Some Perspective on McVay as a Coach

[TXRams86]

I know a lot of us have been super critical of McVay at times, last night was no exception. We saw what happened to this team in the Superbowl and a lot of that fell on the shoulders of McVay. Up until now he's shouldered the blame for a lot of our deficiencies and he's never bad mouthed any individual on this team. By no means am I football or coach guru but there were a few things I had to consider:

McVay is the youngest head coach in the NFL: To a lot of people this doesn't really mean anything but we have to talk about this. There are times that McVay seems to make inexplicable in game decisions - I don't need to write a list of these, we all know them. This is only his fourth season as an NFL head coach and he still has some growing to do in that capacity. We can't expect a 34 year old to come in and have Belichick level success with a team he's having to rebuild from the ground up. That's a huge undertaking and impressive where the team is currently at considering we had been bottom feeders for so long. You wouldn't have to look very hard to find so many promising coaches, of all ages, flame out of the NFL because they were in over their heads. Hell, the way he's handled some of the shit that's come his way is downright impressive: handling of Gurley, the negative press from the Saints game, the Superbowl loss. He isn't immune from criticism but he takes it on the chin and keeps moving forward. Some of that criticism stems from his coaching personnel choices; which brings me to my next point.

McVay is an offensive minded coach: Kind of piggy backing off of the first point, we have a young offensive minded coach. That's the side of the ball he knows damn well, one of the best in the game. It's not outside the realm of possibilities that he doesn't make the best decisions with respect to who runs the defensive side of the ball. Not to bring up bad memories but Fisher absolutely SUCKED at picking offensive coordinators that fit his personnel. The huge difference is that Fisher had been coaching long enough to know; McVay is young and has committed most of his studies to the offensive side of the ball. He picked Wade initially because he didn't want to have to worry about defense but we just never had the personnel to run Wade's style of defense; it happens. I don't think we can really fault a guy for wanting to reduce how thin he's spread by hiring a top tier DC to take care of that side of the ball. At this point we don't know how well McVay is at identifying coaching talent on the defensive side of the ball - that's just the reality of things. I'm sure he'll learn more about that side of the ball as he continues to grow as a head coach and if things don't work out with Staley, he'll be better equipped in choosing his next DC.

McVay is a winner and has a winner mentality: This is a great quality to have but it can bite you in the butt sometimes. McVay has proven to be a winner in this league and it could be argued that he fields a Superbowl contender every year. When things go wrong it would be silly to assume that McVay just shrugs off losses and moves onto the next game. He might not show it in public but I'm sure each and every loss stings and he feels ultimately responsible. Like I said earlier, this type of mentality isn't without its faults. When you focus so passionately on winning, sometimes things get away from you. You start thinking very binary, 1 or 0, and you start to outsmart yourself. Football isn't all X's and O's and, through growth, he'll come to understand that there are some subjective things he can improve on to benefit the objective.

There's more I wanted to write but I think this is long enough. I hope the take away is that as much as we (myself included) want to bag on McVay and his personnel at times, he's really doing a damn good job - all things considered. There are only a handful of coaches I'd say have more upside to McVay right now and we don't even know the ceiling that McVay can hit once this team irons out some of its issues. I think we've gotten spoiled by what McVay did his first two years in the league and we need to come back down to earth a little and cut the guy some slack. We're in good hands.

 

[yrba1]

One thing that we'll have to continue riding with McVay is that he'll have one game where he'll abandon the run regardless if it's working or not. Gotta continue pounding the rock even if you're not getting chunk yards needed; at least you'll tire the defense gradually.

 

[Merlin]

He's a rare combination of things you want at HC. But yeah he's also learning the same way some other young HCs like Shanny are learning. And in the meantime winning a ton of games is pretty damn nice for a fan base who has suffered the way we have.

I think if you get the roster right, in those years that you do from the GM position, he will either win it all or come damn close. 2018 was a great chance but there will be others, maybe even this year. This roster has holes but it might have enough pieces for McVay to pull this off.

IMO he needs to survive this stretch without his young safety that helped to tie this secondary together. So a month. And he also needs to get his asst coaches under control, this isn't a new thing the same thing happened with Fassel where he thought he could make decisions on the sideline. Now fucking up subs isn't as bad as calling a fake the HC doesn't know about, but the process to get there is the same, namely the head coach letting guys think they have more leeway than they do.

