Film review: Rams overpowered the Vikings with their stars

The Vikings had no answer for L.A.'s top players on either side of the ball

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By Sam Ekstrom

MINNEAPOLIS/ZOOM — It wouldn’t be groundbreaking to say that the Vikings simply got outmuscled in their 30-23 loss to the Rams. If you watched the game even passively, you knew that was the case.

When Minnesota needed protection on big downs, its offensive line caved. When it needed the run game to stabilize things, it got blown up at the line of scrimmage. And when the Vikings needed to slow the Rams rushing attack, they scarcely had an answer for Los Angeles’ extra blockers.

The Rams certainly had the best defensive player in the game in Aaron Donald, and while it’s fair to have an argument about Cooper Kupp vs. Justin Jefferson, the Rams receiver was the more valuable offensive player in the contest.

Both of them will be highlighted in the following clips, which won’t be encouraging to watch if you’re a Vikings fan.

Pressure discrepancy on important downs

The Rams entered the game considered the top pass-rushing team, per Pro Football Focus, and they backed that up with a 15-pressure performance on Cousins, right on their season average of a 34 percent pressure rate.

Cousins went 7 of 11 for 75 yards under pressure in the game, which isn’t horrible on the surface — after all, Cousins was 0 for 18 under pressure in his previous two games combined. But the pressure was enough to sabotage several third downs in the game when the Vikings were approaching field goal range.

Below, we see the victimization of Oli Udoh, who was the Vikings’ lowest-graded pass blocker in his return from a brief benching. The ferocious Donald runs a stunt with Greg Gaines, and Udoh has a pretty lousy seal attempt on the All-Pro. He allows Donald to leak through instead of forcing him wider, giving him a direct path to Cousins and forcing an overthrow on third down. Donald had a team-high seven pressures on the day.

It wasn’t just Udoh who was problematic. The Vikings had 10 players take pass-blocking snaps in the game, and the lowest three grades went to the starting interior offensive line of Udoh, Garrett Bradbury and Ezra Cleveland.

Three guesses who caused most of the tumult.