Rams 24 - Patriots 3
The New England Patriots are finished. Done. Season over. Cam Akers singlehandedly embarrassed the New England defense by putting up 177 yards on the ground. Jared Goff managed the game effectively and with Akers going off, he didn't need to do much else. This game was a real coming out party for Cam Akers and this performance establishes him as the lead back out of the Rams' backfield.
The Patriots offense was a disaster. Cam Newton was under pressure from Aaron Donald and company all night long. Even when he had time to process his reads, there wasn't much going on downfield. Cam was benched in the 4th quarter for Jarrett Stidham, who was also getting drilled on every dropback. Damien Harris and Sony Michel were able to get something going on the ground, but it didn't matter. The passing game was nonexistent tonight. Newton finished with 119 yards and 1 interception. They just didn't do enough offensively to make it a competitive game. Speaking of nonexistent, New England's run defense was just as pathetic as their offense. They were giving up chunk play after chunk play on the ground. The Patriots played as poorly as possible tonight. It didn't feel like a Belichick team at all.
Los Angeles has to be feeling great about their performance tonight. The run defense is really the only concern to take away from the game, and that wasn't even terrible. I was very harsh on Jared Goff in my preview and even though he didn't really do much, he didn't cost LA the game either. An easy victory for the Rams and it was never really close.
My Patriots +4.5 pick was very wrong and that's on me. I'll work on it for next week.
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