Healthy Rams A Potential Postseason Powerhouse

The NFL landscape right now is dominated by a San Francisco 49ers team powered by not merely the best offense in football but one that rivals any unit in league history.

But what if I told you that there was another team that had an offense that could match it, one screened for most of the season by injuries?

And this team is tied for the NFC’s final playoff spot, but currently +180 to even make the postseason dance – and 1200-to-1 to win the Super Bowl.

That team is the Los Angeles Rams.

The players in question who have only been healthy together in five games this year are Matthew Stafford, RB Kyren Williams, and WRs Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacoa.

Yes, it’s one Pro Bowl-level skill player short of the 49ers, who add superstar tight end George Kittle, one of the league’s most explosive players at that position.

But by any reasonable standard, the Rams have a multitude of elite weapons that, when all are healthy, make them almost as impossible to defend as San Francisco.

Let’s look at the stats for the Rams with only these players on the field and compare them in key and advanced stats to the entire league.

To what extent would this configuration of the Rams dominate the NFL offensive ranks when fully healthy based on how they’ve performed all together?

• Yards per play: 6.7 (tied for first of 32)
• Offensive Expected Points Added (EPA) per play: 0.25 (first)
• Yards per rush: 6.2 (first)
• Offensive rush success rate: 51.7% (first)
• EPA per rush: 0.28 (first, second is 0.11)
• EPA per pass attempt: 0.37 (second)
• EPA per dropback: 0.23 (second)
• Yards per pass attempt: 7.8 (fourth)
• EPA vs. zone defense: 0.34 (first)

It doesn’t get much better than this.

The only place where the Rams lag is EPA vs. man defense at 15th (0.29).

Finishing 3-1 Probably Punches Ticket

Now Los Angeles’s defense is in the bottom half of the league.

That’s a red flag for sure.

But every oddsmaker agrees that it’s way more predictive/valuable to be great on offense than on defense.

The Rams even with their subpar defense would be an 11-win team if their players had remained healthy all year. They’re healthy now.

The Rams remaining schedule is:

• Week 15: Washington
• Week 16: New Orleans
• Week 17: at Giants
• Week 18: at Niners

If the Rams win three of these games and finish 9-8, they’re probably in the playoffs.

Right now, the 7-6 Vikings are the sixth seed and the 6-7 Packers win the tiebreakers for the final seventh seed.

Additionally, the Rams could catch a break and have the Niners not need their Week 18 games for playoff seeding.

Are any of the other 6-7 teams likely to go 3-1? That would be the Bucs, Packers, Seahawks, Falcons and Saints.

That’s a hard no.

The Vikings with their third QB of the season are not a great bet to even win two games (at Bengals, Lions, Packers, at Lions).

Minnesota in fact could lose all these games.

Remember, the Vikings right now are the sixth seed, firmly in the playoffs.

Rams Big Four vs. Niners Big Four

The Rams, if healthy, have a puncher’s chance in Week 18 against the Niners even if the Niners need the game. If both offenses are fully healthy, the 49ers are better.

But not by that much.

Let’s look at the Niners with Christian McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk, and Kittle all on the field vs. the Rams with Stafford, Williams, Nacoa, and Kupp (the sample for the Niners is twice as large):

This is hardly a wipeout.

The Rams’ offense on their best day with their key players healthy is better than the Niners’ offense on an average day.

Plus if just one of the Niners aces gets injured, the Rams would have the best offense in the playoffs.

And that makes them a team to be respected and even feared, way more than 1,200-to-1.

Los Angeles gave the Ravens all they could handle in Baltimore and the Ravens can make a case for being better than any NFC team except San Francisco.

Look at the rest of the NFC field.

The Cowboys seem strong but probably are not going to win the division given tiebreakers and schedule.

So Dallas is going to have to win on the road in all likelihood and has not played in even the NFC Championship game since 1995 (not a misprint).

The Eagles are not dominating in any key predictive stat.

The NFC South is a rogue’s gallery.

The Lions have shown they can be beaten anywhere by anyone and it’s hard to believe that Sean McVay is going to be vanquished by his former QB Jared Goff when he has the superior Matthew Stafford, who will be playing a revenge game himself.

And the rest of the NFC North is the NFC South.