When it came time to point fingers after the Rams’ 13-3 loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl LIII, Rams head coach Sean McVay pointed the finger at himself and said he did a poor job calling plays on offense.
It’s hard to argue with that assessment after the team was held 29 points below their average output in the first 18 games of the season, but a couple of key players on the other side of the ball said that the defense was not blameless for the loss.
“We didn’t do enough,” defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh said. “We had opportunities to get off the field and we didn’t get off the field. Simple as that. We had to hold them to field goals, that’s what we talked about. This time, this go around, we didn’t do that late and it’s unfortunate.”
Suh’s mate on the defensive line Aaron Donald sounded some similar notes. He said he felt like he “let my team down” because he wasn’t able to make a big play when the defense needed one in the fourth quarter.
“They made a play and we didn’t,” Donald said.
The Rams defense didn’t come up with a game-changing play in the fourth quarter, but the only reason one would have mattered was because of the way they’d played for the first three quarters of the game. That’s of little solace, but the list of things that went wrong for the Rams has to run a while before it gets to the defensive side of the ball.