Everyone saw this roster and assumed the only question was by how much. Myles Garrett and Aaron Donald joining a front that already had 22 sacks between three young stars. Trent McDuffie in the secondary. Matthew Stafford coming off an MVP-caliber year. Sean McVay running an offense that just led the league in EPA. The Rams didn't look like Super Bowl contenders in August. They looked like a cheat code.
Six weeks later they're 2-4, and Sunday's 18-16 home loss to a 1-4 Cardinals team wasn't an excusable one. No fluky turnovers, no backbreaking injury, no special-teams disaster to hide behind this time. Just a talented team that couldn't move the ball and couldn't get off it. If the Rams somehow make the Super Bowl from here, they'd be the first team in the Super Bowl era to post a losing record through six weeks and still win their conference.
Stafford isn't washed, he's just not special anymore
The arm strength is still there. What's gone is the accuracy that used to bail out the misses. Stafford's precise pass rate when unpressured has fallen from 18th in the league to 28th. His deep-ball efficiency has collapsed from 15.5 yards per attempt (fifth-best) to 9.7 (25th), and his completion rate over expectation on those throws has swung more than 14 points in the wrong direction. He's already thrown six interceptions this season after tossing eight all of last year.
None of this reads as decline from age 38 so much as a quarterback who was playing at the outer edge of his ability in 2025 and has regressed toward something more human. That's still a good starting quarterback. It's not the version that made this offense look unstoppable.
The problem isn't talent up front, it's finishing
This is the number that should actually alarm Rams fans: eight sacks through six games, tied for second-fewest in the league. But the Rams rank sixth in pressure rate and sixth in quick pressure rate. They're generating the chaos. They're just not cashing it in. The league average team converts roughly 17% of pressures into sacks. The Rams are under 10%, second-worst in football, ahead of only Miami. On unblocked pressures, where a sack should be nearly automatic, they're converting at 5% against a league average near 13%.
That's not a scheme problem or a personnel problem. It's a finishing problem, and it's happening with Donald shaking off three years of rust and Garrett on injured reserve since Week 1. Expect that number to climb hard once Garrett returns and the timing sharpens.
Special teams remain a genuine, repeated liability
This isn't new, and that's the damning part. The Rams ranked 32nd in special teams DVOA for most of last season and brought in a coordinator who'd just overseen the NFL's 32nd-ranked unit in Cleveland. They currently sit 32nd again. A blocked kick and a missed field goal cost them the Bills game outright, and new kicker Blake Grupe is already hurt. This is a half-decade pattern, not bad luck.
The individual pieces mostly point toward regression in the Rams' favor. The sack rate should climb. The explosive run rate should recover from 9.7% back toward last year's 12%-plus. Fumble recovery luck should normalize. But the schedule won't wait around for internal math to sort itself out, and a team built to flatten the league now has to prove it can win the margins it used to dominate.
