The Los Angeles Rams Week 5 loss to the Dallas Cowboys drops them to 2-3 since winning the Super Bowl eight months ago. The Rams-Cowboys takeaways from this game show how far LA’s roster has sunk since that glorious day for the franchise in February. Even without Dak Prescott, Dallas was clearly the better team on Sunday, and now Sean McVay, Matthew Stafford, and company need to figure out how to move forward with the 2022 squad’s obvious limitations. With that in mind, here are three Rams Week 5 takeaways after their loss vs. the Cowboys.

3. Cooper Kupp needs help

Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp set the NFL on fire last season, leading the league in receptions (145), yards (1,947), and receiving touchdowns (16). Through five games in 2022, Kupp still has more catches (49) than anyone else, but the yards and TDs just aren’t there.

The reason is that while Kupp is still getting open on a regular basis and Stafford is still force-feeding his favorite target the ball, defenses can key on the wideout much more than last season.

For nine games last season, Kupp had Robert Woods opposite him and for the last eight games plus playoffs, he had Odell Beckham Jr. This season, Woods is in Tennessee, and Beckham is still a free agent, recovering from his Super Bowl knee injury.

The team’s second-leading receiver last season, Van Jefferson, hasn’t played a game this year with offseason knee surgery. That leaves 2021 seventh-round pick Ben Skowronek as the team’s No. 2 WR (18 catches, 181 yards) and disappointing free-agent signing Allen Robinson as the No. 3 (12 catches, 107 yards).

As good as Kupp is, he can’t do it alone, and that is a Rams Week 5 takeaway after no other LA wideout produced more than 54 yards in the Rams-Cowboys tilt.

2. Matthew Stafford is who he is

After being the No. 1 pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, Matthew Stafford became the ninth-highest-paid player in history, making over $239 million to date. However, he only produced a 74-90-1 record with the Detroit Lions in 12 seasons.

There were plenty of excuses as to why. The organization stunk, the coaches kept changing, and Calvin Johnson retired early. But the fact is, Stafford has the record he has, and he threw 144 interceptions to 282 touchdowns getting there.

Last season, on a super team and under ideal conditions, he played his best and won a Lombardi Trophy. And no one can take that away from him.

However, one of the Rams' Week 5 takeaways is that when things aren’t perfect, Stafford is who he is. In the Rams-Cowboys game, the QB was 28-of-42 for 308 yards with a TD, an INT, and five sacks.

Stafford and the Rams had plenty of chances, too. Dallas mustered just six points in the second half, so they didn’t exactly put the Rams away. The LA offense got shut out in the third and fourth quarters, though, and that’s why they lost the game. Now that’s more like the Matthew Stafford NFL fans know.

1. Maybe Rams draft picks do matter

The last of the Rams-Cowboys takeaways from Week 5 is that the Rams have an incredibly thin depth chart right now. General manager Les Snead and Sean McVay famously don’t care about draft picks and have traded many of them away in the last several years.

That decision is showing up in a big way in 2022.

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We talked about how it is showing up in the lack of WR depth above, but that’s not the only spot. The Rams only started two offensive linemen (Rob Havenstein and David Edwards) on Sunday who started the Super Bowl.

After losing tackle Andrew Whitworth to retirement, guard Austin Corbett to the Carolina Panthers in free agency, and center Brian Allen to injury, the Rams replaced them Sunday with Joseph Noteboom, Jeremiah Kolone, and Alaric Jackson. That's a third-rounder and two undrafted free agents for those keeping score at home. Five sacks were the result.

The Rams also started a sixth-rounder, a seventh-rounder, and two undrafted free agents on defense.

The LA depth issues were made even more apparent in the Rams-Cowboys game because of Jerry Jones’ penchant for homegrown talent. The Cowboys have more of their own draft picks on their roster than any other team in the NFL in 2022. And the Cowboys started 14 players drafted in the first four rounds of the NFL draft.

There is no question that Les Snead’s famous “f*** them picks” mentality can buy a team a Super Bowl. That said, the approach has to come home to roost someday, and it’s hard not to say that one of the major Rams Week 5 takeaways is that 2022 is the season it finally does.