Article body analysed
NFL NFL Week 15 For a second straight week, the Rams put up over 500 yards of offense, this time as they defeated the Lions 41-34. Wally Skalij / Getty Images INGLEWOOD, Calif. — For a second time in three weeks, the Los Angeles Rams faced a hole borne of their own aggressiveness. Down seven points to the Detroit Lions after a Matthew Stafford interception, the offense faced a fourth-and-4 in enemy territory, and coach Sean Mc Vay wanted to go for it. So Stafford dropped back and looked for the player the Lions had circled all week long. Puka Nacua ran a route against a masked coverage — showing man, running Cover 2 — before he settled into the zone, snared the ball, took a hit and fell forward for the first down. Advertisement Four plays later, they faced a bigger hole on fourth-and-8. And, again, Mc Vay wanted to go for it. So Stafford dropped back and looked to the same player. This time, Nacua saw tight coverage with safety help but caught the pass and barreled forward for the first down. After a shaky start, these were the plays that inspired a 41-34 win over the Lions at So Fi Stadium by returning the Rams to their 2025 baseline. It’s how they remember who they are. “You can’t stop us. You can’t stop us, ” running back Kyren Williams said. “You know where the ball is going, and you still can’t stop us. For me, it’s so cool being out there on the field with great guys like Puka and Davante (Adams) and all the tight ends and all the offensive linemen. It’s fourth down , and they think that they’ve got us, and we get the first down. “To me, that feeling is, ‘Ha, ha, ha. You can’t stop us. '” A second straight week with 40-plus points and 500-plus yards has the Rams believing and talking this way. The opponent has become faceless, the moments insignificant, until they reach a greater goal. That’s why, in the moments following a victory over another playoff contender to clinch a postseason berth at 11-3, the locker room was void of pomp and circumstance. A dropped pin could be heard as players stretched out on blue massage sofas, readying their bodies for a four-day turnaround before the game that could define their season with a road trip to play the Seahawks in Seattle on Thursday. They never discussed clinching the playoffs as a goal this week. Like converting a fourth-and-8, that’s just become an expectation for who they are and how they’re doing all of this. “Now you have firsthand knowledge of what probably the top of the NFC looks like right now. That’s them, ” Lions coach Dan Campbell said after the game. “Now we know what it looks like. ” Advertisement And he would know, considering he coached the NFC’s No. 1 seed on a 15-2 team just one year ago. It’s not to say the Rams don’t have a flaw, because it showed up Sunday, too. It’s in the secondary, where star safety Quentin Lake is on injured reserve and the league’s lowest-paid defense can’t disguise its coverages the same way. Former top outside cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon was a healthy scratch, and young players such as Josh Wallace and Emmanuel Forbes Jr. can get caught on islands against established stars like Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams. Both of those players went for over 130 receiving yards, allowing Jared Goff to put all the pressure on the franchise that traded him away in 2021 by building a 24-14 lead less than a minute before halftime. But with the special teams issues in the rearview mirror for now, after the moves to Harrison Mevis at kicker and Jake Mc Quaide at long snapper, that coverage flaw is looking like the only one they have at the moment. It’s not insignificant in a passing league, but the Rams hope they can manage and mask it with their other strengths until Lake’s return for the postseason. And Sunday was the latest example of how to do that. They have an offense that can’t be stopped much at the moment, but only slowed by turnovers. The same way that the Carolina Panthers pulled out a 31-28 win with three turnovers on Stafford two weeks ago, Detroit rode that formula early when Aidan Hutchinson stepped in front of a screen, intercepted Stafford and took it 58 yards to set up an early Lions touchdown for a 7-0 lead. “It looked like he was the primary receiver on the damn play, ” Stafford said. “He made me look silly in space. ” But all the Rams need right now is a minute to correct themselves through the air, or a game within reach to put away on the ground. Advertisement Take their final possession of the first half. The Rams were down 24-14 with just 30 seconds remaining and the ball at their own 34. Stafford’s message in the huddle was calm and clear. “I told the guys, ‘Let’s go steal three points and see what happens, '” Stafford said. So he threw a quick pass to Williams for 10 yards to get the drive started. Then he launched the ball over D. J. Reed’s head to Nacua on a fade route along the right sideline for a 37-yard gain, and Mevis drilled the field goal to pull the deficit within a score. They challenged a Lions team that’s scratching and clawing for a third straight playoff berth to a shootout on Sunday. And even with so much that went wrong early, the belief sat in them after those fourth-down conversions by Nacua to score their first touchdown. Between him, a quarterback pushing for his first MVP trophy and the league’s leader in touchdown catches in Davante Adams, they believe they can score with any time left now that they have a reliable kicker in Mevis, who can hit from distance. But it’s also an offense that can grind a game out, as the Rams needed to in the second half. After they took a 27-24 lead following a Stafford deep ball to Colby Parkinson for a 26-yard touchdown, a Rams defense that looked helpless and focused solely on the run in the first half came alive in the way it’s built, through the pass rush. The defense forced three straight three-and-outs to begin the second half, and a tired Lions defense living with three linebackers in base defense kept taking the field against a Rams offense that was no longer trying to move so fast. Williams and Blake Corum kept trading drives and swapping styles, from Williams’ hard runs into the teeth of those linebackers to Corum’s cuts from inside to the edges. They combined for near-perfect balance — Williams finished with 78 yards and two touchdowns on 15 carries as Corum added 71 yards and one touchdown on 11 carries — until Los Angeles built a 34-24 lead heading into the fourth quarter. Advertisement And even when the Lions mounted a drive to pull within a touchdown with 2: 42 remaining, the Rams didn’t have to panic. They went back to the ground game to pick up a first down and drained the clock until they were punting to Detroit with just 20 seconds left and the game realistically in hand. “Your ego pretty much dies when that happens. Your ‘want to’ dies to play football, ” Rams left tackle Alaric Jackson said of the defense. “That’s always a lineman’s dream. ” The win didn’t come without its costs. Adams broke open deep for a potential dagger shot in the fourth quarter before his hamstring gave out, and soon he was in the locker room with a diagnosis that doesn’t sound promising with the game of the season on deck Thursday. But for a game against another playoff contender, the Rams showed they can win a shootout without just spamming the ball to Adams from inside the 10-yard line. They found three touchdowns from the running backs and added two more to Parkinson off play action. They let Nacua be the engine he was early in the season, with nine catches for 181 yards, including those two fourth-down conversions to restore the faith. Along the way, they set the bar in the NFC, at least in an opposing coach’s mind. But as Mc Vay reminds them after every game, humility is just a day away. For as much as they’ve accomplished with the league’s best offense this season, a loss in Seattle could make it feel like a disappointment with the potential to fall to the NFC’s fifth or sixth seed if they can’t win the division. But they don’t fear a road game or brutal weather. That’s the benefit of becoming balanced, of having too many stars to defend, of in-game adjustments on defense, and the fortitude to celebrate a playoff berth not with champagne or blaring music but with massage chairs and a laser focus on the next game. Nate Atkins is a Senior Writer for The Athletic covering the Los Angeles Rams. Prior to joining The Athletic, he covered the Indianapolis Colts for the Indianapolis Star, the Detroit Lions for MLive Media Group and the Chicago Bears for Pro Football Weekly. A graduate of the University of Missouri, he was recognized as one of the nation's top-10 beat reporters by the Associated Press Sports Editors in 2023 and 2024, including a No. 1 overall finish in 2023. He grew up in Northeast Ohio, just 50 miles away from Le Bron James.