Whicker: Goff couldn’t beat Atlanta from the sideline

LOS ANGELES — Playoff experience didn’t beat the Rams Saturday, not exactly. Playoff expediency did.

The Atlanta Falcons made no turnovers. They identified the Rams’ rush defense as a sore they could irritate, and they did. They punted when they should have, and they kicked field goals, from 54 and 51 yards, when they needed to. They needed to remove Todd Gurley from the passing game and they did that, too.

They checked all the boxes they could find and they won, 26-13, breaking the Rams’ express after one long, glorious lap.

Afterward, Jared Goff was repeatedly asked to mouth the we-had-a-good-season speech. It should give hope to Rams fans that he would not.

“It (stinks) to have to quit playing,” Goff said. “We’ve got some really good dudes in there. The more big games you can play, the better off you are. As far as playoff experience goes, I don’t even know what that means. You just play the game and they played it better than we did. If this had happened two weeks ago like this, they would have beaten us then, too.”

Often the quarterback has to bear the cross when a season dissipates. Goff left that honor to Pharoh Cooper, the Pro Bowl returner who muffed a punt and fumbled a kickoff, and the Falcons took those chances to score 10 points.

“The first one was a fluke, the second one I know he wishes he had back,” Goff said. “Those special teams guys have won games for us all year.”

Goff was actually fine, considering he was belabored by the pass rush on the first two series, and that the Rams ran only 10 plays in the first quarter and six in the third. They only had the ball for 22:25. That wasn’t enough bandwidth for all the musicians in the band.

“We had to wait to settle into the game,” Goff said, “but we’ve done that before.”

Goff actually made enough big plays. At the end of the first half he drilled Robert Woods with a beautiful 39-yarder down the middle, to set up what might have been a touchdown try if Rob Havenstein hadn’t been caught holding. Sean McVay chose the field goal there and a 13-10 deficit.

Even after the Falcons went ahead by 13, Goff whisked the Rams downfield in a hurry, without blowing a timeout. He went 11 for 13 on that drive until he threw what appeared to be a 5-yard score to Tyler Higbee. At that point there was 2:16 left and the Rams didn’t need to kick onside, with all three time outs in hand.

But then Higbee fell victim to that popular game show, Catch Or Not A Catch, and the Rams had to pick up a fourth-and-5. Deion Jones, one of a horde of quick and brazen Atlanta defenders, broke up the try to Sammy Watkins.

“That’s what I feel good about,” Aaron Donald said. “We got down, and we made some mistakes we shouldn’t have made, but our guys came out and fought.”

Goff had three completions for 20 or more yards. He just didn’t make enough little plays that could sprout into big ones, couldn’t find Gurley on those screens and flares that have overloaded defenses all year. Although Gurley got 101 rushing yards, he caught four balls for just 10 yards. Even on a short week and with travel, the Falcons found the instruction manual and followed it rigidly.

“Really we just didn’t have enough plays,” McVay said. “We only tried one of those screens, and they were in a jam structure early on and forced an incompletion. It really goes back to the rhythm. We weren’t able to get enough plays off.”

The Falcons filled the box with as many as nine defenders and overpopulated the middle and the flat. Then their cornerbacks won more man-to-man battles with the L.A. receivers than they lost.

Offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian also dodged the pitchforks for another week by calling 39 runs, a tactic that worked better after Michael Brockers, the left  defensive end, left with a knee problem.

“Michael has been so stout for us,” McVay said. “They did a good job of getting runs off consistently.”

The observant Falcons noted that the Rams were 30th in a 32-team league in yards given up per rush (4.7).

“We thought we might be able to crease them,” Ryan said, “but the best thing is that we stayed with it  even though we didn’t do much with it in the first half. We thought our offensive line could lean on them.  It was tough sledding for sure, but it was our best plan for success.”

The Falcons needed only one home run and they got it with 7:22 left in the third quarter. Working against a corner blitz, Ryan flipped a screen to Mohamed Sanu, who set up his blockers and burst for 52 yards. Two plays later, Ryan slipped on the annoyingly slick turf but still was able to lob an 8-yard score to Julio Jones, for the 13-point lead.

You could probably say the lack of experience didn’t necessarily hurt the Rams, but the wealth of it helped Atlanta. Last year the Falcons won the NFC and then, as you might have heard, let a 25-point lead evaporate in the Super Bowl. Some of them were around in 2012 when the Falcons came within a play of beating San Francisco for the NFC title. This was Ryan’s ninth playoff start. The amplified Coliseum noise was just a low buzz to them.

“You have to keep yourself in a mental space where you’re not worried about the finality of the game,” Ryan said. “The challenge is to stay locked in and keep your mindset on execution.”

The Rams may be great or disappointing in 2018 but they won’t be the same. Their schedule will be tougher and certainly more disjointed, with more prime-time games. They probably won’t have a healthy offensive line for 16 games. The new-team smell that pervaded Thousand Oaks all season won’t return.

But the Rams will be patching, not rebuilding, and if you thought they had the coach and the quarterback before Saturday night, you must feel they still do.

“I don’t think the game was too big for our players,” McVay said. It wasn’t. It was too quick.