Coaches who call their own plays

Cool article. The link includes input from Mike McCarthy, Sean Payton and Andy Reid besides our Mastemind Sean McVay. Great read.

[www.espn.com]

'He's a mastermind'

Ask Sean McVay where his humility comes from and he'll refer back to when he first started calling offensive plays. It was 2015, and McVay was 29 years old. Jay Gruden handed him the playcalling duties in his second year as the Washington Redskins' offensive coordinator.

"You always think you can do it, then you get into it and you realize it's a lot more humbling than you realize," said McVay, now leading the Los Angeles Rams. "You make mistakes, you try to learn from those, and that's when you realize that when you're around great people, that kind of invest and mentor you, you can learn and kind of accelerate your career."

McVay is calling the offensive plays in his first year as an NFL head coach -- and is making it look easy.

Eight games in, he has taken a Rams team that finished last in the NFL in yards each of the past two years and turned it into one that is averaging the NFL's second-most offensive points per game. Todd Gurley, coming off a dreadful 2016 season, is thriving. Jared Goff, one of the league's worst quarterbacks last season, is improving rapidly. The receiver corps and the offensive line, two major vulnerabilities for a long time, are both clicking.

But McVay is not doing it alone.

Gruden identified the time between series as the greatest obstacle McVay would face as both the head coach and playcaller, a task roughly half of the NFL's head coaches have taken on this season. But McVay is operating under an ideal circumstance, with an ability to entrust defensive coordinator Wade Phillips and special teams coordinator John Fassel when his team doesn't have possession.

McVay spends a good chunk of that time between offensive series on his tablet, determining whether defenses are reacting the way he wants, seeing if his running backs and offensive linemen are picking up blitzes properly, and analyzing the dynamic between his quarterback and his receivers.

He'll stay in tune with what's going on, largely to make decisions on timeouts, penalties and challenges. But he doesn't feel the need to delegate.

His focus is on the offense, a department few know better.

Rams offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur said McVay "sees the game as well as anybody I've ever been around." Phillips calls McVay, 39 years his junior, "a wunderkind" with regard to his feel for how offenses function.

"He's a mastermind," Rams receiver Robert Woods said after the 51-17 win against the Giants on Nov. 5. "He's the brains, and it shows."

The Rams' offensive coaching staff divides the game plan throughout the week. LaFleur focuses on pass plays, offensive line coach Aaron Kromer on running plays, quarterbacks coach Greg Olson on third-down plays and tight ends coach Shane Waldron on red zone plays, with McVay overseeing it all.


Come game time, his double-sided, 11-by-17 play sheet will contain more than 100 plays, but McVay will have most of it memorized. His recall is almost legendary. LaFleur will sit in the booth with receivers coach Zac Taylor and offensive line coach Andy Dickerson trying to anticipate what the defense will do and looking for holes that their offense can exploit. But McVay will be at the controls.

McVay's the only one in Goff's headset, and the second-year quarterback has been impressed with the way he dictates plays.

"Just the way he verbalizes things," Goff said. "The way he's able to communicate with us and give us little tips and the playcall and stuff to remember, little reminders, is so helpful."

-- Alden Gonzalez

---

RFS69