SEATTLE – Since the Rams acquired him before the 2008 season, Rams punter 
Out of all those tries, Jones had never had a punt blocked. Until Monday night.
Seattle receiver Doug Baldwin came firing off the left side of the Rams’ line and blocked Jones’ punt before it ever really got off his foot and Michael Robinson scooped it up and raced 17 yards for a touchdown to provide a lead the Seahawks would never relinquish.
The result was a familiar one as the Rams dropped to 2-11 on the season with a 30-13 loss at CenturyLink Field on Monday night. The Seahawks improve to 6-7 with the victory and hang on to faint hopes of a wildcard berth in the NFC.
“The blocked punt hurt us early,” Rams coach Steve Spagnuolo said. “We can’t do that special teams wise.”
In a season in which the Rams have seen their special teams hit by dynamic returns that have swung field position, resulted in touchdowns and even ended games, the one thing the Rams hadn’t had was a blocked punt.
With 10:06 to go in the opening quarter, Jones lined up to punt from inside the Rams’ 30. Seattle overloaded the left side of the Rams line. Rams protector and safety
“They showed a “hot” down where the corner comes down and so I called the gunner down,” Dahl said. “I am not really sure what happened. I think he got a good rush off the edge and we had a punt directional called into it. I don’t know exactly what happened but they came on it and were able to get a piece of it and they ended up scoring on it. It wasn’t a good play for us.”
Smith lined up flanked to the left with the responsibility to block Baldwin coming off the edge before running upfield to pursue the returner. But Smith never caught a piece of Baldwin and he came in unharmed.
“We had a new guy there,” Spagnuolo said. “If it was the second punt I would have thought maybe they were attacking it but they obviously planned to do that. We had gone through it. We have got to make that block there. They made a play and it cost us seven points.”
Baldwin ripped the ball off Jones’ foot and Robinson scooped in to pick up the loose ball. Robinson took it in from 17 yards out to make it 7-0, a lead that the Rams could never surmount.
“You get behind and you want to play from ahead,” Spagnuolo said. “We always talk about it’s hard to play defense from behind but I thought we recovered fairly well from that. We were swinging away and it was a pretty tight football game there until the middle of the third quarter...But you have got to recover from those things. We are away, it’s a hostile environment and I did think we recovered. Then we let it get away there at the end of the third quarter.”
Of course, the reason for that inability to catch up was another stagnant performance from an offense led by quarterback
Bradford didn’t practice most of the week but was cleared to go before Monday night. Against Seattle’s tough defense, yards and points were once again
hard to come by for an offense that hasn’t been able to get many of either in recent weeks regardless of who is at quarterback.
That group accumulated just 281 yards of total offense, went three-of-14 on third downs and struggled to finish drives and overcome costly penalties.
As has been the case multiple times this season, the Rams were their own worst enemy in many situations.
“It’s just inconsistency,” Bradford said. “I feel like we have just lacked consistency all year. It’s just really hard to get a rhythm going when you don’t establish the pass and the run early in the game. It seems like we are always fighting to do that throughout the game instead of doing it early.”
After the defense kept them in it for the first half, the Rams found themselves in prime position to cut Seattle’s lead to 3 late in the third quarter.
Bradford hit running back
But the red zone woes that have been a thorn in the Rams side all season showed up again at another inopportune time.
On first down, Jackson was stopped for no gain on a direct snap play. On second down, the Rams opted to call a naked bootleg with Bradford faking a handoff to Jackson headed to the left side.
Seattle had aggressively pursued in the red zone and the Rams hoped the misdirection would give Bradford an easy path to a touchdown. Instead, safety Atari Bigby never let his focus stray from Bradford, hitting him as he turned and forcing an intentional grounding penalty.
“That was something we had seen on film,” Bradford said. “We put it in the last time we played them we just didn’t have the opportunity to run it. We kept it in this week. We felt like the guy on the backside would really be hard down the line trying to tackle the run from the backside and I could walk it in. The guy just made a good play, didn’t go for the fake at all and came right at me.”
A third down pass fell incomplete and the Rams again settle for a field goal, this time from 29 yards out. Instead of a 13-10 deficit, it was 13-6.
Given another shot to convert in a similar situation, the Rams finally broke through late as Jackson punched it in from 1 yard out for their lone touchdown.
For the second week in a row, the Rams found themselves embroiled in a pitcher’s duel as their defense showed up with a strong first half.
The Rams defense held the Seahawks to 129 total yards and was particularly effective against Seattle bellcow back Marshawn Lynch.
Lynch and the Seahawks rushed 15 times for 42 yards in the first 30 minutes, an average of just 2.8 yards per attempt.
In addition, the Rams dropped Seattle quarterback Tarvaris Jackson twice for sacks, recovered a fumble, had two tackles for loss in the run game and pressured Jackson a number of other times.
The only points that unit surrendered came on a 42-yard field goal from Seattle kicker Steven Hauschka.
Like last week in San Francisco, the defense was unable to hold up for the entire game as Seattle tacked on points in the second half with a pair of
Hauschka field goals, a 29-yard touchdown catch by Baldwin and a 16-yard touchdown run by Lynch.
“We have got to play four quarters,” end
