The Rams are the second-youngest team in the NFL, and they’re showing their age.
They don’t know how to win.
Oh, they’ve gotten close. Over and over. But just as they showed Sunday in their 24-19 loss to Green Bay — incidentally, the league’s youngest team — they haven’t shown an ability to finish the job.
Now the Rams head into their week off knowing that three of their four losses were by six, six and five points.
With Sunday’s loss, the Rams’ Sean McVay dropped to 0-5 against his old coaching buddy, Matt LaFleur. The two worked together in Washington and with the Rams, before LaFleur took over as coach of the Packers in 2019.
“This one hurt,” McVay said.
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He was referring to the team, of course, not the head-to-head coaching battle. The Rams have gotten tantalizingly close to winning at Detroit and Chicago, and at home against the Packers but so far they’ve lacked anything close to a killer instinct.
That said, it’s too early to start piling dirt on them. The NFL is weird that way. For instance, both the Rams and Packers were 3-6 through nine games last season, yet both wound up making the playoffs. So a 1-4 start isn’t fatal.
But the Rams can’t draw a lot of inspiration from being close in games, either. That’s the way the NFL is built. After the afternoon games Sunday, there had been 46 games decided by seven points or fewer, and 40 decided by six points or fewer, both the most such games through Week 5 in NFL history.
In other words, there’s a thin line separating the good teams from the bad ones, and at the moment, the Rams are on the wrong side of that equation.
They rose from the ashes last season, but that team was far steadier along the offensive line and was generally healthier than this one. These Rams have too many young and inexperienced players at too many key spots to flip the same kind of U-turn.
They’re particularly vulnerable in the interior of their offensive line. Green Bay was especially effective with its pass rush up the middle Sunday, swarming Matthew Stafford, sacking him three times and repeatedly leveling hits that left him writhing on the turf.
Stafford was tired and terse in the wake of defeat, wearing a Hawaiian shirt that was far more festive than his mood. His team has a week off, and none too soon.
Issues in the red zone continue to haunt the Rams. Case in point: They had a first-and-goal from the eight in the opening quarter, and followed a couple of two-yard runs with two incomplete passes, giving the ball back to the Packers.
“We’ve moved the ball nice between the 20s, we just haven’t scored enough points,” Stafford said. “That’s the name of the game in this league. You’ve got to score points and you’ve got to take care of the football. We’ve got to be better in both those areas.”
Presumably, help is on the way. Sure-handed receivers Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua could be back as soon as the next game, Oct. 20 against the Las Vegas Raiders, and offensive linemen Steve Avila and Joe Noteboom too are on the mend.
The current collection of receivers has done a pretty respectable job in the absence of Kupp and Nacua, but none of those fill-ins strike fear in opponents.
No one is running away with the NFC West. The Rams’ only win was a big one, knocking off San Francisco, and the 49ers lost again Sunday to Arizona. The Cardinals are 2-0 in the division, but they’re 2-3 overall, and — though they throttled the Rams — don’t have the look of a top-tier contender.
Seattle lost at home Sunday to the New York Giants, who were 1-3 heading into Sunday.
Basically, the division is four middling teams that aren’t likely to be heavily favored in any given game. There is opportunity in that.
Read more: Rams takeaways: Defense makes points but not enough for offense in loss to Packers
McVay is one of the best coaches in the league. He showed that again last season with his team coming out of the off week to win seven of its last eight games to improbably reach the postseason, then almost win at Detroit in a wild-card game.
But it could take an even better coaching job to turn this team around. The Rams are more banged up, the offensive line isn’t as good, and the defense is prone to forehead-slapping breakdowns.
What’s more, the players haven’t proven they’re closers.
In baseball parlance — fitting for a Dodgers-obsessed city — the oh-so-close Rams are a team bubbling over with warning-track power.
Good enough to make games interesting. Not yet good enough to close the deal.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.