Rams fans were screaming at their TVs and on social media Monday night as they watched Sean McVay refuse to run the ball despite the Bengals struggling to stop the run in the first two weeks. Kyren Williams only carried it 10 times, with one of those rush attempts coming in the final minutes when the Rams were out of timeouts – another point of frustration for fans.
McVay is often quick to abandon the run if it isn’t working, so this was nothing new. But situationally, fans and analysts were surprised by how little he utilized his ground game against a statistically poor run defense.
Buy Rams TicketsOffensive coordinator Mike LaFleur gave his take on the matter Wednesday, explaining why the Rams didn’t run it as much as some people hoped they would. It had to do with what Bengals defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo was showing the Rams, lining up to prevent Los Angeles from running it.
So, as LaFleur put it, the Rams weren’t going to just bang their head against the wall by running into stacked fronts.
“What we’re always going to want to do is still to help our pass protection out, still continue to get a run game going, not abandon the run in the fourth quarter and that’s something you always want to do,” LaFleur said. “The thing about what Lou does in Cincinnati is they don’t allow you at times. You want to stay balanced, but if they’re telling you you’re not running the ball here, you’re not running the ball here based on the pump block-type pressures that they’re bringing in those situations. So there was a lot of runs called that unfortunately had to get checked out of it into some passes and some of the results were good and some of them weren’t as good. So again, you always want to stay balanced, but you’re also not going to just go beat your head against the wall if they’re saying you’re not going to do it.”
The Rams have been reluctant to run into loaded boxes all season, trying to play the number’s game when they do hand the ball off. Kyren Williams is one of two running backs in the NFL who haven’t yet faced a box with eight-plus defenders, so the Rams aren’t trying to just run him into a wall of linebackers and defensive linemen. It may not be the answer fans were looking for, but it does make some sense.
