Matthew Stafford threw four touchdown passes and Davante Adams caught two of them in the best game of his Los Angeles tenure as the Rams routed the New York Giants 28-6 on Monday Night Football at SoFi Stadium. But the result was overshadowed by what happened on New York's opening drive, when rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart went down with a left knee injury that will keep him out for at least this week and clouded an otherwise promising start to his second NFL season.
Stafford completed 22 of 31 passes for 327 yards without an interception, and his fourth touchdown of the night — a 5-yard strike to Terrance Ferguson in the fourth quarter — made him the sixth quarterback in NFL history to reach 426 career touchdown passes, moving him past Philip Rivers. Adams did the heaviest lifting on the receiving end, finishing with eight catches for 195 yards, both career highs since he joined the Rams, including a leaping 31-yard score on the first possession and an 11-yard fade in the third quarter. The Rams piled up 481 yards of total offense to New York's 182 and won comfortably despite committing two turnovers, a lopsidedness reflected in the final box score.
The scoring came in bursts. Adams' first touchdown, with 11 seconds left in the first quarter, set the tone; Kyren Williams added a 10-yard touchdown catch early in the second quarter before Dominic Zvada's 24-yard field goal got New York on the board just before halftime. Adams' second touchdown, an 11-yard catch, pushed the lead to 21-3 in the third quarter, and Zvada's 52-yarder was the Giants' only other scoring play of the night. Ferguson's catch in the fourth quarter closed out the scoring.
The injury that reshaped the night
Dart's evening ended on New York's opening series, when he was hit by Rams edge rushers Byron Young and Josaiah Stewart while throwing deep on third down. His left knee bent awkwardly on the play, and he did not return, watching the second half in street clothes. X-rays taken at the stadium came back negative, and the team said Dart would undergo an MRI on Tuesday to determine the full extent of the damage. Giants coach John Harbaugh described the injury after the game as being "in the neighborhood of" a sprained knee ligament, language that lines up with the team's own injury update and outside reporting that the Giants fear a sprained MCL. Jameis Winston took over at quarterback and struggled in relief, completing 11 of 27 passes for 111 yards with an interception as New York's offense never found a rhythm, managing just 182 total yards for the game, according to CBS Sports' account of the injury and its fallout.
The injury is a significant setback for a Giants team that had built real momentum behind its rookie. A week earlier, Dart had thrown for 230 yards and three touchdowns without an interception in a 28-20 win over Dallas, by most measures the best game of his young career. New York entered Monday 1-0 and left it 1-1, its offense abruptly without the player who had been steering its early-season turnaround. The Rams, meanwhile, evened their own record to 1-1 after an opening-week loss, a result that made Monday's dominant performance feel less like a statement and more like a necessary course correction.
Monday's game also marked the return of three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year Aaron Donald, back in a Rams uniform after a 32-month absence and credited with three tackles in the win — a subplot that gave the SoFi Stadium crowd of 73,773 something to cheer on defense even as the Rams' offense did most of the damage.
Reaction from both sidelines
Adams, who has now posted two of the best statistical games of his 12-year career since arriving in Los Angeles, credited the standard the team has set for itself under coach Sean McVay:
If you're trying to be great, be a Super Bowl-caliber team, you've got to hold yourself to a high standard.
Davante Adams, Rams wide receiver
McVay was similarly effusive about his top target, pointing to the chemistry the receiver has built with Stafford since the two reunited in Los Angeles this season. On the other sideline, Harbaugh was blunt about what his team needed to fix, saying simply that New York had been outplayed from start to finish and would spend Tuesday going back over the tape rather than dwelling on Dart's injury alone.
They outperformed us, they out-executed us, and we just need to go back to the film room and fix some things.
John Harbaugh, Giants head coach
Both teams turn around quickly on short weeks. The Giants host Tennessee on Sunday with Dart's availability likely to hinge on Tuesday's MRI results and Winston expected to start if the rookie is sidelined. The Rams travel to face Denver in a Sunday night matchup, carrying momentum from a performance that saw their passing game operate close to its ceiling — a version of the offense McVay and Stafford will be trying to sustain as the schedule gets tougher.
