After finding themselves the last team standing in a bizarre year of NFC West football in 2024, the Los Angeles Rams are off to a very good start in 2025, taking care of the Houston Texans and Tennessee Titans with relative ease to maintain a perfect record through Week 2.
Unfortunately for Sean McVay's club, the road is about to get a whole heck of a lot harder in Week 3, when the Rams have to board a cross-town flight to the City of Brotherly Love for an early-season barometer check against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Now for the Rams' brass, a showdown against the Eagles is nothing new, as the two teams faced off twice last season. The first contest, a late-November showdown at SoFi, was memorable for all of the wrong reasons for LA, as they surrendered 255 rushing yards to Saquon Barkley in one of the ten-best running back performances in a regular season game in NFL history.
And the second? Well, that came in the Divisional Round of the playoffs, where Matthew Stafford and company came mere plays away from punching their ticket back to SoCal for a showdown against the Washington Commanders, but had those hopes crushed by a dominant Jalen Carter performance.
While Barkley has yet to crack 100 yards on the ground in a game so far this season, will the Rams be the team that unfortunately breaks that trend, allowing the Penn State product to dictate the game on his own? Or will McVay have a major counterpunch for Philadelphia, handing them their first loss of the season while proving they deserve to be in the conversation of true Super Bowl contenders?
Buckle up, football fans, this has the potential to be a good one.
Davante Adams, Puka Nacua dominate Adoree' Jackson
In 2024, the Eagles' defense was one of the best in the NFL, with a trio of incredible cornerbacks, two great safeties, and enough strength in the front seven to give opposing offensive coordinators fits against the run and the pass.
In 2025, the Eagles' defense is still very good, but they do have at least one player who is a notable downgrade from the squad the Rams faced in the Divisional Round last fall: CB2.
In the base defense, the Eagles largely run a five-man front, with Zach Baun and rookie Jihaad Campbell off-ball, Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean at perimeter cornerback, and Reed Blankenship and rookie Drew Mukuba holding things down at the safety spots, but when Philly moves to nickel or even the dime? That's when Adoree' Jackson comes in at the second outside cornerback spot, and he has been targeted so far in 2025.
In his first two games of action in a midnight green jersey, Jackson has been targeted a team-leading 14 times, allowing nine catches for 132 yards but no touchdowns explicitly credited to him. Jackson allowed 14.7 yards per completion, nearly a first down per target – 9.4 – and as a result, has been the player opposing quarterbacks have targeted most often against Philadelphia.
Between Davante Adams and Puka Nacua, it's safe to say Stafford has the weapons to make Jackson pay.
So far in 2025, the Rams offense has been a three-man show, with Kyren Williams holding things down on the ground and the Nacua-Adams show effectively serving as the entire passing offense, with the duo out-targeting the rest of the Rams receivers 41 to 19.
Considering McVay's play-calling savvy, if he wants to make the Eagles' defense pay and force Vic Fangio to ease up on his front-seven pressure, all he has to do is make sure Stafford knows where No. 8 is at the start of each play and throw the ball accordingly.
The Rams struggle to slow down Jalen Carter
While the Eagles' CB2 spot is undoubtedly a question mark heading into Week 3, the Rams have a few of their own, especially on the interior of the offensive line, especially if Steve Avila is unable to play at Lincoln Financial Field.
Against the run, the Rams' offensive line has done a pretty good job, opening up holes for Williams and Blake Corum to operate in effectively, but against the pass? Goodness, it's been a very different story.
According to PFF, the Rams don't have a single offensive lineman with even an average pass blocking grade, with Alaric Jackson ranked 41st among tackles in pass blocking grade, Rob Havenstein 50th, Kevin Dotson 52nd among guards, Coleman Shelton 30th among centers, and potential Avila replacement Justin Dedich 64th out of 67 guards with a 36.4 grade. While they might be able to survive on the outside, as the Eagles don't have an elite edge rusher, they do have three very good interior defensive tackles in Jordan Davis, Moro Ojomo, and Carter, who Aaron Donald has said is his second coming.
Even if Avila is able to play, the Rams will have to be prepared for an absolute war in the trenches on every single snap, and may have to limit their passing playbook to eliminate extended concepts that could turn Stafford into a statue in the pocket.
Matthew Stafford outthrows Jalen Hurts in a loss
In both of the games where Stafford went head-to-head against Hurts in 2024, the veteran Rams passer has finished out the game with more passing yards than his foe but failed to secure the win.
Now granted, part of this is because the Eagles simply aren't a team that is overly concerned with winning games through the air, with an elite rushing offense fueling the offense, and a collection of defensive players seemingly designed in a lab to fit what Fangio likes to do. But no matter who is calling the plays on either side of the ball, Nick Sirianni has built a team around managing the clock, preventing big plays, and avoiding turnovers, and that has been very successful overall, as his 50-20 coaching record clearly proves.
To their credit, the Rams have become a much more balanced offense in 2025 than their initial efforts in 2024, with 50 rushing attempts on the ground versus just 62 passes through two games, but because they don't have the best pass blocking, if Philadelphia gets up early, McVay may be forced to abandon that strategy in favor of a riskier brand of football, which is where Fangio's defense really thrives. Unless the Rams can get lucky early on, their losing streak against the Eagles might just extend further into 2025.
