The Los Angeles Rams came into the 2026 season expecting to chase a Super Bowl. Instead, they’re sitting at 2-3 after a 37-34 overtime loss to the Buffalo Bills on Monday night, and once again the kicking game was at the center of the mess.
The latest collapse followed a familiar script. After a James Cook fumble handed Los Angeles the ball in overtime, Harrison Mevis got a chance to win it with a field goal. Gregory Rousseau blocked the kick, and Buffalo finished the job with Tyler Bass drilling a 49-yard field goal.
Sean McVay didn’t hide from it afterward.
“I thought some of the coverage units… we did some really good stuff and in the kicking game, especially with our PAT field goal, not even close to good enough. It cost us the game tonight,” McVay said, via Nick Hamilton.
For the Rams, that line hits because it sounds a lot like other painful endings. Special teams already burned them last season in a Week 16 showdown with the Seattle Seahawks, when Los Angeles led 30-14 in the fourth quarter before Rashid Shaheed took a punt back 58 yards for a touchdown. Seattle stormed all the way back for a 38-37 overtime win.
That loss carried a long shadow. The Seahawks went on to win the NFC West, beat the Rams in the NFC Championship Game at home, and win the Super Bowl. After that, McVay fired special teams coordinator Chase Blackburn.
But the latest criticism isn’t just aimed at one coach or one bad night. Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk noted that the deeper issue may be how the Rams are built. Under McVay and general manager Les Snead, the team has leaned hard into spending draft capital on offensive and defensive stars, while putting less into special teams.
That lines up with The Athletic’s Mike Sando’s offseason analysis of how each NFL team values special teams. The study used five factors, including how many roster spots are devoted to special teams players and how often starters help out in that phase. According to Smith, the Rams ranked “near the bottom of the league” in all five categories.
Seattle, by contrast, invested heavily. Smith pointed out that the Seahawks scored much better than the Rams “by all five measures,” and he tied that philosophy to the Shaheed move.
“[Shaheed] is a prime example of how Seattle has an organizational philosophy of investing in special teams. At last year’s trade deadline, the Seahawks sent a fourth-round pick and a fifth-round pick to the Saints for Shaheed.
It’s not hindsight to say the Seahawks changed their season with that trade; we were saying that before Seattle won the Super Bowl. It’s also not unreasonable to think that if it had been the Rams, not the Seahawks, who traded for Shaheed, it might have been the Rams who won the Super Bowl last season,” Smith wrote.
The Rams did make one move aimed at that part of the game, signing linebacker Grant Stuard largely because of his special teams value. But Monday night was another reminder that one move isn’t solving the problem.
With a roster built to contend, the Rams keep giving away games in the third phase. And if this season slips off track, special teams may end up being the thing that did them in again.
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