Los Angeles Rams vs. Baltimore Ravens Preview & Prediction | PFF

Los Angeles Rams vs. Baltimore Ravens Preview & Prediction | PFF

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With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world’s largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of five for live sessions based on over 1.7 million client reviews. This World Mental Health Day, we are collaborating with those therapists who have helped millions of people take a step forward. If you’re ready to find the right therapist for you, BetterHelp can help you start that journey. Our listeners get 10% off of their first month at betterhelp.com/pf. That’s betterhelp hp.com/pf. So, the Rams are traveling to Baltimore to take on the Baltimore Ravens in the next game here. And dude, the Ravens schedule before the by-week, brutal. They Okay, think of what this schedule would have looked like preseason. Okay, you start the season at Buffalo and then you go against the Cleveland Browns, which okay, like the Browns, they were probably always going to beat the Browns even with the defense obviously playing as well as is this year and they they they won that game. But then they played the Lions, the Chiefs, the Texans who like the Texans haven’t been good this year, but pre-season a lot of people were picking the Texans to potentially win the AFC South and be one of the better teams in the AFC this year if the offensive line was going to hold up. Obviously, it hasn’t, but it was the Texans and now it’s the Rams before the by-week. They had Bills, Lions, Chiefs, Texans, Rams. Brutal. Going back and looking at this, they’re go the Ravens goal should have been 4-2 at that point. Now, obviously they’re, you know, they’re one and four and so they’re well behind that and it’s it’s tough because of all of the injuries they have, but man, just before we we really dove into this game, I mean, that was that that is a brutal brutal stretch to start the season. Where do you want to start this one? You want to talk about the Ravens or you want to talk about the Rams for this matchup? Um, I I think it it really does just come down to, you know, can the Ravens, whether it’s Lamar Jackson or Cooper Rush, and it’s looking more and more like it’s going to be Cooper Rush again. They have any chance against this Rams defensive line to block. And now Ronnie Stanley is trending towards maybe being back this week at left tackle. That’s a huge development. But this Ravens offensive line has to be better. You spotlight Jared Vers and this Rams defensive line, they’ve been unbelievable. They really have taken a step up from last year. Vers is obviously great. Byron Young’s been fantastic. Kobe Turner’s great. Puna Ford on the inside has been everything they they could possibly ask for. Their their defensive line, they’re fourth in run defense grade and lead the league in run stops. They’re fifth in pass rush grade and fourth in pass rush win rate. It’s not just that they do one or the other well. They do everything well on every down. It’s one of the elite defensive lines in football. We saw against one of the best D lines and especially edge pairings last week in Houston that they just dominated the game, Will Anderson and Denil Hunter. You’ve got an even more loaded group, especially on the inside with this Rams defensive line. So, even if Lamar Jackson were to play, and it looks like he’s not going to, the Ravens have serious problems in the trenches in this game if their offensive line doesn’t start playing better. Again, getting Stanley back would help, but I don’t know if that’s enough against one of the most unblockable teams in the league. Yeah, the Rams are pretty ferocious on both sides of the trenches. And I did not realize this before we did the preview, but just talking about the Rams offense, Dalton, they have the number one run blocking grade in the NFL through five weeks. The Los Angeles Rams do and an 80.7 offensive line run blocking grade. That’s first in the NFL. Now, the contrast is they haven’t been very good in pass protection. 46.7 pass blocking grade. That is a stark contrast from what they are running the football. That’s 29th in the NFL. Their 66 total pressures that they’ve given up, that’s 24th. 32.2 pressure percentage, that’s 25th. So, they are in the bottom half and in the 20s, um, bottom 10 in all of those categories when it comes to pass blocking. The issue is I don’t think the Ravens are going to test them there because I don’t think they’re going to have to. The Ravens have been one of the worst run defense teams in the NFL through five weeks of the season. And with as good of a run blocking team as the Rams are, just going to hand the ball off. I I don’t even know how much Matthew Stafford has to do in this game when it’s called upon. I think that he’ll be reliable because Pukanua and Devonte Adams, that combination there has been fantastic for them. But to be honest with you, like I just think the Rams are going to have their way with the Ravens in this game. I nothing that the Ravens have done yet tells me that they’re going to be able to hang in this game. And if the the Rams are just going to continue to run and run and run and if Cooper Rush makes any mistakes at all whatsoever, they’re just going to lean into that more and more, then they’ve had so much success with that throughout this season. So, it, you know, we talked about uh strength on strength with the Patriots and Saints match up in a couple of ways. This feels like strength on weakness in a major way that favors the Los Angeles Rams in this game. I have the Rams winning this one big. I have them winning 31-13. Like I just I do not have faith in what the Ravens have out there. Even if the guys that were hurt are going to be playing like you know what’s their percentage? They 70% healthy, 80% healthy, they’re just trying to get out there to help the team because of how bad the product’s been over the last couple of weeks. You talked about how good this Rams defensive front is. Is that going to give Derrick Henry any daylight at all whatsoever? Because it’s not like Henry’s been there to save the day for them over the last couple of weeks either. So, it’s just hard to have faith in this Ravens team right now, especially against one of the top eight, if not top five teams in the NFL and the Los Angeles Rams. Yeah, when I first wrote down a score of 2717, I was kind of hedging just in case Lamar Jackson were to play, but it could absolutely be wider than that. I’ve got the Rams as well, and there’s a couple points to make about that. One, you mentioned the pass rush uh for the Ravens. Think about it this way. They’re two leaders in pressures, Odaf Ooway and Nambde Nambi Matabke. One’s out for the season and one just got traded to the Chargers. So they they just they don’t even have really they have even less pass rush today than they did say a week or two ago, right? And you mentioned Derrick Henry and the run game trying to get that going. But the Rams additions of Puna Ford and Nate Landman at linebacker 2, they’ve made the run defense a lot better than it was last year. Last year they really tilted towards the pass rush and you could get him a little bit in run defense. Now this front seven is as complete as any in the NFL right now with those additions. So I’m I’m with you. The Ravens big I think in this game especially with Lamar still out. Yeah. And the chat’s talking about this too like even if the Rams have to get the passing game involved. I mean who covers Puka and Devonte Adams? Well, nobody’s really been able to so far this season. And it’s hard to think that the Ravens are going to be able to if they’re not able to generate a pass rush. even if they are able to generate a pass rush. I just mentioned the pass rush numbers and how inefficient the pass blocking has been for the Rams and they’ve still gone off. Matthew Stafford is still one of the top three highest graded quarterbacks that we have in the league so far this season. So, people have been getting pressure on Matthew Stafford and it hasn’t been mattering. So, it’s just it’s hard to find a way that the Ravens win this football game outside of Derrick Henry having like a 200yard rushing game. Like outside of that, it’s just really hard for me to think that they’re going to score more than the Rams are.

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The Los Angeles Rams and The Baltimore Ravens.

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