Rams overcome slow start to rout New York Giants

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — It takes a couple of turns of the ignition key sometimes, but when the Rams’ offense gets started, it fires on as many cylinders as any in the NFL.

Add head-starts from the defense, and it’s hard to keep up with.

In what became a 38-11 victory over the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, the Rams began slugglishly before roaring to life, led by Matthew Stafford and, well, almost everyone else in blue and yellow.

Coach Sean McVay couldn’t help thinking about the frustration of the first quarter, when third-down sacks ended both of the Rams’ possessions.

“I thought we could be a lot sharper offensively,” McVay said. “We’ve got to start faster. There’s no excuse. We’ve got to be better than that. But we’ll take the win, and I thought guys did a nice job.”

When the offense got going, it quickly showed what McVay wishes it could be from the first snap.

But you might put it the other way, that the cold start made the eventual combustion all the more impressive.

After punts ended the first two possessions, and back-to-back penalties to begin the third put the Rams in first and 21, the switch was flipped.

Five consecutive big gains, with five different players getting the ball, showed the difference in class between Sunday’s teams.

Running back Darrell Henderson ripped off a nine-yard gain. Stafford hit wide receiver Cooper Kupp up the right sideline for 28 yards into Giants territory. Stafford connected with tight end Tyler Higbee on the left side for 10. Back on the ground, running back Sony Michel ran over a tackler at the end of a 15-yard charge. To cap it off, wide receiver Robert Woods got open over the middle, caught Stafford’s pass at the 10, spun right and scored untouched.

A New York crowd that had been excited by the Giants’ 14-play opening drive and 3-0 lead fell silent and would stay that way on a sunny but crisp afternoon, until Eli Penny’s short run put the home team in the end zone for the first time with 6:21 to play.

The victory made the Rams 5-1, including 3-0 on the road. The Giants fell to 1-5.

After much-anticipated games against the Buccaneers (a win), Cardinals (loss) and Seahawks (win), the Rams faced the question of whether they could maintain their intensity in a run of games against the Giants, Lions and Texans, beginning with a 10 a.m. L.A. time kickoff Sunday.

Under those circumstances, a 27-point win was nothing to complain about.

“I think it’s just not listening to outside noise,” Rapp said of fighting off a letdown. “It’s about taking care of our business and just playing our ball.”

The Rams would score on four of their five possessions in the second quarter and their first two in the second half, thanks in no small part to two interceptions by safety Taylor Rapp and one by cornerback Robert Rochell.

Stafford completed 22 of 28 passes for 251 yards, four touchdowns and one interception, while being sacked more than once in a game for the first time this year, before going to the sideline for safety early in the fourth quarter and letting John Wolford see his first action of the season.

Kupp had nine receptions for 130 yards and his sixth and seventh touchdowns of the season. Henderson ground out 78 yards and a touchdown on 21 carries. Henderson caught a scoring pass too.

Two of those touchdowns, Kupp’s first and Henderson’s, were set up by big plays by a defense that had its splashiest game of the season, even if it did come against a Giants offense that began without injured running back Saquon Barkley and receiver Kenny Golladay and lost receiver Kadarius Toney early.

A strip sack of Giants quarterback Daniel Jones by Ogbonnia Okoronkwo, and fumble recovery by Leonard Floyd, set up a three-yard sidearm touchdown pass from Stafford to Kupp just inside the right goal-line pylon to make it 14-3 in the second quarter.

Rapp’s first interception gave the Rams the ball deep in Giants territory again, and Henderson went over from two yards out to make it 21-3.

Henderson scored again on the next series, hauling in a 25-yard pass from Stafford at the goal line, and it had become a rout before halftime.

At that point, though, the Rams were only one for five in converting third downs, and there had been penalties and sacks against what had been the league’s least-penalized and least sacked-team.

“I don’t want to continue to come up here and continue to say the same things,” said McVay, who has seen the offense start slowly repeatedly. “We’ve got to do a better job. I’ve got to do a better job. It was a great job by our defense putting us in position to be able to score points as a team.”

After giving up chunks of yardage on the Giants’ first possession, with Rochell burned twice by Toney, the secondary did well in the first of at least three games it will need Terrell Burgess, David Long and Donte Deayon to make up for the absence of injured cornerback Darious Williams.

“I thought they did a hell of a job today, like they’ve been doing all season,” Stafford said of the defense. “We didn’t start as fast as we wanted to, and they kept us right there in it.

“They know once we hit the ground running, we’re tough to stop.”

It says something about the Rams’ expectations, Kupp said, that a team can win 38-11 and think it can improve.

“It does speak to the standard we have as a team and an offense and what we’re supposed to do,” Kupp said. “This is the result we wanted, but as an offense it’s not up to our standard in terms of the process of how we execute as a unit.

“We’ve got the right guys. We have all the right guys that know we can be better.”