Rams to 'evaluate everything' about kicking unit after 37-34 overtime loss to Bills
It's a one-story day around the NFL, and the story is in Los Angeles, where Sean McVay spent Tuesday answering questions about his kicker instead of his quarterback.
The Rams missed a field goal attempt and had another one blocked in Monday night's 37-34 overtime loss to the Bills, and McVay said Los Angeles will "evaluate everything" about the kicking unit. That sentence is the closest thing a head coach gives to a public warning. McVay doesn't say "everything" unless he means the whole operation: snap, hold, protection and leg.
What makes it sting is how well the offense played. Matthew Stafford went 40-of-54 for 383 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions. That's a clean, high-volume night, and it bought the Rams nothing, because a kicking unit that misses one and gets another blocked doesn't need the offense to be great. It needs the offense to be perfect.
Compare Buffalo, which won ugly in a completely different way. James Cook carried 25 times for 111 yards and two touchdowns, and fumbled twice, losing one. Josh Allen threw only 19 passes, completing 12 for 210 yards, and ran 10 times for 121 yards and a score. Tyler Bass made all three of his field goals with a long of 49 and missed an extra point. The Bills had their own special teams wobble and still walked out of Los Angeles with the win.
My read: "evaluate everything" is not automatically a kicker hunt. McVay has been one of the league's most fourth-down-aggressive coaches for years, and the honest evaluation of a shaky kicking unit in the modern NFL is often to use it less. If the Rams face a fourth-and-short in plus territory next week and the field goal team stays on the sideline, that tells you what the review concluded. If the same operation trots out and it's clean, this was a one-week wobble.
History says the Rams have a high bar here and no patience for drift. The Greatest Show on Turf team had Jeff Wilkins. Matt Gay handled the job through Los Angeles' most recent championship season. When the Rams are good, the kicker is anonymous. That is the standard, and this unit is nowhere near it.
Who it helps and who it hurts. It hurts the incumbent, and it hurts a long snapper and a wing who just put a block on tape. It helps whichever veteran leg is sitting by the phone, and it helps every Rams opponent, who now has a standing reason to send an extra rusher at the edge on every kick and see whether Los Angeles flinches.
My call: the Rams will have a veteran kicker in the building for a workout before the end of the month, and a change alone won't fix this. Blocked kicks are usually a protection or timing problem, not a leg problem, and a new kicker behind the same front is the same risk. What would prove me wrong is a clean day next week with the same personnel, because then the review was about technique and not about jobs.
