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Rams offense vs. Bengals defense
Rams O:
Even better than Cincinnati, the Rams were tied for third league-wide with 6.0 yards per play during the regular season, and only the 49ers – who they just beat in the NFL Championship – averaged more than their 7.3 net yards per dropback. Matthew Stafford was tied for a league-high 17 interceptions and the later we got into the regular season, the worse they looked. Still, he finished behind only Tom Brady with 41 touchdowns. Only Brady and Derek Carr had more than his 65 throws of 20+ yards and he was fourth in QBR, as well as EPA per play.
The Rams' O-line has kept Stafford upright for the most part, as only Brady (once again) was pressured on a lower percentage of dropbacks (16.3%). They did have that near-meltdown at Tampa Bay when they handed the Bucs four fumbles from the last seconds of the first half on. But other than that, they’ve been very efficient overall, only had one turnover, and the combination of Stafford and triple-crown receiver Cooper Kupp has come through in the clutch, along with Odell Beckham Jr. stepping up in a major way.
Similar to their opponents in this game, L.A. primarily runs the ball from condensed sets and under center, often times with Kupp or Ben Skowronek in a wing split almost and then use one of their other receivers on jet sweep fakes, both towards or away from the play direction. And you can’t completely discredit that as eye-candy, because they do hand it off a couple of times per game. Plus, while they don’t do it as much as typically under Sean McVay, they of course still have those misdirection bootlegs or waggles with levels, where Stafford’s big arm also enables them to take those shots down the post from the backside, if the opposing safeties become undisciplined. On those boots, a lot of times they’ll have the backside edge-sealer (Kupp and others) sit down after the QB gets outside and Stafford has the flexible arm to pop it up to them, where they usually have some green grass in front, as the front-side flows and the back-side tries its hustle outside, against that misdirection stuff.
When the Rams do hand it from shotgun it’s mostly inside the zone, where Stafford doesn’t usually have the option to pull the ball (which might be a change-up in this contest) and they’re not much of an RPO team. It’s more so screen alerts to sdegreeree, when they have leverage on the linebacker versus the number three in trips and he doesn’t flow that way off the snap. Those quick inside-hitting runs have been especially effective towards the weak-side against even front teams, when they were in a 3-1 alignment with their defensive tackles towards the field.
What we’ve seen from the Rams this season, however, has seen a much larger reliance on the drop-back pass game with Stafford. He has delivered more EPA on seven-step drops this season than they did between 2018 and ’20. Their favorite formation is empty with the tight-end as single initially and then motioning the running back into the slot next to him. Often times they will use the back and another tight-end or Skowronek to chip the edges and help out their tackles, but you can’t forget about those checkdowns when falling off completely, especially with Stafford climbing up and no-looking those.
At the same time, when you run two-high shells against them, your corner better not try to fall off late because Stafford can find those creases to step up into and fire balls down the sideline if the safety turns with an inside receiver. A subtle change-up to that set is running a mesh concept, now with OBJ or Kupp in the weak-side slot, and they hit either one on the run for easy yardage. Another package they love working out of contains Kupp in a split backfield with two receivers on the opposite side. They can motion across and throw him swing/bubble screens, plus then they also fake that and run a post-and-wheel combination behind it, which is shown in one of the weekly videos, how Stafford perfectly threw a touch ball to OBJ at the sideline against the Bucs on. However, you also see Kupp at times run option routes on the boundary side against a linebacker or safety. So one could see them maybe clear it out with a post by the X and let your best player win against Von Bell or one of those LBs.
Bengals D:
As far Cincinnati’s defense goes, statistically speaking they’re league-average across the board pretty much, but what really stood out – they finished the regular season tied for sixth (with the Steelers) in total pressures (170) and tied for seventh in tackles for loss (81) – so they can create disruption and negative plays with their that defensive line. And now in the playoffs, even though it looked like the Chiefs would roll them in the first half of the AFC title game, they clamped down on those guys once they made that points-saving tackle just before halftime, holding them to just three points the rest of the way, with the Raiders scoring 19 and the Titans 16. They’ve also forced seven turnovers during this postseason, after being average in comparison to the rest of the league in that regard through 17 games.
The thing that stands out when you watch this unit is their adaptability on a weekly basis under defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, where if you go back to their matchup against the 49ers in week 14, they’re in five-man fronts and put both their defensive ends in two-point stances, to not allow combo-blocks to develop, not be forced to put safeties over tight-ends and have their D-ends ready to close against the quarterback on boots. Yet, then against the Chiefs in the Conference Championship, they only have one interior defensive lineman on the field for the majority of snaps in the second half and dare those guys to run the ball on them, with somebody peeling off and spying Mahomes. They rushed three on 12 of 24 dropbacks from the second half on.
Nose-tackle D.J. Reader has been owning the point of attack in the run game in key matchups, like consistently beating Titans center Ben Jones across his face on the front-side of zone runs and forcing Derrick Henry to stop his feet or immediately look for the cutback. The Larry Ogunjobi injury hurts, but those guys up front usually do a good job of fighting over blocks and we haven’t really seen the Rams be able to win in the wide zone game much anyway. Something you commonly see from them is that they don’t usually follow tight-ends motioning across the formation, but rather pull that backside safety down and even slide him in stacked over the guard at times, while the WILL backer shuffles out further and now there’s kind of a plus one on the strong-side, where if you can seal the edge, there’s now room to run.
