven't been able to exploit those looks with big plays. Stafford turned nearly 47% of his throws out of 13 personnel into first downs or touchdowns last season. This year, that's down below 39%, which is essentially league-average.

I would like to reevaluate the 13 personnel groupings once Ferguson returns from injured reserve, which could be as early as the Week 8 game against the Chargers. Given just how dominant the Rams were out of 13 last year, though, some regression toward the mean was only realistic. There's a reason McVay stuck with 11 personnel for the majority of his first decade with the Rams, and the best version of this offense is likely one with Nacua and Adams on the field at the same time, something that can't happen with three tight ends in the lineup.

Expectation: The Rams would have an incredibly efficient run game.

Want some good news? Let's go to the ground game, where Williams and Blake Corum are coming off a spectacular 2025 campaign. Last year, 50.2% of designed runs by Rams players were successful in terms of generating positive EPA, suggesting that they were either keeping the offense on schedule, moving the chains or scoring touchdowns. That was the best mark in the NFL by nearly four full percentage points and the second-best mark of the past decade (trailing only the 2018 Rams, who were at 51.2%).

It would be unrealistic to expect them to keep that up in 2026, and they haven't. But they aren't far off. The Rams have been successful on more than 48% of their designed runs so far this season, which has kept their rushing attack atop the success rate leaderboard. That includes a 10-for-19 performance from Williams and Corum on Sunday, with Allen's lone failure on the aforementioned fourth-down stuff leaving them 10-for-20 overall.

What hasn't been around, though, are big plays. The Rams are making steady gains, and Corum had a long catch-and-run as a receiver against the Bills, but the run game generated just two gains of 10 or more yards against the Cardinals. Last season, the Rams turned more than 12% of their designed runs into 10-plus-yard gains, the third-best rate in the league. This year, that's down to 9.7%, which is 15th. That's about three missing 10-plus-yard runs so far this season.

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Stafford, Corum link up for a Rams TD

The Rams have just one run over 20 yards across six games, a 30-yard Williams burst against the Broncos. A year ago, they finished the regular season with 11 of those rushes. Explosive runs can be tough to sustain year after year, especially without a quarterback who can contribute by scrambling or changing the math in the run game, but it's a surprise that the Rams haven't been able to create more of those big ground gains this season. I would expect a few more in the weeks to come, especially given that the success rate has stayed so healthy.

Expectation: The Rams would have a devastating pass rush without needing to blitz.

The biggest disparity between what the 2026 Rams were supposed to be and what they've been through six weeks, though, lies with the defense. Before the year, it was fair to wonder if the Rams had built one of the best defensive lines we've ever seen. In addition to Garrett and Donald, the Rams could call on a trio of young stars in Braden Fiske, Kobie Turner and Byron Young, who combined for 22 sacks in 2025. There was even depth in reserve with guys like Josaiah Stewart and Poona Ford. Offensive lines simply weren't going to know which defenders to block.

Yet after six games, the Rams have eight sacks. Not per game. Total. That's tied with the Chiefs for the second-lowest cumulative total in the league. The Rams are 27th in sack rate. Built to terrorize opposing quarterbacks, they have instead been one of the least productive pass rushes in the NFL.

On Sunday, they failed to sack Jacoby Brissett on 35 dropbacks, which is just the fourth time across 47 starts in Brissett's career that he has dropped back 30-plus times and finished the game without being sacked. The lack of negative plays helped propel and sustain the Cardinals offense, which held the ball for just under 35 minutes and ran five drives with eight or more plays.

Some of the disconnect, obviously, has been about availability. Garrett came into the season with a knee issue, labored through the Week 1 loss to the 49ers and hit injured reserve after returning from Australia. He hasn't played since. Donald didn't play in the opener and then missed the win over the Eagles with a back issue. He looks, perhaps unsurprisingly, like a great player who hasn't played competitive football in three years.

It also seems fair to point out that the young guys haven't been able to build on their success. Young has 3.5 sacks and eight quarterback knockdowns, but the interior duo of Fiske and Turner has yet to rack up a sack, and the two have combined for six knockdowns in six games. We'd expect to see more production from such a talented group of young defenders, even without Garrett (or Jared Verse, who was traded to acquire the future Hall of Famer) in the mix.

