It has not been a banner year for the Rams’ special teams unit. Los Angeles hired Chase Blackburn to replace Joe DeCamillis as the special teams coordinator but his first season with the Rams has been nothing short of a disaster.
From the kicking game to punt coverage to the return phase, everything has gone wrong on special teams for the Rams. It’s been so bad that the team has been forced to make a kicking change again ahead of the season finale after cutting Lucas Havrisik, who took over for Brett Maher.
The Rams have missed 11 field goals and 15 total kicks, both of which are the most in the NFL. Their 11 missed field goals are more than any team since 2015.
It’s bad bad.
Punter Ethan Evans ranks near the bottom of the NFL in net average (39.1 yards), in part because the coverage has been so bad. The Rams have allowed the second-most punt return yards (478) and they’re the only team to allow two touchdowns on punt returns. One was the Ravens’ walk-off in overtime and the other was a 94-yarder against the Giants on Sunday that nearly cost them a win.
Los Angeles is allowing 26.9 yards per kickoff return, which also ranks fourth-worst in the NFL. They haven’t allowed a touchdown on a kickoff return, but the tackling has been awful in that department.
All of this has resulted in one of the worst special teams performances in NFL history. According to Aaron Schatz, the Rams have the sixth-lowest special teams DVOA ever. It’s also three times worse than any other team this season, which is saying something.
The LA Rams now have the 6th-lowest special teams DVOA ever. The Rams are at -9.8%. No. 31 Patriots are -3.4%. Rams are almost 3x as bad as any other ST unit this year. #RamsHouse pic.twitter.com/P7KjAl697K
— Aaron Schatz 🏈 (@ASchatzNFL) January 1, 2024
Special teams has been costly for the Rams all season and it will need to improve with the playoffs approaching. They took a first step toward hopefully fixing the field goal operation by bringing back Maher on Monday after cutting Havrisik, but there’s no guarantee things will improve.
Sean McVay seems to be growing understandably frustrated with it all, too.
“It was tough,” he said of the Rams’ special teams Sunday. “There’s a lot of things that we have to be better at so I want to be careful to say too much until I’m really able to look at the totality of it all. I’m very engaged in the offense and defense, and some of the different things that didn’t occur today, we’ve got to do a better job there. That wasn’t good enough.”
Football is mostly about offense and defense, but special teams can lose you games.
