Rampage
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- Mar 19, 2019
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The Rams have yet to face the Cardinals in 2020. Which means that, this season, the Rams have not yet had to deal with quarterback Kyler Murray.
Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald addressed the challenge of facing a player like Murray in a Thursday press conference.
“Well, he’s a good football player that can do a lot,” Donald said of Murray. “Obviously, you play a lot of quarterbacks in this league that’s mobile, but he’s definitely has a lot more quick twitch and can do things. So, you’ve got to just rush, have gap contain, don’t get up field, don’t leave rush lanes open to the point where you can step up and have a choice of running or passing. We know what to do, because we play a lot of mobile quarterbacks. We’ve got two of them, we’ve got him and Russell Wilson in our division. So, we kind of know how to handle it, we’ve just got to make sure that we rush the right way pretty much and are gap sound. . . .
“I think Murray is probably a little twitchier [that Wilson]. He’s a good football player. We’ve played a lot of good quarterbacks and mobile guys that you kind of know what to expect, how to rush against them and what you need to do to try to bottle them up, we just have to go out there and execute it.”
Murray, in Donald’s assessment, has improved since last year.
“You can just see he’s playing more confident, feeling little bit more comfortable being in his second year,” Donald said. “He’s playing better football than he was last year, and he’s got some good guys around him that’s helping him as well. We’ve got our hands full, but we’ll prepare for the challenge and be ready.”
Donald would prefer not to have to be ready for the challenge presented by a mobile quarterback.
“Well, I think anybody that rushes the passer would say they’d rather have a quarterback that’s going to just sit there,” Donald said. “You get a clean rush and you think you’ve got him, and then he could spin out and make things happen with his feet, then you got to chase him all day. But, that’s just the way the league is now, so just got to adapt to it.”
Donald understandably didn’t want to delve too deep into details regarding the approach to bottling up Murray, based on film study.
“We’ve seen a lot of things, I’m not going to sit here and tell you guys what we have seen,” Donald said. “Buy, you study film, you sit down with your coaches, they see certain things and you talk about certain things. You have a game plan that you have against a team and you have to go out there. Hopefully they stick to what we’ve been watching. Obviously, they’re going to throw things that we don’t expect, and that’s just a part of the game, but they prepare you the best way they know how to get ready for that. To the point where on Sunday, now you’re able to play at a high level, play fast, do what you do and do everything you can to eliminate certain things to the point where we can win.”
The Cardinals have lost two in a row since the Hail Murray game from nearly three weeks ago. At 6-5, they need to stay a step ahead of teams like the Vikings and 49ers, both of which are 5-6 and jockeying for the No. 7 seed.