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St. Louis Rams running game, Tre Mason have the opportunity

By Kevin Parvizi

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The St. Louis Rams are coming off of a disappointing loss to the Washington Redskins that can only be described as a let-down performance following their dominant display against the Seattle Seahawks in Week 1. Facing the Pittsburgh Steelers will present a tough challenge for the Rams, especially with Le’Veon Bell re-joining a quarterback in Ben Roethlisberger who is averaging a league-high 11.1 yards per attempt.

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Although the Rams have an excellent defense, they will have to put up points, because the Steelers will definitely find a way to get on the scoreboard in a variety of ways. They dropped 43 on the San Francisco 49ers last week, and a few fluky miscues prevented them from turning gaudy yards into more points in Week 1 against the New England Patriots.

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Nick Foles will have to have an individual bounce-back performance in Week 3 to help the Rams get back on track as a whole, and he’ll get to face a light pass defense that was memorably torn apart by Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, and the Pats in Week 1. But perhaps the most promising matchup on paper is the Rams running game vs. the Steelers run defense, because we’ll finally get to see St. Louis’s young, dynamic backfield duo of Tre Mason and Todd Gurley at work.

Gurley is the man to watch after being the first running back taken off of the board in this year’s class and the tenth pick overall, and his regular season debut is fully expected to happen. That said, even though Gurley will most likely take the field at 1:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, he will almost certainly be limited.

This means that Mason is locked in as the Rams lead back for Week 3 with both Gurley and Benny Cunningham taking some touches. The term “game flow” comes to mind when prognosticating the Rams backfield touches against Pittsburgh, but it’s clear to me that Mason is in the best position to receive the lion’s share of the workload.

After allowing 4.4 yards per carry last season, the Steelers run defense has actually been excellent through two weeks, surrendering just 3.5 yards per carry. Underrated big guys Daniel McCullers and Steve McLendon have finally proven to the unaware that they are both solid run defenders, and even Jarvis Jones has joined James Harrison and Arthur Moats in setting the edge against the run.

However, it’s obvious that the Steelers best player in run defense is Ryan Shazier, who jumped off the screen from the get-go, regularly disrupting running plays in the Patriots backfield in Week 1 with his uncanny explosiveness and burgeoning instincts. Shazier is an ascending player in every sense, and the only massive hole in his game is his propensity for missing tackles.

He will be missed by the Steelers defense on Sunday, because he has been ruled out with a shoulder injury that prevented him from getting any practice this week. This was an unexpected blow for the Steelers defense, because nobody really expected his shoulder injury to be serious enough to bounce him out of any games.

That opens up a nice opportunity for the Rams running game, and Gurley’s first game isn’t the only reason for Frank Cignetti and the offense to be optimistic about their chances of establishing a ground attack on Sunday.

Although Mason was able to suit up last week, he only had seven carries for 26 yards in a game in which the St. Louis Rams ran the ball just 13 times. The Steelers pass defense has allowed a massive amount of yardage in each of the past two weeks and has been stout up front, but this is the first real opportunity for the Rams to get something going on the ground.

The biggest key for the Rams will, as always, be the play of the offensive line, and this unit continues to generate no push in the running game. McLendon and McCullers (is there a snazzy nickname for this duo akin to the “McSafeties” moniker in St. Louis?) won’t make it any easier for the Rams, but at least they won’t have to face a beast who has already put up 22 tackles, forced a fumble, and recovered another this season in Shazier.

The duo of Tre Mason and Gurley could give Rams fans something to cheer about when Foles hands it off on Sunday, and we all know just how good Mason is at a hitting the home-run play when he is able to get out of the first level. I think we could see him getting stuffed a few times, but he could net himself a nice day on the stat sheet if he’s able to get that one explosive run, which is entirely plausible against a Shazier-less Steelers run defense that looked a lot worse in Week 1 than in Week 2 when they weren’t playing with a monstrous lead.

Both the Rams and Steelers should have success throwing the football (Pittsburgh moreso, simply by virtue of the Big Ben-Antonio Brown connection), so finding an effective running game to add some balance on offense will be important for both sides. With Shazier out, Gurley in the fold, and Mason healthier, the Rams have to seize this opportunity to make their mark as a well-rounded offense. Cunningham won’t be a factor on the ground with just 2.6 yards per carry this season, but his eight receptions for 104 yards show that he should get on the stat sheet in other ways.

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