The Rams didn’t just stumble against Arizona on Sunday. They watched a game they were supposed to control slip away in the most frustrating way possible, falling 18-16 to a Cardinals team that came in at 1-4 and left SoFi Stadium with a win anyway.
Los Angeles had a chance to get back to .500, and for a stretch it looked like the kind of ugly win teams survive and move past. Instead, the Rams spent most of the afternoon grinding through an offense that went nowhere, then finally took the lead with 47 seconds left before Chad Ryland drilled his sixth field goal of the day as time expired.
The defense did its part in keeping the game within reach. Quentin Lake picked off Jacoby Brissett on Arizona’s first drive, and the Cardinals never found the end zone.
Los Angeles held them to 0-for-5 in the red zone and 5-for-15 on third down. But that same defense also had to watch Arizona hold the ball for 34:52, including an opening drive of the second half that ate up 8:35.
That was the story all afternoon: the Rams kept surviving on one side of the ball while the other side kept putting them in bad spots. Matthew Stafford didn’t get above 100 passing yards until the fourth quarter, and the first three Rams possessions produced just 23 yards and one first down. The Cardinals came in ranked 29th in EPA per play, but Los Angeles made them look far more organized than that.
The mood at halftime said plenty. With the score tied 9-9, boos came raining down as the Rams headed to the locker room.
For a team that was expected to contend for a Super Bowl, the early-season product has been far too uneven to sell that vision. Week 1 against San Francisco lacked energy.
The Denver game wasn’t finished. The Philadelphia win came together late.
Special teams cost them against Buffalo. And now this.
There were small signs of life early. After the Rams signed Blake Grupe following last week’s loss to the Bills, he made an immediate impact by hitting a 44-yard field goal to put Los Angeles ahead in the first quarter. But even that moment came with a catch: on the kickoff, Devin Duvernay broke free and Grupe was injured while trying to make the tackle.
From there, the offense kept finding new ways to trip itself. On a third-quarter fourth-and-1, Sean McVay dialed up a fullback dive to tight end Davis Allen, even with Kyren Williams and Puka Nacua available.
Allen had never taken a handoff in his four-year NFL career. On that same drive, Stafford overthrew a wide-open Nacua on a play that looked ready to go for a score.
The mistakes stacked up fast. After a 26-yard defensive pass interference penalty on Nacua moved the Rams deep into Cardinals territory, Stafford fell while trying to escape the pocket, taking an 11-yard loss and fumbling. One play later, Tyler Higbee lost the ball too, and Arizona recovered.
Los Angeles kept getting chances to straighten things out and kept failing to cash in. Another stop from the defense gave the offense the ball with a shot to make something happen, but a false start on Warren McClendon turned fourth-and-3 into a longer mess, and McVay’s screen call to Williams fell incomplete.
Even the final rally came with a strange feel. Nacua had 17 catches last week, but he had only three targets through three quarters here. Then Stafford finally leaned on him when the Rams needed him most, hitting him for a 43-yard gain while escaping pressure and then finding him again for 16 more yards to get into the red zone.
Two plays later, Stafford hit Colby Parkinson in the flat off play-action, and Parkinson reached for the goal line. The call on the field initially had him short, which ended up helping the Rams burn more clock before the score stood. With Grupe hurt, Ethan Evans handled the extra point and put Los Angeles ahead for the first time since the opening quarter.
That should have been enough to finish the job. It wasn’t.
Arizona still had 47 seconds, and Brissett opened the final possession with a 21-yard completion to Jalen Brooks. An unnecessary roughness penalty for 15 yards pushed the Cardinals into range, and Ryland closed it out with the game-winner as time expired.
The result leaves the Rams at 2-4 and in last place in the NFC West after starting Sunday with a shot to move to 1-1 in the division and jump the Seattle Seahawks. Instead, they dropped to 0-2 against division opponents and walked off with another problem they didn’t need.
There are injuries in the picture, including Myles Garrett on injured reserve since Week 2 and Trent McDuffie missing Sunday’s game. Those were two of the stars the Rams brought in to help push them over the top. But even with those absences, this is not the place anyone expected them to be.
The hard truth is that the Rams are carrying too much weight on Stafford and McVay right now, and those two are also the ones expected to pull them out of it. A team that once looked like a superteam now sits at rock bottom after losing at home to a Cardinals squad that had essentially thrown up the white flag on its season.
What comes next is the real question. Because after an 18-16 loss like this, it’s no longer about finding the “sure thing” on the schedule. It’s about whether there’s still time left to climb back out.
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