Rams fall short against Packers

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – The Los Angeles Rams had an opportunity to win out their Week 5 matchup against the Green Bay Packers. After struggling to put points on the board for the first three quarters, the Rams’ offense seemed energized in the final period. 

The offensive unit of the Rams scored just six points in periods one through three. In the fourth quarter, the Rams sliced a once double-digit deficit into a one-score game. With minutes left in the game, the Rams defense held. 

Now it was up to quarterback Matthew Stafford and the Rams offense to possibly win the game outright in their final drive. It didn’t happen. After converting one fourth down on their drive, the Rams needed to convert another one to keep the series alive and give themselves a chance to record win No. 2 on the season.  

Those aspirations went up in flames after a Stafford pass aimlessly landed on the turf field at Sofi Stadium. With that, the Rams dropped their fourth game of the year, a 24-19 decision to the visiting Packers. 

“This one hurts because our guys… there were a lot of opportunities that we had,” McVay said after the game. “I thought our defense came out, played really well [and] did a great job on third downs. They had a couple explosives, but for the most part we were excellent. [I] hate it for us that we had the substitution error that extended a drive. That’s on us as coaches. We’ve to be better and we gave ourselves a chance.” 

The desperation of getting that second victory of the season was no better illustrated in the second quarter of the team’s NFC matchup against the visiting Packers. 

The Packers had already staked themselves to a fast start, getting a jump on the Rams thanks to a short touchdown run by Josh Jacobs. 

The Rams and McVay went ahead and called to go for it twice and were able to covert both plays. The risky gamble would eventually lead to the Rams cashing in after Kyren Williams ran into the endzone on a short touchdown run. 

The Rams would get another big lift moment when safety Jaylen McCullough picked off a Jordan Love errant pass and took it to the house for a 4-yard touchdown, giving Los Angeles a score advantage. 

That might have been the highlight of the day for the Rams as the third quarter turned into something of a nightmare for the team.  

The Rams turned the ball over twice on back-to-back series in the period. Both times, the Packers made them pay for it. A fumble by running back Kyren Williams indirectly led to a 66-yard touchdown pass from Love to tight end Tucker Kraft. 

The Rams’ defense didn’t have too much time to catch their breaths and had to get back on the field quickly when a Stafford pass landed in the hands of Xavier McKinney for an interception. Green Bay drove down the field. 

Kraft then caught his second touchdown pass of the day – a 7-yard scoring toss from Love to give the Packer a double-digit lead. 

“I do like the fight of this group,” said McVay. “This doesn’t feel good right now being in this situation, but what our guys will do [is] we’ll come in, we’ll look at the film [and] they’ll get a couple days off. We’ll look at this as coaches and figure out, alright, how do we reset ourselves? How do we make sure that we do a better job? This was a tough one because I thought we had a good week of preparation [and] there were a lot of positives.

The most disheartening aspect of the defeat or encouragement moving forward for the Rams is that this was their third one-score game in which they have lost. By the numbers, the Rams did enough on offense to win the ballgame. 

The Rams had more first downs (24-19), were better on third down efficiency (8 of 16 compared to 1 of 8), had more offensive plays (76-58), and had more total yards (370 to 323). Stafford said the one-score games come down to making plays. 

“They come down to that at the end of the game,” Stafford said. “There are a bunch of plays within the game that could make better situations for ourselves. When we have the opportunities late in games, try to find ways to win it. It was a great fight today. I thought our defense did a great job stepping up in the second half, made some plays to get us chances to get the ball back late in the game. We just didn’t do quite enough with it.”