Coming off the run game, Cincy’s defensive ends Trey Hendrickson and Sam Hubbard show excellent backside discipline, staying home against bootleg action and then barreling down at the quarterback to force them to quickly get the ball out, particularly out of those widened two-point stances.
When it comes to the passing game, overall that D-line displays relentless effort, with the two guys just mentioned, B.J. Hill and others. From a coverage-perspective, when you watch their tape against the Chiefs, they lived in sub-packages, often times with seven defensive backs on the field and did a lot of eight-man drops, by peeling off one of their outside rushers. And in general, they get to their coverages in a lot of different ways – start in single- and two-high, rotate guys down as robbers, but even more from the slot to the deep half or even middle. In that AFC title game they ran a variation of one-man that I had never seen quite that way, starting with Jessie Bates as a single-high safety, but then shooting down, to give them two robbers, while the nickel Mike Hilton bailed all the way out, to become that deep middle player. You see a lot of late safety rotations in general, where they often bring Jessie Bates down as a robber or rat and he becomes very dangerous at undercutting those deeper in-breakers.
One guy who doesn’t get enough love is linebacker Logan Wilson, who has been instrumental at taking away a lot of easy completions, with the ability to go from lining up in a gap to getting underneath crossers, follow backs out wide and stuff like that. Because they want their secondary to play aggressive, trying to undercut routes and playing the sticks, only the Ravens and Jets have surrendered more explosive passes (20+ yards) than Cincinnati, but they are top-ten in lowest amount of time on the field per drive because of it and they’ve been playing a lot more man-coverage recently, while doing a great job of switching responsibilities based on releases and usage of “free” defenders.
How they match up:
Just like I talked about this being the time for Cincinnati’s offense to break tendency in terms of run-pass splits from certain personnel sets, I don’t think L.A. should try to come out in as many condensed formations and double-tight sets in order to run the ball. Going deeper into the numbers, the Bengals rank bottom-ten defending 11 personnel runs on first down and second-and-medium (five or less). So the Rams should get their best guys out there (which includes a healthy Van Jefferson) and see if they can get their opponents to stick with that formula of extra resources in coverage to hit a few positive plays on the ground on early downs. And a big component to their success in that regard is if center Brian Allen can cut off D.J. Reader, to allow plays to hit front-side – because when he secures the down-lineman, that allows those guards to climb up and they can cut it up inside, instead of going laterally so much. Of course matchups play a big role in this, but L.A. was much more effective later in the regular season when Sony Michel gave him that physical downhill element. Only the Falcons have less than their three runs of 20+ yards over the course of the regular season, but at least they were able to stay of the chains, compared to only rushing for 143 yards on 59 carries (2.42 YPC) in the playoff, even if their average may be decreased by Tampa Bay’s defense playing the run hard because of the score.
A key to the Rams offense finding success through the air will be if Sean McVay can find counters to Bengals “switching” rules, such as double-moves, fake cross-release, etc. – since they already use quite a few stacks inside, similar to what the Chiefs did a few times, by creating those high-low stretches for hook defenders. Mike Hilton should be heavily matched up with Cooper Kupp and we’ll have to see what happens when the Rams put their receiver tagged to the O-line in those condensed sets, trying to almost hide their biggest weapon and create favorable matchups that way. Hilton has however played his worst season as a pro statistically speaking and overall, Cincy has struggled quite a bit at defending slot receivers, allowing a 70.2% completion percentage and 8.6 yards per target (25th and 27th respectively), according to Sports Info Solutions. That spells trouble, considering that Kupp is lined up in the slot on 73 percent of his targets. A more specific way to attack their coverage principles is if anybody not named Jessie Bates is the single-high safety, variations of dagger and scissors concept could yield some chunk plays, because we saw exactly that drawn up by Kyle Shanahan, where he got Trindon Holliday with a couple of steps on the outside corner trying to fall off his way, but Jimmy G underthrew him. In general, they had some issues against those pass concepts with crossers on different levels out of formations that got them countering with two-high shells and now those hang defenders weren’t sure if they should sink or come up, as they saw multiple receivers come their way.
On the opposite side, the one check I’d have if I were the Bengals, would be if they face empty sets with numbers two and three in a stack, I would rotate strong for a single-high shell, to allow the field-safety to drive down on the outside-releasing receiver and not put your middle linebacker in conflict, where he has to mid-point a couple of routes over the middle, where L.A. tries to create that stretch. Stafford will not shy away from fitting balls into those tight windows.
Cincinnati does a great job of bracketing or creating triangles against inside receivers. So those wideouts will have win outside when put in one-on-one situations, such as former Giants teammate OBJ looking to burn Eli Apple getting at some point. Stafford was far and away number one in EPA versus the blitz, as 14 of his 18 interceptions (including the postseason) have come against zone coverages with no blitzes, which Cincinnati runs on 60 percent of opposing dropbacks (ninth-highest rate in the league). That should be their recipe for success in those ones as well, as Hendrickson and Hubbard both rank top-ten in pressure percentage and rate of negative EPA on opposing QBs taking drops of five steps or more. However, like I already talked about, if the Bengals stick with a similar approach of throwing of light sub-packages, I hope McVay realizes that he has to show patience in the run game and attack those looks – Kansas City averaged 5.8 yards per rush in the AFC title game.