Looking under the hood and watching the Rams on tape, though, there's a disconnect between the pass-rush performance and the sack totals. Defensive coordinator Chris Shula is blitzing at about a league-average rate, which is more than I would have expected for a unit with this sort of talent up front, but the Rams are getting more pressure than their sack totals would suggest.

A lot more pressure, actually. Through six games, the Rams have the sixth-highest pressure rate of any defense, getting after quarterbacks on nearly 41% of opposing dropbacks. Pressure rates can sometimes be misleading if those pressures are coming late into snaps as QBs are about to release the ball, but the Rams also rank sixth in the league in quick pressure rate.

The Rams are creating pressure, but they're not finishing. The average team turns about 17% of their pressures into sacks. The Rams are coming in just under 10% so far this season, which is the second-worst figure in the league. Only the Dolphins are worse. To make things worse, while the average team converts about 13% of their unblocked pressures into sacks, the Rams have just one sack on 20 unblocked pressures so far this season for just a 5% clip.

A year ago, a Rams defense with many of the same players converted just under 18% of their pressures into sacks, so this isn't some problem with personnel. They also have two of the best finishers of the past couple of decades on the roster in Donald and Garrett, who should help the Rams convert those pressures into sacks more often as the season goes along. If there's any place for significant regression toward the mean leading to massive improvement, it's here, both because of the personnel and how unlucky the Rams have been with finishing sacks so far.

As a reflection of what that pressure might mean, the Rams have actually been pretty good on defense in key situations this season. They've stopped third-down conversions at the seventh-best rate, which would be an unlikely feat for a team that has one of the league's lowest sack rates if it weren't for those pressure numbers. They've allowed only two fourth-down conversions in six tries. They've also held teams to scoring touchdowns just 50% of the time in the red zone, which also ranks seventh.

The Rams do have a weakness, but it's the same one we would have expected heading into the year. Linebacker is an obvious concern for this team, with Nate Landman and Omar Speights leading the way at a position the Rams don't typically value at a high level. They play dime at the highest rate in the NFL, which adds to their team speed and takes Speights off the field, but Landman can be exposed in the open field.

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Quentin Lake picks off Jacoby Brissett

The Bills targeted and torched Landman (who did have two forced fumbles in the game) with Josh Allen scrambles, plays where Landman couldn't even get close enough to the star quarterback to attempt a tackle, let alone miss one. The Rams are allowing a league-high 13.4 yards per scramble this season, and while much of that was Allen, both Brock Purdy and Jalen Hurts had big scrambles against the Rams.

Expectation: The special teams would be better (because they couldn't be worse).

Uh-oh. Last year, the Rams ranked 26th in special teams DVOA. The Rams lost to the Eagles on a blocked field goal, missed kicks in the loss to the 49ers and allowed a punt return touchdown to help fuel Seattle's fourth-quarter comeback in the game that ended up deciding the top seed in the NFC. A blocked punt then handed the Panthers a short field for a fourth-quarter lead in the wild-card round, and while the Rams were able to overcome that with a late score, Xavier Smith's muffed punt in the NFC title game handed the Seahawks a short field and an easy touchdown in what would eventually be a four-point Rams loss.

Things were supposed to be better this season. The Rams swapped out Joshua Karty at midseason in 2025 for Harrison Mevis, who went 18-for-19 on field goals and 48-for-48 on extra points after taking over at place-kicker. Special-teamer Grant Stuard was brought in from Detroit to help on coverage units. And after firing coordinator Chase Blackburn in-season a year ago, the Rams replaced him with Bubba Ventrone.

Those moves haven't aged well. Ventrone had just left the Browns, who had fielded the league's 32nd-ranked special teams by DVOA in 2025. And through five weeks, as you can probably already guess, the Rams ranked ... 32nd in special teams DVOA. They endured a disastrous game against the Bills, with Mevis missing a 50-yard kick and having a 48-yarder that would have won the game in overtime blocked. I'd argue that McVay bore some responsibility for putting the offense in power-saving mode after it had marched down the field, but the coach also suggested that Mevis' kick would have missed if it hadn't been blocked, which might have been part of the reason why the Rams cut Mevis after the loss.

