Heading into their bye-week, the Los Angeles Rams have finally found some success after winning two straight games to move to 5-3 on the year. With an extended amount of time to think back on what has gone right and wrong halfway through the season, hopefully, they can continue that success from here on out.
Rams star running back Todd Gurley took some time during his week off to visit the set of ESPN’s “The Jump” and talk about football and basketball. Gurley believes that the team is still on the road to success, but does acknowledge that they dropped some games they should not have.
When asked about making it to the Super Bowl, Gurley stated that the team is focusing only on themselves and their matchup week in and week out, via ESPN The Jump’s Youtube page:
Right now we’re just trying to focus on week-by-week. [We] definitely lost a bunch of games we shouldn’t have lost, and they were NFC games. We found a good pace [for] 1-2 games, heading into the bye week. [We] got Pittsburgh, in Pittsburgh, [I] haven’t been to Heinz Field, so I’m super excited to go up there. No one remembers who wins the first eight games, it’s all about at the end of the season. You know how it goes. You just have to keep pulling away and then find rhythm at the last minute. Last year we lost two games back to back in December and still ended up making it to the Super Bowl, we just got to find our way.”
Gurley’s attitude will hopefully allow the Rams to execute better moving forward. As he mentioned, they have found some footing their last few games and that will hopefully carry over to their matchup with the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 10.
Before the Rams beat the Atlanta Falcons and Cincinnati Bengals going into the bye, they suffered the first three-game losing streak in the Sean McVay era, falling to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers.
Hopefully, those NFC losses do not come back to bite the team in the playoff hunt. If the season were to end today then
the Rams would on the outside looking into the playoff picture.
There is still a lot of season to go though, of course, and getting Gurley going on the ground could be a big key to success moving forward.
So far this season, Gurley has failed to run for over 100 yards and has only played in roughly 64% of offensive snaps. Last year through 7 games, he had ran for over 100 yards three times and played in 83% of offensive snaps. Although the Rams have been adamant that arthritis in his left knee is not affecting Gurley, it is hard to argue with the stats. It will be interesting to see if the lighter workload means he is more fresh to close out the season though.
