A lot of things went wrong for the Los Angeles Rams in 2019. Three starting offensive linemen got hurt, John Johnson and Aqib Talib landed on injured reserve, Brandin Cooks suffered two concussions and both Jared Goff and Todd Gurley regressed from their outstanding 2018 seasons.
The cherry on top, however, was how strong the NFC West as a whole was last season. The San Francisco 49ers went 13-3 and made it all the way to the Super Bowl, the Seahawks finished 11-5 and claimed a wild-card spot and the Cardinals showed promise in the first year of Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray.
The NFC West finished with the best combined record of any division in football (38-25-1), which played a role in the Rams missing the playoffs. Looking toward 2020, Gurley hopes the top two teams in the division come back down to earth a bit and don’t play as well as they did last season.
“Hopefully, the 49ers and Seattle Seahawks don’t do as well as they did last year [in the coming season],” Gurley said, via United Press International. “We have to focus on the little things. We still ended up with a winning season, but we just have to do a little better.”
There are a lot of “little things” that go into winning football games, and the Rams had trouble with many of them. They committed far too many penalties (eighth-most in the NFL) – Andrew Whitworth was called for 14 himself – and their blocking up front gave Goff no time to survey the field and find open receivers, even if the offensive line did allow the fewest sacks in the league.
There was also very little consistency from the defense, going from completely shutting down the Saints and Browns to allowing 55 points to the Buccaneers.
Those are things the Rams must correct in 2020 if they want to get back to the postseason, otherwise, they’ll be home watching again in January.