The Rams don't do anything well on special teams. Grupe suffered what appeared to be a serious injury in his team debut, which will likely send the Rams back out onto the kicker market. Mevis had gone just 5-for-9 on kicks before his departure. They land punts inside the 20-yard line at one of the lowest rates in the league. They're one of just three teams without a punt return of 25 yards or a kick return of 35 yards this season, too.

While we don't yet have special teams DVOA for Week 6, the Rams aren't going to rise very far. This has been a blind spot for them for quite a while now; they ranked 19th in 2024, 32nd in 2023 and 23rd in 2022. It should be telling that the only time they've fielded an above-average special teams unit in recent memory was during the 2021 season, when they ranked fourth in special teams DVOA and just happened to win the Super Bowl.

Expectation: The Rams would win the Super Bowl.

There's no need to pretend. Outside of the decision to use a first-round pick on quarterback Ty Simpson as Stafford's long-term successor, the Rams conducted this offseason like they were all-in to win the Super Bowl. They traded their other first-round pick for McDuffie, flirted with the idea of a move for A.J. Brown and then sent a massive haul to the Browns to acquire Garrett. Making those deals coaxed Donald out of retirement. This was already a team with Super Bowl aspirations on an annual basis, but the offseason reinforced that general manager Les Snead and the front office saw this as a team that needed one final push to get over the hump before Stafford (and potentially McVay) ride off into the sunset.

Six weeks later, the Rams are 2-4. With the 49ers getting off to a 5-0 start and holding a tiebreaker, the Rams chances have dropped precipitously. ESPN's Football Power Index gave the Rams a 13.4% chance of winning the Super Bowl before the season, second only to the Seahawks. That figure has dropped to 1.8%, which is 15th in the league and not far off from the Panthers at 1.4%.

Los Angeles' 83.1% chance of making the playoffs before the year was also second; now, FPI thinks the Rams have a 35.3% chance of making it into the postseason. They have less than a 1% chance of winning the NFC West, which would push the Rams into the wild-card picture and force them to win at least two games on the road before making it back to a potential Super Bowl at their home stadium.

The good news for the Rams is that the schedule does get relatively easier over the next few weeks before their Week 11 bye. Three of their next four matchups are on the road, but those games come against the Raiders, Chargers, Commanders and Cardinals. Of course, the Cardinals just beat the Rams at home, so writing them (or any of these other teams) off as subpar competition feels a little foolish. At the very least, the Rams won't be overmatched by superior talent in the weeks to come, though.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Rams righted the ship. Things aren't that bad on offense, and the defense's sack rate is going to rise. They've recovered just four of 13 fumbles in their games, and they're unlikely to recover fumbles at a 30% clip from here on out. They're 1-3 in one-score games and not too far off from starting 5-1, with the blowout loss to the 49ers in the opener as their only comprehensive defeat.

Players and teams react to unmet expectations in funny ways, though. Do we see the Rams start pressing on offense, if they aren't already, to create big plays? Does the defense start blitzing more to create pressure, leaving the secondary more vulnerable? Does McVay go back to his conservative roots and kick more often on fourth-and-short? I'm not sure the Rams need to change as much as they need to get Garrett healthy and have their explosive run rate and pressure-to-sack ratio move back toward the mean.

By the time L.A. gets there, though, the damage might already be done. We saw how difficult it was for even a great Rams team to make it through the NFC as a wild card last season, where they needed to survive close calls with the Panthers and Bears before being knocked out in Seattle. And that team started 9-2 before ceding the division to the Seahawks.

At 2-4, the Rams aren't out of the hunt, but the idea that this team was going to run over the league on its way to a title is out the window. And if the Rams don't make a meaningful step forward with a winning streak before their Week 11 bye, the expectation that this team was a lock to make it to the postseason is going to suffer the same fate.