Sean McVay described the play in the meeting room, a version of the old “hook and lateral.” Jared Goff would throw a screen to Cooper Kupp, who would pitch the ball to a sprinting Tavon Austin. Eyes rolled.
“We’re just like, ‘Yeah, right, this is the NFL,’” Rams running back Todd Gurley said with a laugh.
McVay called the play in the red zone last Sunday, all three players executed it perfectly, and it picked up 9 yards and set up a go-ahead field goal in the second quarter of what turned into a blowout victory.
This is McVay: young, excitable, full of ideas of energy, bringer of much-needed excitement and belief to a Rams offense that moved like a tortoise last year. McVay, the offense’s architect and play-caller, has developed a reputation as a constant tinkerer, one always looking for new wrinkles and new plays.
McVay’s offensive mind is the major reason why the Rams have the NFL’s highest-scoring offense and take a 6-2 record, and first-place standing in the NFC West, into Sunday’s home game against Houston.
“He’s up all night,” Gurley said. “He’ll tell you, he doesn’t have much to do. He’s always copying ideas.”
Indeed, McVay said this week, “I probably kind of have no life outside of football.” And for that, the Rams are grateful.
There’s one part of the story Gurley forgot, or perhaps repressed. The Kupp-Austin lateral? The New York Jets ran the exact same play against the Rams a year earlier, in the same stadium, and scored a touchdown. McVay wasn’t even with the Rams then, but clearly he saw the play when he reviewed film.
“We’ve got very capable players that can do a lot of the things that we’re asking them to do,” McVay said. “When you have that, it makes it fun, as an offensive coaching staff, to kind of find creative ways to do some different things that fit within the framework of our system.”
And here’s the thing about McVay: he’s smart enough not to take credit. He deflects praise at every opportunity, to his players and assistant coaches, and openly admits that he borrows ideas from other coaches. Specifically, near the start of this season, McVay said he lifted a play from Andy Reid.
Among the many problems for the Rams’ defense last year was stagnant coaching. Coach Jeff Fisher and offensive coordinator Rob Boras (who was in his first full year as an NFL coordinator) really tried to shake up an offense that was bland and ineffective. It was the same stuff for 16 weeks, and it didn’t work.
Now, the Rams shake up things on a weekly basis. Some weeks, they feed Gurley a ton. Other times, they get the tight ends more involved. And the perception, whether it’s true or not, is that McVay and this year’s staff spend more time studying the opponent and determining the best way to exploit it.
“If we see something two, three weeks ago that Seattle beat them on, let’s try it again,” Gurley said. “If they stop it, they stop it. If they don’t then that’s a win for us.”
That’s a quote Gurley never would have spoken last season, when, at one point, he got so frustrated that he referred to the Rams’ attack as a “middle-school offense.” Now, Gurley, who typically attempts to play it cool in front of reporters, can’t stop smiling and laughing when he talks about McVay’s offense.
Gurley offered another example. He’d always wanted to score on a specific inside-zone run that he could bounce outside. McVay dialed that up last week against the Giants, and Gurley scored a touchdown.
“I’ve always seen people do it,” Gurley said. “I saw (New Orleans running back) Mark Ingram do it a couple of weeks ago. I’ve seen (Kansas City’s) Kareem Hunt. I’ve seen a lot of people do it, so I was happy to definitely get that touchdown like that so easily.”
No doubt, McVay found that play on tape somewhere, maybe in a Saints or Chiefs game, and it clicked.
McVay, it seems, has found the correct balance between tweaking and adjusting the playbook but not overwhelming his players with changes. Much like Gurley, Goff said he sometimes laughs when McVay installs the week’s game plan and has added new wrinkles.
“We have some plays in there where we’re like, ‘What are we doing this for?’” Goff said. “And sure enough, we see it and we’re like, ‘Oh, it’s going to work.’ That happens weekly.”
The Rams knew what they were getting when they hired McVay as the youngest coach in NFL history. His motor never stops and he brings a kinetic energy to the locker room.
By contrast, the Rams’ 70-year-old defensive coordinator, Wade Phillips, is a slow-talking Texan with a wry sense of humor and 40 years of experience as an NFL coach. Phillips, one would assume, has seen it all in the NFL, but he was asked this week if anything has surprised him about working with McVay.
“Yeah, that we’re leading the league in scoring,” Phillips said with a laugh, but then turned serious. “You don’t expect that certainly just coming from the past, but it doesn’t surprise me. I didn’t say it would surprise me, I’m just saying he works awfully hard, he knows what he’s doing and he’s doing a great job of getting our offense to be one of the top offenses.”