Sam Darnold’s redemption story has a new chapter, and it starts with beating the Rams the right way. DH

The NFL contains a long and extensive history of great players not being able to perform against particular opponents. Brett Favre had a 199-123 record in his career, but went 4-9 against the Dallas Cowboys, including three straight postseason losses from 1993 to 1995 and an 0-7 start.

Eli Manning squeezed out a career winning record (125-121) despite a late career collapse, but struggled to beat the Eagles even in his prime, ending up going 10-23 against his hated rival.

For a current day example, Jahmyr Gibbs seems to dominate every Detroit Lions opponent he encounters except for the Green Bay Packers, who have held him to 3.9 yards a carry and 68 scrimmage yards a game.

Sometimes, these examples get largely forgotten by history due to late career redemption. Peyton Manning went 6-13 in the regular season against the Belichick Patriots, but triumphed in three AFC Championship games against them in the second half of his career, leading to two Super Bowl titles.

Steve Young, much like Favre, kept crashing into the Cowboys of the 90s and dropped two straight conference championship games before finally breaking through in 1994 (ironically playing what was probably his worst game of the three).

Two weeks later, his domination in Super Bowl XXIX was so thorough it was easy to forget the trials of getting through Dallas.

Sam Darnold’s tribulations against the Los Angeles Rams are barely a footnote in comparison to most of these historic battles, but it’s hard to deny that his career renaissance is being consistently halted by them. Since 2024, Darnold has seven total losses, and three of them have come against the Rams.

He has seven games with multiple turnovers, and two have come against the Rams. It was the Rams that ended his storybook 2024 season in such an emphatically negative way that it’s hard to imagine that it didn’t influence the Minnesota Vikings away from re-signing him.

And now, they’re the team that might just secure Sam Darnold’s place in history as the only quarterback to pile up 27 regular season wins across two seasons with zero division titles to show for it.

In fairness, Sam’s first shot at Los Angeles in 2024 was perfectly respectable, resulting in his second highest quarterback rating of the season and the game falling much more on Minnesota’s defense. But the postseason game saw Darnold turn it over twice, take nine sacks, and lead the Vikings offense to all of nine points.

And if you’re a Seahawks fan, I probably don’t have to walk you through what happened a month ago. Four interceptions, nineteen points, and a defensive masterpiece gone to waste. If he comes up short tonight, it will be impossible to suppress the concerns that he just doesn’t have it against this particular squad.

So how does he prevent this from happening again? The key is to understand what the Rams defense does, and why it’s caused problems for Sam, specifically in that game a month ago.

The Rams defense is elite, 4th in points allowed, 3rd in EPA, 5th in success rate. But it’s how they get their elite results that is compelling. Specifically, the Rams avoid blitzing. Their blitz rate sits at 19 percent, 29th in the league. They are content to generate pressure with a front four of Jared Verse, Byron Young, Braden Fiske, and Kobie Turner.

The key compensation is their rate of running twists and stunts up front, which is first in the league by a mile at over 30 percent. You might know who is going to be rushing the quarterback when playing the Rams, but you’re not going to know where or when.

And therein lies the problem for Darnold. In the first matchup against LA, the Rams were able to consistently drop seven men into coverage, but still forced Sam to think about what was going on right in front of him as if they had blitzed him.

Darnold had, leading up to the Rams game, thrived on getting blitzed and launching the ball down the field, exploiting the openings and opportunities that naturally come when a defense commits extra men to the rush. But this time, the openings weren’t there, and Darnold ended up tossing the ball directly to defenders.

Things went so badly for Darnold, that he’s played like a completely different quarterback since that game, going from the best tight-window thrower in the entire league to someone who can barely complete even one tight-window throw.

It’s a reasonable assumption to make that the Rams shook him mentally, to the point where he’s become risk-averse. Against other teams, I’d view this as a crippling problem. But against this Rams team? I think it’s the right way to go.

Get the ball out fast (especially with Charles Cross out), check it down to backs, scramble for positive yardage, focus on moving the chains and taking the safe play. The Rams were focused on guarding against the big gains last month, and the game was largely lost because Darnold kept trying to force it for the big gains that were so well guarded.

Mac Jones has provided an ideal blueprint for beating this Rams team, splitting two matchups and going 66 of 88 for 661 yards, 5 touchdowns, 1 interception, and 52 points, mostly by taking what the defense allowed him to take. If Darnold can have a similar process, I believe he can have a similar result.

Darnold is not the only person under the microscope here. Klint Kubiak will have to call the right kind of game to make this feasible. The backs, who have seen their effectiveness as receivers come and go, will have to provide the reliable options underneath.

And a defensive no-show could make all of this moot. But there’s a clear way to beat this Rams team, and while it goes against the player that Sam Darnold has been for most of his career, it does line up well with the Sam Darnold we’ve seen in recent weeks.