The first preseason game is never smooth for teams, and that was especially true in the Los Angeles Rams’ loss to the Los Angeles Chargers.
With so many new faces and young players to integrate, the Rams had their fair share of rough moments in every phase of the game. Sean McVay and the coaching staff shouldn’t have been too shocked as everyone in the organization understands that grooming this team will be a process.
When discussing the game against the Chargers, McVay emphasized that Los Angeles can take away several lessons from it.
“A lot of things that we can learn from, a lot of young guys getting their feet wet for the first time. That’s exactly what we expected. I thought there was some positives. I thought there were some things that are very correctable that we can clean up, but when you got that many new things and really there’s a good chance for us to be able to get our ducks in a row as far as our operation on game day and just some of the different things that come up. We’ll look at the film, we’ll clean it up and we’ll continue to keep it moving.”
The Rams got off to a slow start in the first half, particularly offensively when they weren’t able to stay on schedule. However, McVay believes that they found some of their rhythm in the second half and were able to build off of it.
“I think we were able to get some early success and you’re able to kind of just be able to get some momentum on some early downs. It feels like when you’re not converting on those third downs and then they were able to sustain some pretty good long possessions on two of their first three drives. Just felt like the offense was kind of…you’re sitting there and they’ve got almost 30 plays and you’re sitting there, you don’t even have ten yet. It was hard to really get into a rhythm because of some of the third down stops that they had. They did a good job. They brought a couple different pressures, [head coach] Brandon [Staley] always does a nice job with some designers. Then we missed a couple pickups with our young guys towards the end of the game that we can certainly learn from.
“I did think that when we were able to settle in, string together a couple plays, they were able to get some removal and it was a good balance. I thought [offensive coordinator] Mike [LaFleur] did a nice job of being able to kind of balance it up and got a little bit tilted towards the pass at the end when we went behind. There were definitely some good things to take away.”
It wasn’t the start that McVay or fans wanted, so exercising patience could be a valuable tool for the upcoming season.
The organization has a lot of young players that still have a lot to learn, so this preseason will be more important for L.A. compared to years past. Regardless though, it was good to see young guys like Stetson Bennett, Puka Nacua and Byron Young show flashes of what they’re capable of in their respective NFL debuts.
