Rams News: Jared Verse Takes Blame For Defensive Struggles Vs. Seahawks

For the second consecutive season, the Los Angeles Rams had to watch as a team they nearly, and many believe should have, beaten go on to win the Super Bowl in a blowout. This year it was even more heartbreaking as the Rams fell to their division rival Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship Game.

While the offense accounted for nearly 500 yards and didn’t turn the ball over, the defense allowed nearly 400 yards to Seattle, including 346 through the air for Sam Darnold. A timely special teams turnover also helped seal the Rams’ fate as they came up short.

Now looking back, Rams star defensive end Jared Verse believes the defense came into that game with the wrong mindset, and put the blame on himself for their failures when it mattered most, via the Pivot Podcast:

“It was just me being completely, blatantly honest. I think it was a young mindset. I think it was my fault on the defense. I think it was a couple of our secondary. I feel like our linebackers were 100% locked in. I think it was our fault as a defense because we’re a younger defense. We have a lot of young dudes. We felt like we earned everything. We felt like ‘Oh yea we got this sealed.’

“Alright boom we beat the Panthers. Boom we beat Chicago we’re like alright Seattle next and we’re all hyped up all week. We’re like ‘Yea we’re gonna beat em again we know what we learned from last time.’ And then when we start having trouble, early on they throw a big play, everybody’s kinda like s***ting the bed. Everybody’s like ‘Oh what do we do now? This isn’t going the way we thought it was gonna go, they’re not laying down.’ And when that happened, everybody kinda started freaking out. We were able to kind of ground ourselves again. But because of our young mindset of we think we earned it, like we think it’s a cakewalk.

“Like this is the league ain’t nobody gonna lay down for you. This team could be 0-16 last game of the season they not gon lay down for you they gon go out there and try to get that one. So for us to kinda go up against, even Seattle they’re not a sorry team they’re a very good team, VERY good team, I’m not saying that. But our mindset was like ‘We lost to them once, we beat em once, this is for all the marbles,’ and when we started having trouble we didn’t know what to do. Like some of us on the defense, I’ma take full blame too. There was a couple times I’m like ‘Bruh they running the other way, I don’t know what to do. I can’t chase, I’m not that fast, I can’t chase em on the backside what do I do?’ So when we had the troubles we just kinda like mentally shut down.”

In many cases across sports, teams need to experience that failure as it just requires something different mentally to succeed on those biggest stages and most don’t realize it until they get there. That seems to be what happened with these Rams as Verse is admitting that the defense just didn’t know what to do when things didn’t go their way.

That Verse is looking inward and putting the blame on himself bodes well for the Rams going forward as he will no doubt be pushing this team to not make the same mistakes again next year and hopefully that will lead to a return to the Super Bowl for L.A.

Matthew Stafford announces he is returning to Rams for 18th NFL season

One major piece that will help the Rams on their journey next season is the return of their leader and quarterback Matthew Stafford, who announced he will be back under center next season during his speech after being named NFL MVP.