Rich Weighs In on the Rams Getting Their Mojo Back in L.A.’s MNF Beatdown of the Giants

The Los Angeles Rams needed a statement on Monday night. They got one, and then some, in a blowout of the New York Giants at SoFi Stadium that Rich broke down on The Rich Eisen Show as the night the Rams got their mojo back.

It did not start that way. The Giants got the ball first and were moving it in a way Rich said was reminiscent of their Sunday night win over the Cowboys. Then Jaxson Dart took a shot, his left leg "looked like a metronome," and after the blue tent and the cart ride, the air went out of the Giants and all the transplanted New Yorkers in the building.

From there, the Rams took over. Rich pointed to a pass rush that could not get to Matthew Stafford the way it got to Dak Prescott in Week 1, and Stafford "lit them up." He looked well rested, Rich noted, like "his commute to work wasn't 19 hours long at the last second."

The numbers were staggering. The Rams piled up 481 yards to the Giants' 182, which Rich called the largest yardage differential of any game not just this season, but this decade. Stafford became the second oldest player with a four-touchdown game on Monday Night Football, behind only Drew Brees. It was his 22nd career four-touchdown game, sixth most in NFL history, breaking a tie with Dan Marino.

The emotional center of the night was Aaron Donald, playing his first game in almost a thousand days. Rich heard the introduction went crazy in the building. Sean McVay made it plain in his postgame sound. "If you didn't get chills when he was introduced, then you're not freaking alive," McVay said. "He just elevates people he's around, situations he's a part of."

Donald looked the part. According to Next Gen Stats, he played 32 snaps, including 18 pass rush attempts, with a get off of .75 seconds, the third fastest by a defensive tackle this season. "Guy's not human," Rich said. Donald himself sounded like a player shaking off rust. "The game really wasn't as fast as I thought," he said. "It was more of me calming myself down." He compared it to returning from his holdouts in 2017 and 2018, when it took a couple of games to get going. Asked about his play on Najee Harris, Donald said it felt good, but "it would have been better if I was able to slam him."

And the Rams did it without Puka Nacua. Davante Adams stepped in and had a near 200-yard night, which led Rich to one of his favorite points: some of the best trades are the ones you don't make. If the Rams really were kicking the tires on A.J. Brown, Rich said, Brown has "got a long way to go to get the resume of Davante Adams." Rich called Adams a first ballot Hall of Famer who is happy to take what the game gives him on a team quarterbacked by Stafford.

Adams kept it simple. "Puka does what he does," he said. "I take some stress off of him. He takes some stress off of me." When a guy like Nacua is out, "it's time for people to step up for sure."

The win also closed the book on the season opening loss. McVay's line making the rounds: "Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. And sometimes you have a dumb ass coach that makes travel plans that put you in a bad spot."

Now the schedule gets real. The Rams head to Denver on Sunday night, then Philadelphia, where Rich recalled Saquon Barkley running all over them in the snow and the missed block on Jalen Carter. Then comes a Monday night home game against Buffalo. And Rich noted the Rams still won't have Myles Garrett back for that Buffalo game either.

Rich isn't buying a perfect season. The 17-0 talk was left in Australia, he joked, and while a softer stretch follows those three games, "this team has some holes and they're still working on it." But with Seattle and San Francisco still unbeaten, Monday night was exactly what the Rams needed.