Matthew Stafford was Phenomenal in Critical Moments vs. the Bills

The Rams won a 44-42 shootout against the Bills on Sunday in what was the best offensive football game of the season. There were plenty of big plays on both sides of the ball, but nothing was more instrumental to L.A.’s victory than their performance on 3rd and 4th down.

They finished 11-for-15 on 3rd down and 1-for-1 on 4th down. That enabled them to keep the ball out of Josh Allen’s hands for over 38 minutes (the Bills may have scored 70 if they had the ball for just 8 more minutes).

The catalyst for L.A.’s success in these critical moments was Matthew Stafford, who had one of his most impressive performances as a Ram. That included 10 completions on 11 attempts for 130 yards and 2 touchdowns on 3rd and 4th down.

All the traits you look for in a quarterback were on display in these key moments: great ball placement, anticipation, quick processing, late-in-the-progression completions, pocket movement, and command at the line of scrimmage.

Let’s break it all down below.

The first play I’ll show is this 3rd-and-3 during the 3rd quarter. This was a great example of Stafford being on top of his game Sunday.

The Rams came out in an empty formation and put running back Kyren Williams on the outside. The Bills would match up with a linebacker over him and cornerbacks on L.A.’s receivers elsewhere, all indicators of man coverage:

The play the Rams had called was HOSS “Juke.” The HOSS part stands for Hitches Outside, Slot Seams. The 5th receiver inside (the Juke) then has a number of options for what he can do based on the coverage:

Sean McDermott and the Bills saw this play no less than 1,000 times against the Patriots when Tom Brady and company were still in town (they kind of made it famous). The play itself has a lot of answers for the quarterback.

If it’s man coverage, he can choose his best matchup. The “Juke” is often targeted vs. man since he has the option to run his route based on his defender’s leverage. Not a bad option on 3rd-and-3.

If it’s cover-3, the quarterback can attack the seams. If it’s cover-4, the seams are taken away but the hitches on the outside should be open. If it’s cover-2, those seams bend inside the safeties and the quarterback can try to fit one in over the middle (the outside routes could convert to verticals as well). If it’s Tampa-2 with the middle linebacker running the middle seam, the “juke” receiver can set up shop in the short middle of the field, or those seams can turn to curls (there are lots of options depending on who’s running it).

Again, this looked like man pre-snap with the linebacker on the perimeter. But that would just end up being a disguise. The Bills rotated to cover-3 after the snap instead:

Stafford recognized it instantly, which is impressive. If you’re taking into account the pre-snap alignment and then just looking at those safeties after the snap, this still could have looked like cover-1 to the quarterback with one safety dropping down to be the robber/lurk/rat in the middle. But Stafford also saw or sensed the underneath coverage drop out into zone.

And it didn’t mess up his timing at all.

Stafford quickly processed that the safety dropping down would take away the “juke” underneath:

Then he got his eyes on the other safety, who was rotating to the middle from the right side. That seemed to hold him for just a split second:

Then Stafford let it rip, hitting Cooper Kupp in the left seam for the touchdown:

Take another look from the end zone angle. Stafford processed all of that, took one hitch, and got the ball out within the natural timing of the play:

That’s high-level quarterbacking.

Stafford’s ball placement was great on that throw as well. He put that ball on Kupp instead of leading him, which kept the ball away from both defenders and allowed Kupp to turn his body just enough to protect himself from the safety.

There were several other great examples throughout the game of Stafford exhibiting great ball placement and making the right type of throw based on the coverage.

On this 3rd-and-10, the Bills would end up bringing a man blitz. Stafford would target Puka Nacua on an out-route near the first-down marker: