Inside Sean McVay’s Beautiful Mind

[Prime Time]

https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/2/1/18206647/sean-mcvay-jared-goff-rams-super-bowl-offense

Inside Sean McVay’s Beautiful Mind
In a rapidly changing NFL, the Rams offense remains ahead of the curve. McVay’s master plan has been to maximize every advantage, constantly keep teams guessing, and give Jared Goff easy options on every single play.
By Kevin Clark

Getty Images/Ringer illustration

The narrative about the NFC champion Los Angeles Rams is that they are changing the NFL. Their true genius, and that of their 33-year-old head coach Sean McVay, is that they are changing very little. Think of a navy suit, said Dan Orlovsky, who played quarterback for the Rams last summer. “Every guy has a got a nice navy suit, but the analogy is: Sean McVay has the same navy suit, but he’s got really cool shoes, snazzy ties, pocket squares. You don’t. He has so many variables—how he creates plays where guys end up in the same spots—but how they get there changes.”

Orlovsky says McVay is better at polishing and perfecting plays than creating them—“more of a wrinkler than a creator”—and considers pure play invention the domain of Kansas City coach Andy Reid and New England offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. What McVay has done is just as impressive: He’s taken countless plays and schemes that already existed and perfected them for the current era.

There is no Rams offense without the modern era of football, and there is no modern era of football without the Rams offense. “The Rams,” said Orlovsky, who is now an ESPN analyst, “are the perfect storm of where the NFL is right now.”

They’ve identified trends and adjusted them to their needs. The middle of the field was considered closed for most of football history until rule changes preventing contact (and middle linebackers getting smaller) made it a less dangerous place to tread. It’s become easier than ever for receivers to get open, and the Rams have taken advantage. They use sports science and technology to monitor players and have emphasized player rest.

“We are the forefront of the mesh between college and pro football,” said Jedd Fisch, the team’s senior offensive assistant, referring to the trend of the 2018 season.

There’s a simple explanation for how the Rams perfected their schemes: They think about it a lot. “The starting point, really, is throughout the year, and throughout the whole time we’ve been here, is taking in the whole league,” said Shane Waldron, the team’s passing game coordinator. “We’re looking at what people are doing on offense, what’s working, maybe some of the different rules and how that affects what routes work.”

According to NFL Next Gen Stats, quarterback Jared Goff passed into tight coverage—1 yard or less of separation from a defender—on just 13 percent of his throws. Of quarterbacks who started all 16 games this season, only Patrick Mahomes II and Kirk Cousins did so at a lower rate, and Goff’s average pass on those throws traveled 1.4 yards farther than Cousins’s in the air.

Goff was also second behind Mahomes in air yards to the sticks, which measures how close to a first down a pass was. Goff’s average pass was 0.1 yards ahead of the sticks, a big reason why the Rams led the NFL with 401 first downs. For comparison’s sake, Derek Carr, Eli Manning, and Matthew Stafford all average 2 yards short of the sticks.

On short passes thrown over the middle of the field, the Rams are first in the NFL, averaging 9.6 yards, and sixth in completion percentage (77 percent). When they throw deep in the middle of the field, they rank fourth, averaging 19.4 yards, and fifth in completion percentage (65 percent).

With Goff as his quarterback, McVay has created perfect modern passing plays, taking advantage of huge windows at exactly the right distance.

“It’s not necessarily a year-to-year thing, it’s a week-to-week thing,” said Chris Shula, the Rams’ assistant linebackers coach and a college friend of McVay’s. “He’s so self-conscious that he’ll change whatever doesn’t work in one week. He studies our offense and ourselves just as hard as he does our opponents’.”

The Rams offense relies in part on giving the same looks while running vastly different plays. Torry Holt, the seven-time Pro Bowler and former Rams superstar, told me that when he was a focal point of the “Greatest Show on Turf” 20 years ago, contact with defensive backs was so physical at the line of scrimmage that it was hard for receivers to get into their routes.

“You really had to work and be crafty getting off the line of scrimmage to even get into your patterns. Nowadays it is more free release so they can penetrate the defense more quickly, which to me puts a lot more stress on the defense,” Holt said. This freedom allows the Rams to disguise their plays until the last second.

