The Los Angeles Rams have to look in the mirror and learn from past mistakes if they want to fix this season’s defensive struggles
The Los Angeles Rams and Sean McVay have to embrace change if they want to fix their defensive woes
The Los Angeles Rams‘ 2025 season has been a tale of two cities. Or in this case, a tale of two sides of the ball. The offense has remained elite, thanks to the outstanding connection between Matthew Stafford and Puka Nacua accompanied by the addition of Davante Adams. The defense, on the other hand, has been an entirely different story.
They got by in their first couple of games against the Houston Texans and Tennessee Titans, buoyed by an elite pass rush that crushed teams up front, but the warts began to show in Week 3 against the Philadelphia Eagles and were fully exposed last week by the San Francisco 49ers in embarrassing fashion. The team has a justifiable irritation at their poor special teams, but in my opinion, their biggest issue lies squarely on defense.
In fairness to the Rams’ coaching staff, these defensive issues aren’t entirely on them. They simply don’t have the talent on the roster there to compete against anyone with a solid offensive operation, and that falls on the team-building philosophy agreed to by both head coach Sean McVay and general manager Les Snead. They cannot continue with this approach with the way the NFL is evolving, and they have to prove their adaptability if they want to turn the defense around moving forward.
Who Is To Blame For Rams’ Defensive Struggles?
If you’ve followed my content for awhile, you’ll know that I’ve been fairly critical of general manager Les Snead for his approach to roster construction. The Rams have seemingly bounced strategies every year without a sense of coherent guidelines or parameters. They don’t have any specific things they look for in the draft at any position, and they beat to the tune of their own drum over draft consensus at any given pick, making them a bonafide wild card every time they pick.
Their maverick style drafting is fun when it works, and headache-inducing when it isn’t, and recently, it’s been a lot of the latter over the former (the issues with their 2025 draft haul notwithstanding), leading to their current predicament.
However, I’ve somewhat softened my stance on Snead. I still don’t believe that he has built a well-rounded roster (I can think of 10 needs the team will have this upcoming offseason, and the team had 6 of them coming into the season), but this specific issue isn’t solely on Snead. I think their defensive philosophy and talent strategy instead can be attributed to Sean McVay himself.
Sean McVay’s Approach Deserves Criticism
When a team ignores a position room for a year or two, it’s oftentimes a front office decision based on some internal logic about the room or perhaps the players available in the offseason. When a team ignores a room for years approaching a decade, it’s a top-down philosophy approach that the head coach institutes, and the Rams have ignored linebacker for nearly a decade now. McVay’s defensive philosophy has directly contributed to the dilution of the Rams’ linebacker unit and it certainly plays a part in their strategy when it comes to the secondary.
Let’s take a look and compare the investments at linebacker when Les Snead was with Jeff Fisher versus Sean McVay. Snead was hired before the 2012 NFL Draft alongside Jeff Fisher, and inherited a roster with Rams’ legend James Laurinaitis. Despite that, Snead added talent almost every year in pursuing a linebacker. Take a look.
2013: 1st-round pick on Alec Ogletree
2014: Traded for Mark Barron, who converted to LB on the team
2015: Signed Akeem Ayers to a two-year deal
2016: Signed Cory Littleton as an undrafted free agent.
In Jeff Fisher’s last year, the Rams boasted a linebacker room of Alec Ogletree, Mark Barron, Bryce Hager, and Cory Littleton. While the results weren’t there defensively, linebacker was not a problem on that defense, as that unit could fly around the field. Ogletree was 7th in the league in tackles, Barron was 17th, and Littleton won the team’s rookie of the year award as a special teamer and rotational linebacker.
By the end of McVay’s second season just two years after, Ogletree was traded, Barron was cut, and the Rams were relying on Littleton playing over a thousand snaps every season as an undrafted free agent still on his rookie deal.
The aggressiveness at linebacker has gone out the window under Sean McVay. Littleton wasn’t retained at the end of his contract before 2020, leaving Micah Kiser, Troy Reeder, and Kenny Young as the only linebackers on the roster. They seemingly wizened up when they spent a third-round pick on Ernest Jones in 2021, only to trade him away for peanuts after three years of quality play before his contract season. Beside Jones, they’ve tried a patchwork job with an aging Bobby Wagner, who was released a season after earning a Second-Team All-Pro nod, Christian Rozeboom (a UDFA), Troy Reeder (a reoccurring player in this story), Jake Hummel (another UDFA) Omar Speights (yet another UDFA), and Shaun Dolac (you guessed it, another UDFA).
Those resources have instead gone to building up the defensive line (as well as running backs that never do anything on the team, but that’s a different story). In a vacuum, I’m 100% ok with that. Investing in your pass rush and run defense in this era is always a smart thing. However, it’s come at the expense of the other positions on defense, and it’s those positions that have gotten exposed the most under this McVay philosophy.