I'm confident we're a deep playoff team though. Why? Well because our OL is good enough this year. This past game McVay tried to line it up more conventionally and got burned. But the protections were there. Where he erred IMO is once those protections were there he should have opened things up more and put stress on that 9er secondary. Instead he made it easy on them. I don't think it was indicative of a lack of confidence in Goff, but either way he is going to need to let Goff sling it in certain situations like last night. Sometimes you get down to the point where you know your QB's arm is your only salvation. We're paying Jared. So open it up and let him eat.

 

[TXRams86]

One thing that we'll have to continue riding with McVay is that he'll have one game where he'll abandon the run regardless if it's working or not. Gotta continue pounding the rock even if you're not getting chunk yards needed; at least you'll tire the defense gradually.

I think this has a lot to do with point 3. He's a winner and he knows that this is a passing league, running isn't really "sexy." Not that I agree with him abandoning the run, I think it's a terrible idea. But I'm sure there's some underlying psychology behind his decision to do it when we're well in the game.

 

[Angry Ram]

I cringe at just how overboard the criticism police gets after a bad game. Jared hits Cooper on that wide open pass, or he catches a routine (for him) catch, and it's a different game. Football is itself a weird game. Sometimes you just got got.

 

[Merlin]

I think this has a lot to do with point 3. He's a winner and he knows that this is a passing league, running isn't really "sexy." Not that I agree with him abandoning the run, I think it's a terrible idea. But I'm sure there's some underlying psychology behind his decision to do it when we're well in the game.

All great OCs have this quirk I think. Shanny has done it in big games, McVay has too, Martz did it, and so on.

It's funny too, going into this shitter game I thought McVay might abandon the run if things got tough. He didn't. But ironically there at the end of the game he probably should have been more aggressive and put us in 4 minute offense a bit earlier, KNOWING that his defense was bleeding time and yards to the shitter ground game.

 

[Varg6]

My gripes with McVay are his use of timeouts and I think he tends to outsmart himself. He can get a bit gimmicky at times, for lack of a better way to put it. Nevertheless, I honestly wouldn’t want any other coach. I think he’s shown growth and resilience and is clearly a great leader. Much like how the Niners were the wounded dog, so to speak, it’ll be interesting to see how we respond this week against a much tougher team in the Chicago Bears.

 

[TXRams86]

My gripes with McVay are his use of timeouts and I think he tends to outsmart himself. He can get a bit gimmicky at times, for lack of a better way to put it. Nevertheless, I honestly wouldn’t want any other coach. I think he’s shown growth and resilience and is clearly a great leader. Much like how the Niners were the wounded dog, so to speak, it’ll be interesting to see how we respond this week against a much tougher team in the Chicago Bears.

His usage of time outs is frustrating to me too. But notice that most of the time he does it, there's still a second or two on the clock for Jared to call for the snap. Sometimes I wonder if McVay is either too scared to take the 5 yard loss or if he doesn't have confidence in the execution of the play since we're snapping it so late. Almost like he doesn't really value time outs like the rest of the league does. There's been times where we still get the snap off, the play works as planned and we move the chains. Other times, the play is stopped mid-play and you can see it WOULD have worked if not for the ill-fated time out. Just one of those things he's going to need to learn to be better at.

 

[badnews]

I know a lot of us have been super critical of McVay at times, last night was no exception. We saw what happened to this team in the Superbowl and a lot of that fell on the shoulders of McVay. Up until now he's shouldered the blame for a lot of our deficiencies and he's never bad mouthed any individual on this team. By no means am I football or coach guru but there were a few things I had to consider:

McVay is the youngest head coach in the NFL: To a lot of people this doesn't really mean anything but we have to talk about this. There are times that McVay seems to make inexplicable in game decisions - I don't need to write a list of these, we all know them. This is only his fourth season as an NFL head coach and he still has some growing to do in that capacity. We can't expect a 34 year old to come in and have Belichick level success with a team he's having to rebuild from the ground up. That's a huge undertaking and impressive where the team is currently at considering we had been bottom feeders for so long. You wouldn't have to look very hard to find so many promising coaches, of all ages, flame out of the NFL because they were in over their heads. Hell, the way he's handled some of the shit that's come his way is downright impressive: handling of Gurley, the negative press from the Saints game, the Superbowl loss. He isn't immune from criticism but he takes it on the chin and keeps moving forward. Some of that criticism stems from his coaching personnel choices; which brings me to my next point.

McVay is an offensive minded coach: Kind of piggy backing off of the first point, we have a young offensive minded coach. That's the side of the ball he knows damn well, one of the best in the game. It's not outside the realm of possibilities that he doesn't make the best decisions with respect to who runs the defensive side of the ball. Not to bring up bad memories but Fisher absolutely SUCKED at picking offensive coordinators that fit his personnel. The huge difference is that Fisher had been coaching long enough to know; McVay is young and has committed most of his studies to the offensive side of the ball. He picked Wade initially because he didn't want to have to worry about defense but we just never had the personnel to run Wade's style of defense; it happens. I don't think we can really fault a guy for wanting to reduce how thin he's spread by hiring a top tier DC to take care of that side of the ball. At this point we don't know how well McVay is at identifying coaching talent on the defensive side of the ball - that's just the reality of things. I'm sure he'll learn more about that side of the ball as he continues to grow as a head coach and if things don't work out with Staley, he'll be better equipped in choosing his next DC.

McVay is a winner and has a winner mentality: This is a great quality to have but it can bite you in the butt sometimes. McVay has proven to be a winner in this league and it could be argued that he fields a Superbowl contender every year. When things go wrong it would be silly to assume that McVay just shrugs off losses and moves onto the next game. He might not show it in public but I'm sure each and every loss stings and he feels ultimately responsible. Like I said earlier, this type of mentality isn't without its faults. When you focus so passionately on winning, sometimes things get away from you. You start thinking very binary, 1 or 0, and you start to outsmart yourself. Football isn't all X's and O's and, through growth, he'll come to understand that there are some subjective things he can improve on to benefit the objective.

There's more I wanted to write but I think this is long enough. I hope the take away is that as much as we (myself included) want to bag on McVay and his personnel at times, he's really doing a damn good job - all things considered. There are only a handful of coaches I'd say have more upside to McVay right now and we don't even know the ceiling that McVay can hit once this team irons out some of its issues. I think we've gotten spoiled by what McVay did his first two years in the league and we need to come back down to earth a little and cut the guy some slack. We're in good hands.

Great post

 

[Merlin]

His usage of time outs is frustrating to me too. But notice that most of the time he does it, there's still a second or two on the clock for Jared to call for the snap. Sometimes I wonder if McVay is either too scared to take the 5 yard loss or if he doesn't have confidence in the execution of the play since we're snapping it so late. Almost like he doesn't really value time outs like the rest of the league does. There's been times where we still get the snap off, the play works as planned and we move the chains. Other times, the play is stopped mid-play and you can see it WOULD have worked if not for the ill-fated time out. Just one of those things he's going to need to learn to be better at.

Some of it is definitely on the QB. Seems like every couple games there's a snap where he has to burn a TO to save the offense from a delay of game. And that's common around the league too btw. Happens a lot.

But that unfortunately is only going to improve as our QB gets more command of the details.

 

[jrry32]

He's not perfect, but he's a great fucking coach. Enough said.

 

[TXRams86]

He's not perfect, but he's a great fucking coach. Enough said.

 

[Ramstien]

He has a lot of Mike Martz in him, maybe too much!

 

[Marc Spector]

My biggest gripe with him is we get away from aggressive running of the ball and Check Down to TE's which I think comes from his love of the Big Play (Mind you his playcalling this year has definitely improved in terms of a "death by 1000 cuts" style offense). Any other gripe i have is a direct side effect of that.

To piggyback off of OP, the biggest difference between Shanny and Mcvay IS experience honestly. Kyle is older, has 2 SB appearances as a lead coach on staff, and a father who pioneered the Zone Blocking scheme. So the lesson of "stay aggressive on the ground" is more built into his DNA. Sean doesnt have those luxuries so his growing pains are that much evident.

 

[Classic Rams]

I cringe at just how overboard the criticism police gets after a bad game. Jared hits Cooper on that wide open pass, or he catches a routine (for him) catch, and it's a different game. Football is itself a weird game. Sometimes you just got got.

Yeah but then again anyone could also say if they made their plays that they missed on it's a different game more in their favor too. In the "what if" scenarios, the speculation can go either way, and it's not what could've happened, it's what happened. I don't validate it when other teams' players or fans say if we could've done this or that it's a different game. I just go, "yeah but they didn't and we won."

 

[Faceplant]

I love the kid and we are lucky to have him....however, there are times when I literally have no idea what he is thinking, lol. My son and I traded more "WTF??" looks watching that game last night than I can count. Lots of head scratching decisions. It was just a shitty performance from the coaches to the key players. Its rare, and it sucks when it happens against those shit bags on SNF.....They simply can NOT have games like this and yet they do....its annoying.

 

[Angry Ram]

Yeah but then again anyone could also say if they made their plays that they missed on it's a different game more in their favor too. In the "what if" scenarios, the speculation can go either way, and it's not what could've happened, it's what happened. I don't validate it when other teams' players or fans say if we could've done this or that it's a different game. I just go, "yeah but they didn't and we won."

Well that's the whole point no? A single play changes the view on the player or coach.

People knee-jerking and over criticizing the coach after an L is ridiculous (not saying you are). It's overdoing it and becomes unbearable sometimes. I mean I hate the way they lost last night, but it's just that...a loss. And this won't be the last time they'll lose, and after the next one it'll be the same round of criticism threads. Also why the need to post SOOOOO DAMN MANNNY??? Why do people insist on just shoving the wallowing? Like move on man.

Like I said before sometimes you just get got.

 

[Jacobarch]

I cringe at just how overboard the criticism police gets after a bad game. Jared hits Cooper on that wide open pass, or he catches a routine (for him) catch, and it's a different game. Football is itself a weird game. Sometimes you just got got.

Finally a sane fucking post.

 

[XXXIVwin]

He has a lot of Mike Martz in him, maybe too much!

Yeah but I love that about him.

Like Martz, McVay is a terrific offensive mind. His offenses are consistently among the best in the league. McVay is a grinder with a photographic memory (probably remembers every play from every Ram game he has coached.) Rams went from dead last all the way to first in McVay’s first year. Unreal!!

But also like Vermeil, McVay is a great leader. Togetherness, commitment. McVay constantly reading books from great coaches like John Wooden, “We not me”, family, great teacher of fundamentals, gets real buy-in from his players without resorting to caustic Marine-Sergeant BS.

“Mad Martz” was a gifted tactical innovator, but let’s face it, the guy had issues, he was not a great leader. And as for Vermeil, he was a motivator, but not terrific with the X’s and O’s. No way Vermeil could’ve led the GSOT without Martz.

But McVay has BOTH. Great tactician. Great leader.

Yeah, McVay is human and will make some mistakes and have some bad games here and there. But I’m pretty confident that as long as McVay is at the helm, Rams will have a legit chance to win the Super Bowl nearly every single season.

Give this man a lifetime contract.

 

[Ellard80]

McVay has gotten a lot more blame the last couple years.

He isn't without fault - I don't like the time outs being used.

However for the most part what I've seen in the past couple years - when the offense hasn't been quite as explosive is a lack of execution - especially in key moments.

Was McVay's game plan against the 49ners great? It could have been better - however it still was good enough without a couple of crucial mistakes, and that's with the defense getting trucked until mostert went down.

Crucial mistakes I remember that cost the game.

1. Goff overthrows Cupp on about a 25 yard deep out.
2. Edwards gets beat on a stunt and Goff gets hit on a deep pass that would have been 6 to Cupp. It was a ballsy play call in 3rd and 4 that was there.
3. Cupp drops an easy TD - I love Cupp - I have his jersey, but he really needs to cut down on drops, he already has 3 this year, plus a fumbled punt.
4. Questionable play design -or poorly executed on 4th and goal from the 2. Woods man was close to the play.. however Goff also stared at Reynolds and the DB keyed on that.
5. 3 and 7 with time to get the ball back and defense get's trucked on a jet pass.