Rams to Evaluate Kicking Unit After 37-34 OT Loss to Bills

Q: With an elite offense sabotaged by historically bad special teams, who will Sean McVay cut before Sunday's crucial game?

The most likely cut is Harrison Mevis. McVay’s postgame remarks were unusually pointed. He said the field-goal unit “cost us the game tonight” and that he would “evaluate everything,” and the clearest weak link is the kicker. Mevis missed from 50 yards in regulation and then saw a 48-yard overtime try blocked, with reports suggesting it may have been drifting wide left anyway. More broadly, the Rams have shown little trust in his range all season, passing up some longer attempts and treating anything beyond the mid-40s as uncertain. That said, if the Rams make only one immediate move, it may not stop with Mevis. McVay blamed the “field-goal unit,” not just the kicker, which puts protection and operation under scrutiny too. But the team’s recent behavior suggests it prefers changing fringe special-team personnel around the core specialists before making bigger structural moves. It already waived Xavier Smith and Tanner Ingle and promoted or added players such as Dean Connors and Maximus Pulley in response to coverage and return issues. The harder question is whether McVay would make a second major change this quickly, such as moving on from punter Ethan Evans. Evans has also been part of a bottom-tier special-teams profile, but his problems have been less singularly decisive than Mevis’ misses. So the best answer before Sunday is Mevis is the prime candidate to be cut, with the rest of the PAT/field-goal protection unit also under review if McVay wants a broader shake-up.

3 articles · Updated · ESPN · Oct 13

Sean McVay said Los Angeles will "evaluate everything" in its kicking operation after Harrison Mevis missed from 50 yards and had a 48-yarder blocked in overtime.
Those failures decided a 37-34 loss to Buffalo, and McVay said the Rams' PAT and field-goal work was "not even close to good enough" and "cost us the game tonight."
The coach also blamed himself for the sequence before the blocked kick, saying he regretted the third-and-5 call from the Bills 30 that left the Rams settling for a field-goal try.
The latest breakdown fits a longer pattern: the Rams have had three blocked field goals since the start of last season—tied for most in the NFL—and 81 missed or blocked kicks under McVay since 2017, third most in the league.
The defeat dropped Los Angeles to 2-3 and third in the NFC West despite Matthew Stafford's 383 yards and three touchdowns and Puka Nacua's 17 catches for 138 yards and a score.