“Post-snap for the first second, the route concept-wise looks the same,” said Orlovsky. “As a defensive guy, you don’t know if it’s an out or deep. Guys like Robert Woods control the guessing game.”

Sometimes defenses get that guessing game very wrong:


View: https://twitter.com/riversmccown/status/1091056547986399233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1091056547986399233&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theringer.com%2Fnfl%2F2019%2F2%2F1%2F18206647%2Fsean-mcvay-jared-goff-rams-super-bowl-offense

And it can create wide-open throws in the middle of the field:


View: https://twitter.com/camdasilva/status/1087804060156219392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1087804060156219392&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theringer.com%2Fnfl%2F2019%2F2%2F1%2F18206647%2Fsean-mcvay-jared-goff-rams-super-bowl-offense

When the Rams bunch their skill players together before the snap, it allows them to pass, run, or do nearly anything they want. “Reduced splits and stacks and bunches do get hands off you sometimes because [defensive backs] have to soften up and defend all areas of the cut,” Zac Taylor, the team’s quarterbacks coach, explains.

But this doesn’t explain why Rams receiversget so open all the time. There are, Orlovsky says, two ways to get open in an NFL game. One is to be a Julio Jones–type who can get open by pure talent. The other is play-action. Goff uses play-action 35 percent of the time, far more than any other quarterback this year who has started half of his team’s games. Goff’s rating is a full 20 points higher than when he does not use play-action.

Play-action creates separation, which is helped further by rule changes. Penalties on “defenseless receivers” have risen over the last decade. Shula said offensive players know defenders “have to hit the strike zone,” referring to the parts of a receiver a defender can hit. This allows receivers even more separation since a defender might hesitate to deliver a big hit over the middle of the field.

Quarterbacks can also hang in the pocket longer due to new rules governing contact, which resulted in an epidemic of penalties earlier this season. “It’s funny seeing some of these games played, even a couple of years ago, [like] the Denver game against New England two years ago. Now you can’t land on the quarterback. You can stand a little firmer in the pocket,” Shula said.

Goff leads the NFL in passes that take over 2.5 seconds; the Rams’ great offensive line helps, but coaches say that stat is helped by the fact that he’s less likely to get clobbered. When kept clean in these playoffs, Goff and Brady are the only quarterbacks to have accuracy ratings above 80 percent.

Fisch thinks NFL defenses have shifted over the last few years. Whereas Rex Ryan’s Ravens and Jets defenses once impacted how teams hired and schemed, now teams are influenced by Pete Carroll’s Seahawks system. “It’s trended to more of a cover-1, cover-3 league,” Fisch said.

“That means you’ve got to beat man or tight zone coverage. You’ve got to run the ball with an extra guy in the box. You can see why that system has defenses in the top 10. You have long corners, guys that are dropping down into the box and you’ve got to react to that.”

Then there’s sports science. After Week 4, McVay dramatically scaled back the team’s workload during Wednesday practices because of what their data was showing them. It worked. The Rams also barely played starters during the preseason. “The most important thing is that our guys are the freshest guys in the league come Sunday and we feel like we’ve accomplished that,” Taylor said. Shula thinks limited practice time has increased the intensity of their practices.

Rams executive Kevin Demoff, joking about McVay’s influence around the league, said that if McVay ever canceled training camp, half the league would do it immediately, too. But rest is an increasingly important consideration for the Rams.

There is almost no facet of the Rams operation that has not been modernized for today’s NFL. Fisch mentions the diverse backgrounds of the coaching staff: Longtime NFL coaches, like running backs coach Skip Peete or Aaron Kromer, are mixed with coaches with college backgrounds, like receivers coach Eric Yarber, hired out of UCLA, or Zac Taylor, who coached in the NFL with the Dolphins and as the University of Cincinnati’s offensive coordinator.

“We’re an 11-personnel team, and really the only place teams are 11 personnel was college football. Fly sweep, jet sweep is a big part of our offense. We’re able to take shots down the field, yet we play under center which is very unique,” said Fisch, who aside from NFL stops has coached at Miami, UCLA, and Michigan. “I think that Sean has done an amazing job, and Shane and Aaron Kromer, in keeping the offense at the forefront and staying ahead of the curve.”

Orlovsky thinks that the Rams have innovated a trend started by the Patriots in the 2000s by having five talented offensive weapons who can put pressure on the defense in space all over the field. Finishing something another team started is not necessarily new in the NFL. McVay has made no secret that he’s happy to steal plays and adjust them. He admitted to taking a scheme from Asshole Face’s Saints earlier this year. Before the epic clash with the Chiefs, he admitted to stealing their plays, too.

And then the Rams do what they always do: keep adding wrinkles and perfecting them. They will use some of them in the Super Bowl on Sunday.

 

[Prime Time]

https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/...-play-action-history-bill-walsh-mike-shanahan

Fifty Years of Play-Action Evolution Has Led to Sean McVay’s Rams
The notion of faking runs to help the passing game is as old as football itself. So how has McVay used that concept to make these Super Bowl–bound Rams unlike any offense that’s come before them?
By Robert Mays

Getty Images/Ringer illustration

The first AFL-NFL World Championship Game—now referred to as Super Bowl I—was played on January 15, 1967, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. A then-record television audience of 65 million viewers tuned in to watch Vince Lombardi’s Packers take on the Chiefs. Players on the winning team each received a prize of $15,000.

In many ways, it feels like that game happened more than 52 years ago. The scale of the Super Bowl has grown larger than anyone could’ve imagined in the days before the AFL and NFL merged. In other ways, though, not much has changed. CBS broadcast that contest, like it will do on Sunday. The event was held at the Coliseum, where the Rams currently play their home games. And, somehow, many of the tactics used back then are as relevant now as they were five decades ago.

Early in the second quarter of Super Bowl I, Chiefs QB Len Dawson faked an exaggerated handoff to his fullback before pulling the ball back and launching a pass to wide receiver Otis Taylor for a 31-yard gain. It was Kansas City’s longest play of the afternoon, and on the indispensable NFL Films recap of the game, legendary narrator John Facenda notes that the play-action pass was the Chiefs’ best weapon during a frustrating day for their offense.

“When the Green Bay defense honors the fake,” Facenda says as the replay rolls in slow motion, “it must sacrifice the pass rush. With no pressure on him, Dawson has ample time to find the receiver.” The defense’s reaction and Facenda’s commentary are fascinating—because they explain why the Rams rely so heavily on play-action today.

With quarterback Jared Goff wearing Dawson’s no. 16, the Rams have built an offense that uses play-action unlike any team in the Super Bowl era. This season, Goff used play-action on 34.6 percent of his dropbacks, the highest mark in the league by more than 4 percentage points, according to Pro Football Focus.

He averaged 10.0 yards per attempt on those throws, compared to 7.5 on drop-back passes. Ten of Goff’s 12 interceptions came when he wasn’t using play-action. Rams head coach Sean McVay has learned what Chiefs coach Hank Stram did in the 1960s—play-action throws are the most efficient way to move the ball through the air.

More than half a century after play-action first became part of Super Bowl history, McVay is testing the limits of the concept within the modern NFL. And against Bill Belichick and the vaunted Patriots, it may give his Rams their best chance at writing their own chapter in Super Bowl lore.

The notion of faking runs to help the passing game is as old as football itself. In his 1931 book Coaching: The Complete Notre Dame System of Football, Knute Rockne writes: “No forward pass play is good unless both the passer and the receiver cover up as long as possible the fact that it is going to be a forward pass play.” Rockne’s primary method for achieving that: faking an off-tackle run. George Halas and the Chicago Bears used play-action as part of their T-formation offense to decimate the Washington Redskins 73-10 in the 1940 NFL Championship Game.

Quarterback Sid Luckman finished the game just 3-of-4 passing—with 88 yards and a touchdown. Three years later, in another championship victory over Washington, Luckman used a play fake before finding halfback Dante Magnani for a 36-yard touchdown early in the third quarter.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=64&v=U3kyEFCKfP4

Play fakes might not have been new by the time the Chiefs hired Stram in 1960, but that’s when the modern understanding of play-action began to take shape. The earliest known occurrence of “play-action” appearing in print came in a 1961 Philadelphia Daily News article, published right around the time when Stram was manufacturing ways to provide Dawson with easy throws.

“Lenny kind of fit the Drew Brees mode,” says Tom Pratt, the defensive line coach for the Chiefs from 1963 through 1977. “Lenny was not real tall. I think he was 6 feet when he was playing. Here he had some of those guys playing across from him, and they get their hands up and he could have a little bit of trouble finding a place to throw.”

Stram devised a plan for Dawson to drift both back andto his right after executing a hard play fake. By rolling only partially to his right, the quarterback gained additional separation from the defensive line while keeping his vision of the entire field intact. “[The movement] controlled that rush a little bit better, where they just couldn’t tee off and come,” Pratt says. “And it gave diversity to our offense as well.” Stram referred to the design as a “moving pocket.”

The terminology may be different than what this season’s Rams use, but the overarching goal is identical. “You’re moving so much of the offensive line, your passing windows are much bigger because of all that movement,” says former NFL QB and current ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky, who played for the Rams in training camp last season.

“I’m not sitting back there behind basically stationary guys, I’ve now created more passing lanes. It’s easier for me to find passing lanes because instead of sitting in a tackle box set about 5 yards wide, it’s now something that’s 8 to 9 yards wide.”

While the end goals may be identical, the Rams’ use of play-action represents an evolution—one that’s been taking place for as long as the West Coast offense has existed.

McVay may share the motivations that propelled Stram’s innovations, but the DNA of his offense emerged roughly a decade and a half later. That’s when the 49ers hired Bill Walsh, and the NFL’s West Coast offense craze began in earnest. The quick-passing, drop-back elements of the West Coast offense remain its most famous and enduring principles, but Walsh was always an ardent supporter of play-action.

And his meticulous attention to its intricacies shaped how the concept would look in generations to come. “The Play-Pass is the one fundamentally sound football play that does everything possible to contradict the basic principles of defense,” Walsh once wrote in American Football Monthly. “I truly believe it is the single best tool available to take advantage of a disciplined defense.”

Reading Walsh’s words from the 1980s and listening to the Rams discuss the nuances of play-action this week in Atlanta, the similarities are striking. As Walsh makes clear in that article, it’s virtually impossible for an offense to succeed using play-action without committing to the concept. Every detail matters, from a lineman’s initial movements to the quarterback’s willingness to sell the fake.

In his early days within McVay’s system, Goff would occasionally fail to finish his bootleg action on running plays. Per quarterbacks coach Zac Taylor, that’d result in Goff getting negative grades when the staff reviewed the tape. At every position on the field, it’s key for players to hone their tiniest movements to ensure that runs and passes look identical to defenders. “It’s making the unnatural feel natural,” Taylor says.

To Walsh, play-action was a way to engage every player in his offense. Because each player could take ownership of how their actions impacted the defense, play-action served as what he called “result-oriented teaching.” A tackle could take pride in the way that his first step sent a defensive end scurrying out of position. A running back could watch as the linebackers crashed toward the line of scrimmage and opened clear throwing lanes behind them. A QB could enjoy seeing a pass rusher stay put as he faked a rollout.

The only barrier to play-action success, according to Walsh, was whether a team’s coaches were willing to put in the requisite time for their offense to master it. “Unfortunately the necessity for fundamentals of ball handling and play-faking are sometimes overlooked by coaching staffs,” Walsh wrote. “These staffs will not take the time to make sure that the entire team understands what they are trying to do with a play-pass.”

In 1976, when Walsh was an assistant with the San Diego Chargers, the team played an exhibition game against the St. Louis Cardinals in Tokyo. The Cardinals’ backup quarterback in those days was a journeyman named Sam Wyche, who played under Walsh for three seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals from 1968 to 1970.

Early one morning in Japan, Wyche bumped into Walsh in their hotel elevator, and the coach invited him to the lobby for tea. “After about 35 or 40 minutes of having a cup of tea, I started smiling and he started smiling back at me,” Wyche says. “He knew I’d caught on. I said, ‘Bill, we aren’t having cups of tea. You’re interviewing me, aren’t you?’ He said, ‘Well, yeah, maybe.’’’

When Walsh was hired in San Francisco, a recently retired Wyche joined him as the 49ers passing coordinator. He spent four seasons there before taking the head-coaching job at Indiana, and later the same position with the Bengals in 1984. Wyche became the father of the no-huddle offense during his stint in Cincinnati. He also furthered Walsh’s adherence to the play-action game’s most infinitesimal details, stressing how a quarterback’s subtle tells were the difference between a team’s success or failure on those throws.

“The best way to teach a quarterback how to fake is to break down a run reel,” Wyche says. “Just let him see himself hand the ball off, hand the ball off, and then run it back. Say to him, ‘Just watch your head. I don’t want you to look at the rest of your body. Just your head. Where is your head? At what angle is it, and where are your eyes?’”

Under Wyche, Bengals quarterback Boomer Esiason developed into one of the most effective play-action passers in football. Esiason’s spin on his play fake involved an exaggerated lean just as he passed the running back, along with a sleight-of-hand movement that placed the ball on his back hip. He was devoted to the deception. Esiason won the NFL MVP in 1988, piloting an offense that scored a league-leading 28.0 points per game. He threw 28 touchdowns that season while averaging a ludicrous 9.2 yards per attempt.

The 1980s Bengals were a precursor to the 2018 Rams in other ways, too. One was the tempo at which they played. Another was the emphasis they placed on zone running. By having their offensive linemen step in the same direction and then using combination blocks, the Bengals implemented zone-running plays long before they became a leaguewide phenomenon.

The components of one perimeter running play served as an early version of what’s now known as “outside zone”—the centerpiece of what would become the Mike Shanahan (and ultimately, the McVay) offense.

If Wyche and the Bengals were early supporters of the zone-running system, the Shanahans became its first evangelists. Robert Griffin III—who played under Mike Shanahan for two seasons in Washington—calls Shanahan and his son, Kyle, “true believers” in the concept. When Mike took over as the Broncos head coach in 1995, the outside zone was installed as the basis of his running game.

And over the next 10 years, a parade of productive running backs marched through Denver. Hall of Famer Terrell Davis rushed for 2,008 yards en route to the MVP award in 1998; Clinton Portis averaged 5.5 yards per carry and gained more than 3,000 yards during his two seasons with the Broncos in 2002 and 2003; late-round picks Mike Anderson and Olandis Gary both gained at least 1,000 yards in their respective rookie years.

“It was cool to see how consistent it was over the course of time,” Griffin says of watching Shanahan’s offense across different eras. “Their belief in what they were doing is kind of why the system has stuck and it’s done so well.”

Alex Gibbs was the Broncos’ offensive line coach for Shanahan’s first nine seasons in Denver, and together the pair created the most devastating outside-zone rushing system the league had ever seen. The Broncos’ ground game was built into a machine calibrated on basic math.

On wide zone runs, the backside tackle would leave the defensive end unblocked, and instead climb toward the second level to pick off another defender. By having all five offensive linemen step in the same direction, the Broncos gained a numbers advantage.

The problem, of course, became how to handle the unblocked edge rusher hellbent on sabotaging the play. That’s where play-action came in. “If we’re not blocking the backside end, then the quarterback is responsible for the backside end,” Griffin says. “Does that mean I’m going to hand it off or toss it and then go block him? No, it means when I hand the ball off, I’m going to boot around and carry out the play fake.”

Shanahan and Denver QB John Elway consistently threatened defenses with bootlegs and keepers to the back side, which held edge rushers in place, shifted the ratio of blockers to defenders in their favor, and provided the running back with a lane to cut back if the defense flowed too hard to the play side. Like any truly great play-action scheme, the runs and passes worked in concert—and looked identical for the first few steps.

Washington hired Shanahan as its head coach in 2010, and after the team drafted Griffin with the no. 2 overall pick two years later, Shanahan and his son, Kyle—who was the team’s offensive coordinator at the time—taught Griffin the basic tenets that fueled the Denver offense. Throughout OTAs, training camp, and the preseason, Griffin watched old tape of Matt Schaub (from Kyle’s time as an offensive coordinator in Houston), Elway, and Jake Plummer.

“They wanted to teach us the framework of the offense, which was—we’re gonna run wide zone. We’re gonna run play-action pass, we’re gonna use boots and keepers,” Griffin says. “I was learning Mike Shanahan, Kyle Shanahan’s West Coast offense.”

The Shanahans and members of their coaching tree maintain that the most effective form of play-action originates from under center. Because the QB turns his back to the defense while faking a handoff, defenders are shielded from seeing what’s happening, and bad reads are only accentuated.

“[The Shanahans are] never going to get away from the true play-action under center,” Griffin says. “There’s something about [under-center] runs that are inviting to a defense, that makes them bite on the run harder than they necessarily would from a shotgun play-action.”

Once Griffin got to town, though, the Shanahans showed a willingness to evolve. While the staff kept a heavy dose of under-center play-action in the playbook, Kyle introduced concepts from the quarterback’s spread offense at Baylor and grafted the Shanahans’ zone play-action designs onto pistol and shotgun formations.

“Their goal for me and our offense in 2012 and 2013 was for us to be able to run all of their typical concepts—play-action pass, drop-back pass, run game, the wide-zone scheme—from any set. Under center, pistol, shotgun, and everything in between.”

Working out of the shotgun prevented Griffin from booting around the edge to hold the defensive end in place, but the quarterback countered that with his devastating speed. Griffin retained the option of bolting if a pass rusher crashed too hard, which neutralized defenders in the same way a bootleg would.

In 2012, Griffin used play-action on 39.9 percent of his dropbacks, according to Pro Football Focus. No team before or since has even come close to that number. On those throws, Griffin averaged a mind-boggling 11.8 yards per attempt. “We were the most efficient offense,” Griffin says. “And it’s because we were able to run the ball and play-action pass.”

Just like that, the NFL’s zone-read craze was born. Along with the 49ers and Seahawks, both of whom also had young, athletic quarterbacks in Colin Kaepernick and Russell Wilson, the Redskins altered the perception of what a QB could be in an NFL offense.

That season, Mike and Kyle Shanahan found the perfect recipe for melding established West Coast, zone-running principles with the skill sets of their specific personnel. It was a lesson that coaches around the league have put to use since, including Shanahan’s former tight ends coach in Washington: Sean McVay.

Sean Mannion could sense something was different from the very first meeting. The Rams had hired McVay ahead of the 2017 season, and on the first day of system installations, the backup quarterback realized this new offense was a major departure from his two years under Jeff Fisher.

Teams that run the West Coast offense typically spend that day the same way: The coaches unveil the drop-back passing game (three- and five-step drops) and then work in the rest of the scheme. But on Day 1, McVay introduced his play-action principles.

McVay made it clear, to both his players and assistants, that the play-action game would serve as the foundation of the Rams’ passing attack. He knew that would require the sort of meticulous, detail-oriented coaching that Walsh outlined more than 30 years prior. Every member of the offensive line was required to master each step to ensure a perfect marriage between the running game and play-action counters off it. McVay’s goal was to eliminate any possible tells that a play-action throw was coming, which meant breaking old habits.

For offensive line coach Aaron Kromer, the challenge was teaching his guys to block defenders who might not even be there. Even if one of his guards was uncovered, that player still had to mimic what he’d do on a running play to sell the defense on the deception. Zac Taylor structured his QBs’ footwork so that each play looked identical, whether they were handing the ball off or not.

After spending his entire college career as a shotgun, Air Raid quarterback, Goff has played under center on a league-leading 63 percent of his dropbacks this season, as McVay clearly abides by the Shanahans’ belief that play-action is more effective under center.

At its most basic level, the Rams’ play-action scheme resembles others that came before it. But as McVay learned in Washington, subtle tweaks to that scheme can make a world of difference to its success. He took the route concepts that Shanahan used and executed them in ways that were better suited to his roster.

When other West Coast offenses have traditionally run a flood concept—which sends three receivers to one side of the field—the fullback leaks into the flat. McVay calls for jet motion to carry out the same route with a receiver instead. “It’s a totally different play in a way because it affects eyes on the defense,” Orlovsky says, “but guys essentially end up in the same spot.”

By centering a laundry list of formations and motions on familiar zone runs, McVay achieves “the illusion of complexity,” a term that the Rams use constantly. This group has taken the play-action mission of the 1960s to its furthest extreme. “How can we make it look like we’re doing a bunch of different things?” Mannion says. “For us, we say, ‘It’s Day 1 install. It’s really something that’s simple.’ … Our read is the same, even if the formation, the motion, a pass protection is different.”

