A Hopeful Season for The Rams

Illustration By Diana Parra-Garcia

With a young, ambitious head coach that has all the right tools to bring them back to the playoffs, the Los Angeles Rams will be a huge threat to any team in the NFL this upcoming season.

“We’re going to win games,” said Marcus Peters, the newly acquired Pro-Bowl cornerback, to the NFL Network. “When you’ve got a running back like I do, when you’ve got a front-seven like I do now, all you can do is keep making plays. Give the ball back to Todd [Gurley] so he can do his thing. Give the ball to Jared [Goff] so he can do his thing.”

Although the team had no first-round draft pick for the second year in a row, their future looks bright. They will be led by head coach Sean McVay, who is the youngest head coach in the NFL. As a first-year head coach at such a young age, he was able to prove he was fit for the job by taking his team straight to the playoffs.

In January, the Rams named Jedd Fisch the senior offensive assistant coach. His experience includes the quarterback coach for the Seattle Seahawks and interim head coach of UCLA in 2017. You will probably see a very fast-paced offense from Coach Fisch and McVay, especially with a player like Todd Gurley II in the backfield.

Gurley has rushed for 3,296 yards in just three seasons with an overall average of 4.7 yards a carry. Gurley is not only a threat when handed the ball, but was targeted 87 times last season and ended the season with 64 receptions. Such an outstanding performance from Gurley earned him the Offensive Player of the Year award for the 2017-18 season.

Quarterback Jared Goff is also becoming a huge threat to any defense that stands in front of him. Goff ended last season with a 62.1 percent completion rate, which only falls 2.2 percent short of Tom Brady. Goff is also very young, as this is only his second season in the league.

The Rams had 11 draft picks for this upcoming season, seven of which were defenders. Rookie defensive end Ogbonnia Okoronkwo who was one of the seven drafted defenders recently broke his foot and surgery was needed. Okoronkwo was the 160th overall pick in the draft and had a fighting chance at making the starting line up since two of their outside linebackers had been released from the team.

The defense is still one for opposing offenses to take caution of, especially with the new trades of Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib, who has shown that he can compete with any receiver in the league. Talib is a very aggressive player who has also found himself in trouble throughout the past few seasons. Talib also found himself on the NFL’s top 100 players list ranking #53 overall, right in front of another new addition to the team, Ndamukong Suh who was ranked #61.

There is a saying in the football world: “Offense wins games, defense wins championships.” Now that the Rams has a defense, now it's just time to see if they can perform. The Rams are coming up on the 20-year mark since they have won their only Super Bowl title. Hopefully, Coach McVay can end this streak and make the city of Los Angeles proud of the team that has always been theirs.