Whittington and Corum hardly play, rookie OLB makes his debut

After their Week 6 bye, the Los Angeles Rams turned things around on both offense and defense on Sunday against the Las Vegas Raiders. They used Logan Bruss at left back in place of Justin Dedich and, shockingly, Jordan Whittington wasn’t involved in the game plan at all.

Both he and Blake Corum played minimal snaps in the win, a surprising development after each of them looked good in the Rams’ last game against the Packers.

On defense, rookie Brennan Jackson made his NFL debut by playing a handful of snaps. Chris Shula used far fewer base-3-4 packages and more nickel-and-dime sets where the Rams had five and six defensive backs on the field.

Here’s a look at the snap counts from Sunday’s win against Las Vegas.

attack

The Rams’ five starting players all played 100% of the snaps, including undrafted rookie Justin Dedich.

At wide receiver, it was Demarcus Robinson and Tyler Johnson who played the most snaps and each achieved a snap percentage of 91%. Johnson’s role had decreased significantly in the last few games following Whittington’s emergence, but he played 50 snaps compared to just nine for Whittington. Tutu Atwell played 43 snaps and Xavier Smith appeared in five plays on offense.

Colby Parkinson had played no less than 79% of the snaps in a game all year and was averaging nearly 90% through the first five games, but he played just 64% on Sunday. That’s because both Hunter Long and Davis Allen saw increased playing time as the Rams utilized all three tight ends.

defense

Quentin Lake, Kam Curl and Darious Williams all played throughout the game, but were hardly the only defensive backs with significant roles. In fact, the Rams have delved deep into their secondary to utilize a variety of players. Ahkello Witherspoon played 59%, Cobie Durant played 56%, both playing slightly less roles for them than in Week 5 when they each played over 80%. Josh Wallace (49%) and Jaylen McCollough (23%) each received larger roles and played the highest number of snaps this season as the sixth and seventh defensive backs. Kam Kinchens played two snaps after not seeing any playing time in Week 5.

At inside linebacker, Troy Reeder remained the leader with a snap percentage of 89%, but this is the second straight game in which he played less than 90% of the snaps. Christian Rozeboom also only played 51% of the snaps as the Rams used more nickel and dime packages and took him off the field more often than usual.

Byron Young played almost the entire game and achieved a snap percentage of 85%, while Jared Verse played 78% and Michael Hoecht 59%. All three were instrumental in the win, so it was a promising performance from this group. Rookie Brennan Jackson made his NFL debut with nine snaps played and one tackle.

At the top, Kobie Turner played 78% of the defensive snaps and Braden Fiske played 51%, which is about their usual share per week. Interestingly, Neville Gallimore played more than Bobby Brown III and even Tyler Davis played 17 snaps along the defensive line.