This Rams position group could swing the season, analyst claims

[ASFN Admin]

The Los Angeles Rams made a pair of big moves in the secondary this offseason, and at least one analyst thinks the cornerback room could be the key to how their season plays out.

Yahoo Sports' Nate Tice highlighted the Rams' cornerback group as one of the NFL's most improved position groups heading into 2026, and one that could tilt the NFC in L.A.'s favor this season. He pointed to the obvious additions of Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson as significant upgrades for a defense that was already doing a lot with a little under coordinator Chris Shula.

Los Angeles acquired McDuffie via trade, sending their No. 29 pick in the 2026 draft (and more) to the Kansas City Chiefs. The team then added McDuffie's teammate, Watson, in free agency to give Shula Chiefs top corners.

That familiarity matters. Tice noted that Shula's defense leans heavily on zone blitzes, simulated pressures, and constant role-switching between cornerbacks, safeties, and front-seven players, all designed to create confusion before and after the snap. The Rams led the NFL in dime personnel usage in 2025, running six defensive backs on 32.4% of snaps — the highest rate by any defense since 2020.

This is where McDuffie and Watson come in. Not only are both talent upgrades, but McDuffie has All-Pro ability when playing in the slot and on the outside. And both have experience playing in a defense that likes to blitz and throw a lot of funk at quarterbacks and offensive lines under Steve Spagnuolo in Kansas City. The Chiefs and Rams both have similar rates of split coverage (i.e. running two different concepts on each side) over the past two seasons, with a similar rate of Cover 2, a common coverage call behind inverted or simulated looks to make quarterbacks think they’re getting heated up before catching them with a “softer” coverage look.

The Rams led the NFL in using dime personnel (six defensive backs) with 32.4% of their defensive snaps in 2025, the highest rate by an NFL defense since 2020. Three Rams defensive backs, Quentin Lake, Josh Wallace and Jaylen McCollough, played more than 100 snaps in the slot, and that’s not even including the 89% slot snap rate that midseason acquisition Roger McCreary posted. McDuffie will start on the outside opposite of Watson, but Forbes is still on the roster, and McDuffie can kick inside and be used wherever Shula wants him to make the most impact on the play. It’s not only a scheme and role fit, it’s a gigantic talent upgrade. And Watson is no slouch himself on the outside; he rates as a slightly better than league average cornerback by both eye test and advanced metrics.

The scheme has worked well enough to squeeze production out of Day 3 picks and reclamation projects in the past, but Tice noted the Rams ran into trouble when facing the league's better receivers — getting, as his colleague Charles McDonald puts it, "out-blue chipped."

With the offensive side of the ball anchored by Matthew Stafford and Sean McVay, the Rams enter 2026 as Super Bowl favorites. But Tice's point is that the defense needed shoring up if Los Angeles is going to hold off Seattle and the rest of the NFC. Adding two corners who fit the scheme this cleanly, twice, is a reasonable place to start.

This was the team's biggest weakness from the 2025 season, as the Rams allowed the 19th-most passing yards and passing touchdowns this past season despite going all the way to the NFC title game. Despite their prolific offense, the defense allowed playoff quarterbacks like Sam Darnold, Bryce Young and Caleb Williams to throw all over the secondary, which kept all of those games closer than they needed to be.

Now, with McDuffie and Watson, the secondary should turn into a strength.

This article originally appeared on Rams Wire: This Rams position group could swing the season, analyst claims

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