The Los Angeles Rams began the easy part of their schedule in Week 6, going on the road to take on the New York Giants and coming away with a convincing 38-11 victory.
Look, there’s no reason to get super excited about this win since the Giants were without a number of key players and already weren’t that good to begin with.
The Rams went out and did what any good team would have, completely sucking the life out of the Giants with 28 unanswered points in the second quarter.
Regardless though, 5-1 isn’t a bad spot for the Rams to be right now, especially when considering that they have yet to play their best football.
They turned it on and beat the Giants with one good quarter, which while impressive, was a bit of a concern for Sean McVay since the offense started slow once again. So that is where I’ll start with my weekly observations and analysis.
Defense helped out offense
So typically in a 38-11 game, one team dominates from start to finish. That wasn’t the case in this one though.
The Giants opened up with a field goal on their opening drive, and then the Rams’ first two drives stalled when Matthew Stafford was sacked on third down in each of them. L.A. finished the first quarter trailing 3-0 and wasn’t able to build any momentum.
The Rams finally got going early in the second quarter with their first touchdown drive to take a 7-3 lead. It was all Rams defense from there though as they proceeded to come up with a sack-fumble of Daniel Jones deep in his own territory to set the offense up in the red zone.
After they converted with another touchdown, the Rams again came up with another turnover to set the offense up in the red zone, this time on an interception.
In the span of minutes, the Rams went from trailing 3-0 to leading 21-3, tacking on another touchdown before the end of the half to make it 28-3.
While it was good to see the Rams offense get going eventually, it was really their defense that started it with the key turnovers. Considering the Rams defense has not lived up to expectations so far this season, it was great to see them come up with a dominant performance for a change. They were getting pressure on Jones all day long.
More Stafford to Kupp magic
This has been something worth bringing up basically on a weekly basis, but Stafford and Cooper Kupp were at it again with their magic. Stafford found Kupp for the second of two touchdowns early in the fourth quarter and he did so with a beautiful no-look pass to throw off the defense:
This no-look pass from Stafford 🤌
Up next: Lions at Rams 📺 @NFLonFOX pic.twitter.com/TuU8QBmoQg
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) October 18, 2021
Kupp finished the game with nine receptions on 12 targets for 130 yards and two touchdowns. Through six games, Kupp is tied for the league-lead in receptions (46) while ranking second in receiving yards (653) and first in touchdown catches (seven).
Rapp silences critics
After the Rams win over the Seattle Seahawks last week, many questioned the play of safety Taylor Rapp, who seemed to be getting picked on by opposing quarterbacks early in the season.
Many people, including myself, called for Terrell Burgess to get some time at safety in Rapp’s place.
Well…Rapp shut all of us up in Week 6.
The safety not only finished with five total tackles and three passes defensed, but he also had two interceptions.
Obviously interceptions are great and helped the Rams out a lot, but the main positive of Rapp’s game is that he put these great plays on film, which may make teams think twice before going right at him the way they have in the past.
I’d still like to see Burgess get playing time at some point, but Rapp had a great game that he can hopefully build off of.
Up next for Rams…
Week 7 is a big one for the Rams as they welcome the Detroit Lions to town, which marks the homecoming of Jared Goff as well as Stafford’s first game against his former team.
The Rams should be able to take care of business on the field as the Lions are 0-6 and Goff hasn’t been playing well, already being criticized publically by head coach Dan Campbell. It will be interesting to see what type of reception the former Rams quarterback receives at SoFi Stadium though.
