Before the bye week, the Rams offense was in a bit of a funk. They couldnt finish enough drives to put the pesky Dolphins away or hang with the Packers, and got absolutely shut down by the Patriots after poking the bear with a 7-0 lead. Predictable questions resurfaced about Sam Bradford's ceiling and quiet doubts began bubbling up in Rams Nation.

Then, Bradford and the Rams put together a heroic performance versus San Francisco, putting up more points against their elite defense than any team aside from the Giants. Sam Bradford set a new personal high in DYAR (an advanced stat tracked by Football Outsiders that measures yardage per play above average), and set a season high in QBR with a 275-yard, 2-TD performance.

Of course, as we all know, that could have been a 355-yard, 3-TD day but for a fateful presnap penalty against Brandon Gibson, but that's not the subject of this article. Instead, lets look at six areas where the Rams showed improvement, and can sustain that improvement over the second half.

This touchdown from Sam Bradford to Austin Pettis capped one of the most impressive clutch drives we've seen from Bradford in a Rams uniform, and put the team in position to upser the mighty 49ers. Against a top-shelf defense bringing pressure up the gut, this play required - and got - perfect execution from the quarterback, running back, inside protection, and the wide receiver. 

[Editor's note: We're taking a different approach in this week's lesson in football from Coach Shields, as he is giving us his breakdown in video format. We broke this into two videos, roughly split between pre-snap and post-snap breakdowns.] 

As an entertainment job, there aren't many beats better than covering the New York Jets. As a sportswriting job, there aren't many worse.

The records of the Rams (3-5-1) and Jets (3-6) are very similar, but the surrounding storylines couldn't be more different. It’s all about expectations. The Rams' narrative tells of a new coach, a very young team, and a starting quarterback who is starting to shine. The Jets' narrative is basically a weekly review of "Springtime for Hitler," peppered with as many damaging player quotes as you can find.

How much of this is perception and how much is reality, and how closely matched are these two teams? If you're asking, then you're interested in real football talk.

But if you want to talk real football and the Jets, you first have to outshout the likes of professional carnival barkers like Skip Bayless, Darren Rovell, the various New York tabloids, professional fantasy pundits, pretty much all of ESPN, and even Rex Ryan himself. And then, once you've got an audience's attention, the truths you have to tell aren't much prettier than the meta-narratives floating around the broadcast world. They're just more real.

That's life in the trenches for our friend Joe Caporoso, lead writer of the excellent TurnOnTheJets.com. He takes some time out of his busy schedule of media debunking to answer a few of our questions, and give us some real insight to this Jets team.

In some ways, watching game film of the Rams vs the 49ers is an absolute joy, to see a team execute its gameplan to perfection. In others, that same film is agony to watch. Most of the latter moments came on defense, which had a very uneven performance and put our offense behind the 8-ball throughout the second half.

We'll write up examples of things the Rams did well in a related article. But this feature focuses on three examples of plays that the Rams failed to defend time and time again. These aren't individual effort plays, like missed tackles or dumb penalties; these are repeated problems that would appear to be coachable and fixable.

In this game, they flat-out cost us a win.

1. An inability to defend the crossing pattern

This happened multiple times in the game, but few were more critical than this 3rd-and-15 in the second quarter on what would be Alex Smith's only scoring drive of the day.

A signature win for the St Louis Rams turned into a prime-time display of catastrophic failures that still plague this franchise, as well as the tantalizing possibilities inherent in this young and spiritied team. The result was a 24-24 tie that leaves Rams nation stunned, and gives the 49ers fans a huge sigh of relief.

The Rams had this game won - and then taken away - so many times that we have to count them to be sure.

1) They had it won early, jumping out to a 14-0 advantage on touchdowns by Brian Quick and Steven Jackson, and then knocking Alex Smith out of the game after he led a scoring drive.

2) They had it won even after the Niners closed the gap under Colin Kaepernick in the second half, ready to receive the kickoff up 17-14 with eight minutes to go.

3) They had it won even after the Niners recovered an awful fumble by Isaiah Pead on that kickoff and scored a murderously quick touchdown, as Sam Bradford led his team down the field on a signature comeback drive, scoring a go-ahead touchdown and leaving just over a minute on the clock.

4) They had it won even after their defense couldn't hold onto that lead, utterly failing to set the edge on defense and allowing Kaepernick to make plays with his feet again and again to send the game into overtime.

5) They had it won on the first play of overtime, as Sam Bradford uncorked a gorgeous downfield pass to Danny Amendola, who somehow got behind his man and made a brilliant catch and run to give the Rams a first and goal inside the five yard line ... until the referees took it away.

6) They had it won even after having to punt the ball away and watching their defense continue to have no idea how to play against a mobile quarterback, as David Akers honked an easy field goal.

7) They had it won as rookie sensation Greg Zuelein drove a 53-yard coffin nail straight through the uprights at Candlestick, until the referees noticed the play clock standing at zero.

8) They had it ... maybe ... until the referees made one final intrusion into the game by failing to get the ball spotted as time ticked ominously away. A final ten seconds that may or may not have made the ultimate difference in our last gasp.

In one sense, this game was an astounding victory of spirit for a Rams team that showed up with fight on their minds and refused to back down against the bullies of the division. In another very real sense, this was a horrendous opportunity lost, an opportunity - multiple opportunities, as stated above - to get a statement win to start the second half.

A game the Rams won and lost... could only end in a tie. A tie that means essentially nothing in the standings - not a loss, not a win, just a void. A void that utterly fails to capture the torture of conflicting emotions that comes out of this game. Every judgement of every component of this game comes with nearly equal parts good and bad...

In less than two years, Jim Harbaugh has made the San Francisco 49ers into one of the NFL's premier division bullies, rivaling only the Patriots and Ravens (coached by his brother John) for their level of domination of their own division. Combined, the three teams have lost only two games to their rival teams.

At quarterback, these three teams couldn't be more different. In Tom Brady, the Patriots have one of the game's elite quarterbacks; in Joe Flacco, the Ravens have a big-armed monster that is becoming more dangerous as a passer; in Alex Smith, the 49ers have ... Alex Smith.

By far the most impressive job Jim Harbaugh has done in San Francisco is in turning Smith into a usable - even valuable - commodity in the passing game. Every other component of the 49ers' success - a punishing defensive front, near-elite weapons in Vernon Davis and Frank Gore - was inherited. So much so that only one draft pick from Harbaugh's two seasons as coach - Aldon Smith - has cracked the starting rotation.

So how has he done it? And what can the Rams learn from his approach?

I usually try to look for something unique to discuss in the preview. However, the game plan this week is so obvious; I am just going to go with it. Nothing set forth below will guarantee a Rams win, but I believe the numbers support the argument that you have to do this to have a chance to win.    

1.         35+ RUNS

San Francisco has the second best defense in the NFL. They are 5^th against the run allowing  a measly 87.4 yards a game. They are 2^nd against the pass allowing a paltry 184 yards a game. Looking at those stats might cause you to conclude that you can’t have success against the 49ers by focusing on the pass or the run. However, those stats do not tell the full story.