That Jeff Fisher linebacker room I mentioned earlier? The resources there went to the defensive line with acquisitions like Ndamukong Suh, Samson Ebukam, Dante Fowler Jr., and John Franklin-Myers. The same song happened in 2020 and 2021. The Rams invested a $64M contract into Leonard Floyd, a third rounder into Terrell Lewis, a fourth-round pick into Bobby Brown III, and then traded a second and third-round pick for Von Miller. During that time, they shipped the aforementioned Kenny Young off to Denver for a pick. This pattern again repeated in 2024 and 2025. Ernest Jones was traded away and the Rams drafted Jared Verse, Braden Fiske, Brennan Jackson, Tyler Davis, Josaiah Stewart, and Ty Hamilton.
The one linebacker the team drafted from 2021 onward was cut before playing a down on the team.
Why is McVay Like This?
Where does McVay’s mindset come from? Why has he adopted this philosophy that simply discards an entire position group? While I’m not in the room with him or connected to the team enough to ask him about this, I think I can build a reasonable guess here based on another similar coach who was incredibly influential in McVay’s upbringing: Kyle Shanahan. Shanahan is almost the inverse of McVay here, and it might speak to the difference in philosophies between the two.
For years, Shanahan opted to go light on the interior of the defensive line and at corner while investing into linebacker, pass rusher, and safety. Defensive tackles are often more expensive than linebackers, and gifted linebackers can cover for average defensive tackle play more often than not. With the 49ers’ playing a heavy zone scheme and benefitting from top-flight safety play, the need at corner wasn’t as pressing. They mostly signed street free agents and didn’t heavily invest into the cornerback position until 2022 and didn’t take the defensive line seriously until this offseason when they loaded up on run stuffers in Mykel Williams, Alfred Collins, and CJ West in the draft, likely to combat what the Eagles were doing while also adjusting to the modern NFL’s trend towards heavier offensive personnel.
Shanahan likely adopted this philosophy because it was the areas he targeted the most as a play caller. He could take advantage of poor defensive tackle play and picked on bad corners, but knew that a strong linebacker and safety room could neutralize a lot of his offense. Inversely, McVay heavily targets the middle of the field, picking on linebackers and safeties, and realized that a strong defensive line and pass rush could do the same to his offense (see: 2018 Fangio, Belichick; 2024 Eagles Playofff game), so he invested in his team correspondingly.
Much like McVay, Shanahan believed in a heavy coverage with pass rush philosophy, but he had the linebackers and safeties to get away with that approach until recently, thus his latest adaptation in personnel. McVay has yet to make that switch.
The Rams & McVay Need to Change
As I said before, I am totally ok with a team willing to invest in their defensive line. There were several times during the Aaron Donald era I wish they had done more (which might speak to their ability to properly invest in this room). Yet this repeated pattern has left a mark on the defense. It’s not a surprise that every linebacker on the Rams fits the exact mold, and coaches like Kyle Shanahan have picked that unit apart every. single. year.
This philosophy of playing soft coverage and rush the passer and hope the pass rush wins can’t truly win in this offensive era. Not having any linebackers that you can rely on in coverage as offenses evolve into heavier personnel limits what you can get away with defensively, and creative coordinators keep taking advantage of this.
The 49ers have benefitted from strong linebackers in Fred Warner, Dre Greenlaw, and this season Dee Winters. The Eagles won a Super Bowl partly thanks to a breakout season from Zack Baun at linebacker. The Chiefs’ dominant defense owes a lot to Nick Bolton shoring up the second level. Buffalo has one of the NFL’s strongest defense over the past few years with Matt Milano and Terrell Bernard roaming the middle. The Lions have arguably the best linebacker room in the league with Jack Campbell, Derrick Barnes, and Alex Anzalone. The Packers have a strong duo in Quay Walker and Edgerrin Cooper. This year, the Jaguars have built a strong defense on the backs of Foye Oluokun and Devin Lloyd, while the Seahawks have constructed their defense around former Ram Ernest Jones. Every team in direct opposition to the Rams’ Super Bowl bid has learned this lesson, but the Rams haven’t.
Therein lies the problem. Other teams have been quicker on the uptake than the Rams, who are content to skate by with patchwork jobs with undrafted free agents and free agency fliers on players discarded by other teams. The Rams’ linebackers coach never played the position and is a career defensive backs coach! It’s almost criminal how negligent they are openly treating this room, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that the rest of the league has responded accordingly. Their struggles to adjust have been a consistent theme this season.
If the Rams want to fix their biggest problems defensively, they have to change their defensive philosophy from both a team-building and identity perspective. If not, these issues are going to keep piling up year-after-year and create the same problems that they have throughout McVay’s entire tenure.
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