Can the Rams Be as Dominant After the Bye as They Have in Past Years?

In Week Eight of the 2025 NFL season, the Rams enter their bye with a 5-2 record. While some Rams fans might bemoan this record, because the Rams choked away two very winnable games against the Eagles and the 49ers, comparing the team to the two years prior is a night-and-day difference. Going into the season, a large question looming over the Rams was whether or not they could avoid their abysmal starts of the previous two years. In 2023, the Rams entered their Week 10 bye with a record of 3-6. In 2024, it wasn’t much better with a record of 1-4 when entering their Week Six bye. By comparison, entering Week Eight at 5-2 is so much better, and Rams fans should be grateful for the difference in how the team has started.

​Part of the reason for these early problems was the injury bug plaguing Los Angeles early in the season, before the bye helped the Rams get healthy to end the year. Thus far, the Rams have successfully avoided the injury bug for the most part. Their only major, multi-week injuries are Ahkello Witherspoon being out for an extended time with a broken collarbone and offensive linemen Steve Avila and Rob Havenstein missing a couple of games each to nagging injuries. This is huge for Los Angeles, especially after a summer full of offseason rumors surrounding the health of Matthew Stafford’s back and Alaric Jackson’s blood clots. It is worth noting that Puka Nacua also missed Week Seven after suffering an ankle injury in Week Six, and there is currently no confirmed timetable to return. The good thing is that Nacua returned to play in Week Six after the injury, and may have just sat out Week Seven to avoid further injury risk. He has the bye to get healthy, and still has a chance to play in Week Nine. That being said, if Nacua misses extended time, his absence could be one that severely alters the course of the season, even with Davante Adams to take over as the top pass catcher.

​For two years in a row, Los Angeles has gone on a tear after the bye, to the point where the team before and after the bye were almost completely different teams. In 2023, the Rams went 7-1 to end the year, and in 2024, they went 9-3 while resting their starters in the final game. If this pattern continues into 2025, it can indicate two different things. Pessimistically, it could mean that the Rams have a habit of streaky play and could devolve into a completely unrecognizable and messy team after the bye. Optimistically, it shows that Los Angeles is one of the best teams at closing out a season, no matter how the season starts, especially after getting a rest week to reevaluate their team’s avenue to success. It will be the job of Sean McVay and the Los Angeles coaching staff to ensure that the latter is what comes true. The Rams still have a lot of room to improve, and McVay may be able to implement changes that carry out the momentum of the team over the course of the season. The first of these will be an improvement in the red zone. It would also be vital to see improvement on special teams kick blocking. Rams will come out of the bye to face an easier opponent in the New Orleans Saints, before ramping up to face two division rivals and then the current NFC South leader, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They will have to play three teams with the same current record as them in a row, and they will need to win two or three of these games to dominate the way Los Angeles is used to after the bye. They also cannot look past a Saints team that has been competitive despite their poor record. The Rams surely have a chance to achieve this goal, especially if Nacua is healthy for most of this stretch, but it is by no means a cakewalk. These next four games will be indicative of which side of the coin the 2025 post-bye Rams will fall on.