Matthew Stafford reveals the Rams’ biggest problem — and it’s not the kicker

The easiest thing in football is finding a scapegoat.

For the Rams, that scapegoat was field-goal kicker Harrison Mevis.

The team watched a victory sail away on a missed field goal on its opening drive and then the potential game-winner get blocked in Monday night’s 37-34 overtime loss to the Bills.

The natural reaction was to blame Mevis. To blame the entire special-teams unit. Even Rams coach Sean McVay said he was sick to his stomach afterward watching another game slip through their fingers.

“It cost us the game tonight,” McVay said of the kicking unit immediately after the loss.

But after some reflection and sitting with the loss for a day, McVay changed his tune a bit.

“He wasn’t exclusively the reason why we lost the game,” McVay said of Mevis after he was released on Tuesday morning. “This is the greatest team sport. The kicking unit cost us an opportunity to win the game. But that wasn’t the reason we didn’t win exclusively.”

Veteran quarterback Matthew Stafford, the reigning NFL MVP, knows that as well. Making Mevis the scapegoat is the easy way out, but the harder thing to do is to look in the mirror and find ways you could have been better.

Stafford delivered a revealing assessment on Thursday that should serve as a wake-up call for an offense talented enough to score on anybody, yet maddeningly inconsistent when it comes to opportunities in the game to put their opponents away.

The problem isn’t necessarily how the Rams finish games or what the offense does when its backs are against the wall and it needs a score. They’ve been excellent when urgency is required, especially in two-minute situations. It’s more about the opportunities they miss before they reach the finish line.

“There’s chances all over the place in games to snatch the momentum, or go pile on a lead, or claw back a little closer, so it’s not just about one possession at the end of the game, or whatever that is,” Stafford said.

Over their last three games, the Rams have mastered the art of playing with their backs against the wall. Now they need to figure out how to play with that same sense of desperation before their opponent puts it there.

The Rams offense shouldn’t need to be in crisis mode to come alive.

While it is impressive how Stafford, even at 38 years old, still transforms into a surgeon operating without anesthesia late in games when his team needs him the most. Every throw becomes calculated, every second precious, every defensive mistake an open invitation to strike.

Against the Bills, Stafford engineered another late two-minute touchdown drive to force overtime. He did it the previous week in Philadelphia to steal the victory from the Eagles.

But here’s the $300 million-dollar question: Why does it take a crisis to unlock that version of the Rams?

Imagine if Los Angeles attacked every second and third-quarter possession with the same precision it displays when trailing late. Imagine turning a seven-point advantage into 14 instead of giving opponents another opportunity to hang around.

Great teams don’t merely survive close games. They recognize the moments when an opponent is vulnerable and bury them.

Stafford insists the mentality never changes, regardless of the situation or time on the clock.

“We are always trying to score every time we touch it,” he said. “We don’t sit there and go, ‘Meh, we’ll punt it back to them. We’ll get it next time.’ We’re trying like hell every single time.”

Nobody should question the effort. But effort and execution aren’t interchangeable, and the Rams have spent too many Sundays proving it.

McVay offered a similar perspective Thursday, pointing to the 178 plays that preceded the missed field goal against Buffalo.

Eighty-seven offensive snaps. Sixty-four defensive snaps. Twenty-seven special teams snaps.

A football game is a collection of opportunities, not a single snapshot.

“We missed a chance to win it on that play, but that’s not why we didn’t win it,” McVay said.

A blocked field goal might have helped determine the final score, but earlier failures determine why the outcome remained hanging in the balance instead of ending a lot sooner.

And Stafford acknowledged that the offense’s late-game success hasn’t come from some dramatic halftime transformation.

“We just executed a little bit better in the second half,” he said, matter of factly.

There it is. The difference between winning comfortably and sweating through another final possession isn’t some revolutionary play call.

It’s execution, plain and simple.

The irony is that Stafford and McVay already possess the blueprint.

Their offense can move quickly, attack vertically and manufacture points when the situation demands it. The challenge is making those moments routine and consistent rather than emergency procedures.

“We need to ask ourselves ‘what are the opportunities to come out and find a way to execute when we needed to?’” wide receiver Puka Nacua said. “That’s something that we need to do more consistently. Obviously, the two-minute offense is when we’re in rhythm and when we’re in flow, but we need to be able to do that more consistently.”

Eventually, the miraculous comeback won’t arrive, and the final drive stalls. In Denver, the Rams got one final snap with a chance to win the game, but had they had more time on the clock, or stretched a 16-point first-quarter lead to 23, maybe the outcome would not have come down to the final snap.

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