It wasn’t the start the Los Angeles Rams and their fans were expecting when they were embarrassed by the Buffalo Bills at home.
The Rams were able to keep pace with the Bills in the first half before getting thoroughly outplayed in all three phases in the second half. Josh Allen had his way with Los Angeles’ defense, connecting with his receivers or running the ball himself for chunk gains.
Jalen Ramsey was on the unfortunate end of several big plays, and he summed up his and the team’s performance, via Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic:
Cornerback Jalen Ramsey put it succinctly: “We got our ass beat, straight-up.”
Ramsey then went into detail about how the Bills were able to dissect the defense throughout the night:
“They were really attacking our little zones, like our soft spots in our zones,” Ramsey said. “Obviously we’ve gotta watch the film, but I’m sure we all would’ve liked to play man a little bit more. I feel like we kind of had a mentality like, ‘bend, don’t break’ a lot, because they were driving the ball but they weren’t scoring, like, we were getting turnovers, interceptions, whatever it was.”
Then, Ramsey said what I think was the most illuminating piece of this matchup: “We felt like they weren’t going to be patient enough to do that the whole game, just take those five yards, three yards, four yards, right? But they were, for the most part,” he said, “(and) then they had … two or three explosives that ended up turning into touchdowns, and that was like, the difference. They won by three touchdowns.”
Los Angeles’ defense takes a “bend, don’t break” mentality during games, but Buffalo was able to remain patient and picked their spots to strike. Hopefully this is a lesson for Ramsey and the Rams who should look much better in Week 2 against the Atlanta Falcons.
