Rams, Matthew Stafford can’t change losing ways in Green Bay

GREEN BAY, Wis. — The Rams hoped to turn the calendar back a month Sunday. Back to when Matthew Stafford was an MVP contender. Back to when they were tied for the best record in the NFL. And back to when they were deservedly confident about making a run to a home-field Super Bowl.

Instead they turned it back 10 months, to the loss to the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field that shook them out of last season’s Super Bowl dream.

With a 36-28 loss in front of 77,948 fans on a freezing day at Lambeau, the Rams finished a winless November and Stafford wrapped up a disastrous one.

More turnovers by Stafford handed the Packers their first and last touchdowns. A questionable fourth-down call by coach Sean McVay left the Rams in another early-game hole. The defense was given too much to do in the face of all that and Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

“Lot of the same narratives,” McVay said after the Rams’ third straight loss, which was also Stafford’s third straight with an interception returned for a touchdown. “We turned the ball over too many times. We can’t get behind against a good football team like that.

“We’ve got to stop with some of these self-inflicted wounds, and that’s going to continue to be a focus and concentration for us, and then (we’ll) expect to start to see some results.”

The result left the Rams 7-4 — after they’d been 7-1 on Halloween — still solidly No. 5 in NFC playoff seedings but looking more like a wild card now that they’re two full games behind the Cardinals in the NFC West.

Meanwhile, the Packers are 9-3 and coasting in the NFC North.

Following losses to the Titans and 49ers, the Rams had a bye week to reset, making it all the more shocking that the same things kept happening to them.

“We’re too good to be losing games like this,” Rams cornerback Jalen Ramsey said. “We’re not playing like we’re good right now.”

The Rams were down by 19 points at the start of the fourth quarter before Stafford hit Odell Beckham Jr. for 54 yards and the wide receiver’s first L.A. touchdown, and then found Cooper Kupp for a 2-point conversion.

But that was only after Stafford, throwing to Kupp on third and 7 at the Rams 28 late in the third, had his pass picked off and run back for a touchdown by cornerback Rasul Douglas.

“You can’t come into Lambeau Field and have three turnovers and play the game you want to play,” Stafford said, including punt return J.J. Koski’s fumble that led to a Packers field goal.

Stafford said he sees no common denominator in his six turnovers in the past three games.

“You’ve got to take ‘em all individually,” said Stafford, who was acquired by the Rams in the trade for Jared Goff and draft picks mere days after their playoff loss to the Packers last January. “I know that’s tough for you guys to hear, for everybody to hear, but that’s the truth of the matter.

“I’m going to do everything I can to be as good as I possibly can with the football, while still trying to be efficient and explosive and do all the things we want to do as an offense.

“Can’t do that if you don’t have the ball,” he said in a nod to the turnovers and the Packers’ 39 minutes 40 seconds of ball control.

A low-scoring game seemed possible with the temperature 37 degrees kickoff and 28 at the end, with flags blowing in a 14-mph wind.

The fact it didn’t turn out that way wasn’t all about offense.

As they did in their losses to the Titans and 49ers on Stafford interceptions, the Rams quickly fell behind by double digits because of mistakes.

First it was a Stafford fumble on a sack by linebacker Rashad Gary. The Packers took over at the Rams’ 6. Broken left pinky toe and all, Rodgers ran it in around right end after freezing cornerback Jalen Ramsey by faking a pass.

Next, it was McVay’s gambling decision to go for it on fourth down and 1 at the Rams 29-yard line. Darrell Henderson, who’d been stopped for 1 yard on third and 2, was upended for no gain on fourth. The defense did its job, holding the Packers to a field goal, but that made it 10-0 early in the second quarter.

Stafford tried to keep the Rams back in the game.

He hit Van Jefferson with a long pass at the Packers 35, and the receiver stayed on his feet after contact with a defender and completed a 79-yard touchdown play. He threaded a 6-yard touchdown pass to running back Darrell Henderson, who held on at the goal line as he was hit by linebacker Krys Barnes. In between, the Rams got a field goal after Robert Rochell recovered Randall Cobb’s muff of a fair catch on a Johnny Hekker punt.

But Rodgers responded to that by leading the Packers on the longest drive of the game, an 89-yarder that included passes for 43 to Davante Adams and 27 and 18 for the touchdown to Cobb.

Rodgers ended up with his third game of 300 or more yards passing this season, while Adams ended up with his fourth game of 100 yards or more receiving.

Stafford finished with his sixth 300-plus-yards game, completing 21 of 38 for 302 yards, three touchdowns and the one interception.

In view of Stafford’s inconsistency, Jefferson said teammates have to be supportive of Stafford.

“Matthew is an elite player,” Jefferson said. “He needs to be better. We all need to be better.”

Under similar circumstances when Goff was the Rams’ quarterback last year, McVay called him out, saying, “Our quarterback’s got to take better care of the football.”

But the coach wasn’t happy Sunday when a reporter asked if it was time to do the same with Stafford.

“Listen, this is a team game, all right?” McVay said. “I’m not interested in revisiting the past and some of the things that haven’t always gone the way that we wanted (them) to. There’s a lot of different snaps, there’s a lot of things that he’s (Stafford) done at a really high level. When you want to just isolate those individual plays, of course we want to be able to play better. It’s not always exclusively on him.

“We’ve got a guy that’s got great ownership. I’ve got great confidence in this guy. I’m not going to sit here and criticize our players. I’m going to look at it, I’m going to say here’s where we can fix it, here’s where we can correct it, and that’s what I feel like my job is as a coach.

“I don’t mean to get upset, but this is a very important thing to all of us. I have total confidence and belief in Matthew Stafford. And I think the narrative — everyone wants to throw out ‘six turnovers’ — all of those have a different story, and not all of those are his fault.”

McVay concluded: “This is a great team game. We’re going to stay connected.”

The Rams host the Jacksonville Jaguars next Sunday hoping December will be better.