WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. — When Matthew Stafford threw another no-look touchdown pass, and Aaron Donald started cheering as “M-V-P” chants broke out throughout a raucous SoFi Stadium while the Los Angeles Rams rolled to a sixth straight victory Sunday night, it became easy to see a special team taking form.
The Rams have been so dominant over the past month and a half that they’ve put themselves in an enviable position down the stretch. They boast the NFC’s best record at 9-2, hold the NFL’s best point differential at plus-127 and have BetMGM’s best odds to win the Super Bowl at +425.
They’ve been good all season, but the six games since they blew an opportunity at home to beat the San Francisco 49ers have showcased a new form. Their stars have reached new levels, their weaknesses have started to look like strengths and they’ve begun to look like the most fun team in the most physical sport.
Here are six stats that illuminate the roll these Rams have been on:
19-0
That’s Stafford’s touchdown-to-interception ratio in those six games. He’s thrown 19 touchdowns without a single pick, which is hard to fathom for any quarterback but especially one who was long wired as a gunslinger. After all, his magical 2021 debut season with the Rams that produced 41 touchdowns came with a league-leading 17 interceptions.
Dating to Week 3 against the Philadelphia Eagles, he’s thrown 27 touchdowns since his last interception.
“Most quarterbacks can’t throw 27 passes without an interception,” wide receiver Davante Adams said. “He’s playing like the Most Valuable Player in the league.”
Adams would know what that looks like since he played with Aaron Rodgers during three MVP campaigns in 2014, 2020 and 2021. But it’s also what the objective measurements suggest, as Stafford is BetMGM’s favorite to win the award at -235 odds.
That would be something new for Stafford, too, as he’s only received MVP votes one time, with an eighth-place finish in 2023.
This version of Stafford is seeing the game at a completely different speed than everyone else he’s going against, but he’s also managed to pull the rest of his supporting cast to that wavelength.
Rams coach Sean McVay has shifted his offense to more of how it looked with Jared Goff, with lots of plays under center to utilize play action. He’s added a heavy dose of three-tight end sets that condense the formations and muddy the picture on opposing defenses. And the result is that Stafford, in his fifth season with McVay, is seeing everything develop before the ball is snapped.
That’s how he’s throwing no-look touchdowns and never putting the ball in harm’s way. He’s playing chess in a league of checkers.
9
That’s the number of touchdowns Adams has scored in the past five games. Most receivers hope for nine touchdowns in a single season, but Adams has produced at a level the past month-plus that has him leading the league with 12 touchdown catches.
He’s doing that work almost exclusively in the red zone, with eight of the nine scores in that stretch coming within the 5-yard line. It’s the single biggest shift in the Rams’ passing game since early in the season, back when Adams’ connection with Stafford was new and forced — and the Rams were struggling to match their yardage totals with red zone success.
But what the Rams are often doing now is playing Adams as the single receiver along with three tight ends. It’s forced defenses into base looks that limit their abilities to double him, and with one-on-one matchups, he’s able to line up tight to the line and run option routes between slants and fades to the corner. And almost no cornerback has found a way to correctly guess which way he’s running and then make a play on the ball.
It has Adams playing with a joy he often couldn’t find during trying times with the Las Vegas Raiders and New York Jets over the past three seasons.
“At this point, I could be jumping around, going to different teams and having all different types of experiences,” Adams said. “To have a pleasant one is just a nice feeling.”
111
That’s the number of points the Rams have outscored opponents by over the past six games — an average of 18.5 per contest. The only win that came by fewer than 14 points in that stretch was the 21-19 victory over the Seattle Seahawks in Week 11.
It’s pushed their season-long point differential to plus-127, which is No. 1 in the NFL.
It’s been the culmination of an offense that now turns long drives into touchdowns and protects the ball, a defense that takes the ball away at a high rate and a special teams unit that is no longer creating losing plays.
During this stretch, the Rams have become the epitome of complementary football, where a high-octane offense puts pressure on opponents to answer by dropping back against a ferocious four-man pass rush with ball hawks in the secondary making them pay.
7
That’s the number of targets Emmanuel Forbes Jr. saw on Sunday night against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He did not give up a single reception. It’s the most targets any NFL cornerback has seen in a game without allowing a catch since Week 12 of the 2022 season, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats.
Perhaps even more impressive is that of those seven targets, five ended in pass breakups.
In the course of half a season, Forbes has gone from a reclamation project who was on the losing end of explosive plays against the Eagles, Indianapolis Colts and 49ers to a man producing on the ball among the best in the NFL. His 13 passes defended are tied for third in the league, and his three interceptions are tied for seventh.
He has 11 passes defended and three interceptions in the past four games.
This has been a fast but gradual climb for Forbes in Los Angeles. He arrived late last season as a waiver claim after the Washington Commanders released him, just a year and a half after making him the second defensive back selected in the 2023 NFL Draft at No. 16 overall.
The Rams played him sparingly last season, as they had to first work on the mental and emotional components for a player who had “PTSD” from his Washington experience, according to cornerbacks coach Aubrey Pleasant. Then they placed him in a rotation to start the season in order to earn more playing time, which started by improving his tackling in practice.
And now, he’s playing the most snaps among Rams cornerbacks, and all that confidence is spilling out into those plays on the ball, which all highlight the 6-foot length and 4.35-second 40-yard dash speed that once made him a top draft prospect.
“I take pride in him being prideful again,” Pleasant said. “I take pride in the journey. Because his journey proves that it works.”
4
That’s the number of games in which the Rams have held opponents to 10 points or less during this six-game winning streak. The only exceptions were when the 49ers scored 26 points in Week 10 and the Seahawks scored 19 in Week 11, which is still the fewest they’ve scored in a game since Week 1.
The Rams held the Baltimore Ravens to three points, the Jacksonville Jaguars to seven, the New Orleans Saints to 10 and the Buccaneers to seven.
What makes it more impressive is that the Rams have been down their top two defensive backs for the past six quarters and haven’t had outside cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon for any of that stretch. Quentin Lake’s absence with an elbow injury was supposed to challenge a secondary where he played three different roles and communicated every coverage, but so far it has not.
Chris Shula’s defense has everything working right now. It has a pass rush anchored by Jared Verse and Byron Young, who have combined for 15 sacks. It has a cornerback duo making plays on the ball between Forbes and Cobie Durant, who have combined for five interceptions in the past four games. It has a run defense that Nate Landman and Poona Ford have rebuilt, which has allowed one run of more than 16 yards all season.
22-9
That’s the record of the Rams’ past three opponents in games other than against Los Angeles. Those opponents were the 49ers, Seahawks and Buccaneers.
The story of the early portion of this six-game winning streak was about the Rams overwhelming undermanned teams. They faced the Ravens without Lamar Jackson and a Saints team that is now 2-9 and had quarterback Tyler Shough making his first career start.
But the past three weeks, the Rams have outscored three playoff-caliber teams by a combined 45 points.
That’s a statement the Rams have wanted to make lately. Their goals are bigger than dominating a regular season. They want to return to the Super Bowl heights of the 2021 season, and that will mean handling teams good enough to reach the postseason.
“I feel like we’ve definitely made a strong statement,” Verse said, “that we’re one of the best in the league. If not the best.”