The Rams also set themselves apart in how often they’re willing to use play-action. When the Falcons, with an offense coordinated by Kyle Shanahan, went to the Super Bowl two seasons ago, quarterback Matt Ryan led the league by using play-action on 27.6 percent of his dropbacks. In both of McVay’s seasons in Los Angeles, the Rams have blown that number away (29.1 percent in 2017 and 34.6 percent in 2018). Kromer says that if it were up to McVay, he’d run play-action every time the game situation allowed it.

Chasing McVay from his play-action-focused game plan is no easy task, but it will likely be Bill Belichick’s foremost priority on Sunday. When the Rams turn into a drop-back passing team, their entire identity changes. McVay’s main objective during his two seasons in Los Angeles has been to create a play-action offense unlike any the league has ever seen. He’s succeeded: In terms of design and dedication, the Rams are pushing play-action passing about as far as it will go. Continuing that pursuit may just win them a championship.

Thanks to Charlotte Goddu and Daniel Chin for research assistance.

 

[den-the-coach]

Just beat those Inglorious Bastards!

 

[Elmgrovegnome]

My biggest concern for the Rams in this game is how well they can adapt if the refs allow the Patriots to get physical with the receivers.

It will be interesting to see how McVay adjusts to it if it's a problem. It was a big problem against Green Bay. The play that sent Gurley across the field in the opposite direction the defense was being lead was genius. It took advantage of a defense that was being allowed to be overly aggressive.

Ill absolutely love it if McVay has counters to the Patriots defense, up his sleeve that make it apparent that he wins the coaching match up over Bill in this Superbowl.

 

[I like Rams]

I thought this was about the visuals of his gf naked.

 

[Rmfnlt]

Their true genius, and that of their 33-year-old head coach Sean McVay, is that they are changing very little. Think of a navy suit, said Dan Orlovsky, who played quarterback for the Rams last summer. “Every guy has a got a nice navy suit, but the analogy is: Sean McVay has the same navy suit, but he’s got really cool shoes, snazzy ties, pocket squares. You don’t. He has so many variables—how he creates plays where guys end up in the same spots—but how they get there changes.”

I heard a good analogy on a local sports station here in DAL the other day (BTW, they talk whimsically about how they wished they had an offensive coach that could be innovative like McVay).

The analogy was James Bond movies.

The character (plays) is still James Bond.

But by switching around the actors...Connery, Moore, Brosnan, etc. the character takes on new life... and depth.

Bond is still Bond (the play is still the play) but it looks different... and feels different.

For Bond, that means new fans... for plays, that means confusion.

Thought it was a good analogy, FWIW.

 

[Florida_Ram]

"The mastermind" vs "A beautiful mind"

 

[LesBaker]

My biggest concern for the Rams in this game is how well they can adapt if the refs allow the Patriots to get physical with the receivers.

I said before that IMO if the refs go into "let them play" mode the Rams have an advantage in the defensive backfield, and that gives them the edge overall defensively.

The Patriots have Edelman and Gronkowski as the two primary concerns in the passing game. Edelman is not a game break play type, so if the refs let DB's get physical he'll be erased and Gronkowski will be their only threat. Josh Gordon was their big play threat, and we know how that story ended.

With a limited passing attack if they try to run, the Rams previously weak run defense has really, really tightened up, so that will be a long day. The Patriots don't really have a great running game and one of their RB's is really a pass catcher and doesn't run often. So maybe count him as a second weapon.

IMO if this is how the refs call the game the Rams will slow them down significantly, shorten drives and create a couple of extra punts, plus control the clock with a mix of passing and running the likes that the Patriots saw in KC which they can't slow down that much.

This would assure the Rams victory because the Patriots wouldn't score more than 20 points.

 

[LesBaker]

By the way, I expect to see both Patriots RB's in the backfield on several plays and in different down and distances as an adjustment if the refs let them play and Edelman gets erased.

 

[TexasRam]

Welcome to the new age..to the new age...to the new age. To the new age.

woah oh oh oh oh woah oh oh oh!

 

[Ram65]

Goff is smooth with his footwork which allows him to make those play action fakes look like runs. I'll be looking at it even more this Sunday. That is one thing that stood out when he was drafted. He really adapted quickly to playing under center.