The Los Angeles Rams suffered their most disappointing loss of the season in Week 9 as they were unable to hold onto a late lead and fell to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 16-13.
It was an ugly game with both offenses not being able to do much for a lot of the day. With the Rams leading 13-9 in the fourth quarter, their offense was unable to get a single first down to move the chains and bleed out the clock to earn the victory.
That put a lot of pressure on the Rams’ defense, who thought they did enough to earn the win. L.A. came up with a big fourth down stop in the red zone late to give the ball back to the offense with less than two minutes to play.
One first down would’ve iced the game, but instead, the Rams again went three-and-out. That allowed Tom Brady to get the ball back on his own 40-yard line with 44 seconds to play. He drove his team right now the field for the game-winning touchdown as the Rams’ defense could not get the final stop it needed.
Even though the defense was on the field last, it was the Rams’ offense that cost them this game and Jalen Ramsey had no problem calling them out after, via Kevin Patra of NFL.com:
“The defense should not have had to go back on the field. Simple,” Ramsey said bluntly. “Gotta have some dogs who are gonna go get it. We shouldn’t come to the sideline after a big stop like that and our coaches or the other side or whoever telling us, ‘We gonna to need y’all one more time. We gonna to need y’all one more time.’ Like what the f—? We just made a big stop, turnover on downs, with a minute and some change left and no timeouts for nobody.
“Gotta have some dogs who are like, man, f— all that, we are going to end this game right now. Good stop. We are going to end the game for y’all. We gotta play off each other in that sense. You know what I mean? That’s what I mean by we should not have had to go out there. It is what it is. It ain’t the first time that this has happened. This has happened multiple times this year, really. S—.”
While it’s never ideal when a player calls out his teammates publically after a loss, there is a lot of truth in what Ramsey is saying.
The Rams’ offense has struggled all year, constantly putting pressure on Ramsey and the defense to be perfect. Against the Buccaneers, they were able to do that and the result was a rough loss to fall to 3-5.
The question now is where do the Rams go from here? Does Ramsey’s comments make them come together and improve as whole, or does it fracture the locker room and pave the way for the losses to continue piling up? Only time will tell, but something will need to change quick if this team wants to get back into playoff contention.
