Rams quarterbacks not the only ones tasked with improving the passing game

Rams quarterbacks not the only ones tasked with improving the passing game

[www.ocregister.com]

By RICH HAMMOND / STAFF WRITER

IRVINE – Seeking to boost their passing game, the Rams promoted one offensive assistant coach and hired another. Fortunately for those guys, improvement should happen almost by default.

By nearly every statistical measure, the Rams had the worst passing attack in the NFL last season and one of the worst offenses in the league, period. That’s largely why Jared Goff came to be a Rams quarterback, and at least for a couple minutes Tuesday, Goff got the controls of the retooled first-team offense.

For the first time in eight training-camp practices, Goff – the top pick in April’s draft – split first-team reps with incumbent quarterback Case Keenum. The plays came late, during a two-minute-offense drill, and included some of Goff’s most efficient work of camp to date.

“He took the ball right down the field and got points, and that was good,” Coach Jeff Fisher said Tuesday at UC Irvine. “It’s always good to get him working with the offensive linemen and give him a chance to work with (starting center) Tim (Barnes), from a communication standpoint.”

The drill represented a notable stagger-step in Goff’s development. Fisher last week said Keenum will start Saturday’s preseason opener against Dallas. But with more than a month until the Rams’ Sept. 12 season opener at San Francisco, there’s time for Goff to take more forward steps.

The Rams did not make Goff available for comment Tuesday. Fisher said Goff’s first-team reps will increase in number during camp, but when asked whether anything extra should be read into the decision to elevate Goff, Fisher fell back on a familiar refrain.

“Read whatever you want,” Fisher said. “We’ll start him when he’s ready to play. It’s all about the process. It’s about being patient.”

There’s a lot to learn, and not just for the rookie quarterback, because two of Goff’s primary tutors – offensive coordinator Rob Boras and pass-game coordinator Mike Groh – also are learning on the job.

Boras, formerly the Rams’ tight-ends coach, was promoted when Fisher fired coordinator Frank Cignetti last December. After the Rams offense showed late-season improvement, Boras was retained, but the Rams hired Groh, formerly the Chicago Bears’ receivers coach, to specialize in the passing game.

The need was obvious. Last season, the Rams finished last in the NFL in passing yards per game (175.3), passing yards per attempt (6.2) and passing touchdowns (11). Part of that was the Rams’ instability at quarterback, but clearly the offense needed a change.

Boras has never been a full-time NFL coordinator and his background is as a tight ends and offensive-line coach, so in came Groh, a former quarterback who also will work as the Rams’ receivers coach.

“Rob’s expertise is in the run game and the play-action and protection,” Fisher said, “and I just wanted to expand it a little bit in the passing game. … It’s been great. (Boras) has really handled it great and they’re working together really well, so hopefully it turns into production.”

The expectation is that the Rams, who attempted the third-fewest passes in the NFL last season, will open things up in 2016, and that leads back to Goff.

Fisher previously said he expected Goff to play one half against the Cowboys on Saturday, and Boras said Goff is “handling” everything well in his initial two weeks of training camp.

“The more that he can go out there and just settle in,” Boras said, “like you saw him settle in at the Coliseum (on Saturday), he’s going to play confident. We know he’s talented. So it’s just him doing what he does, and everyone else just playing football around him.”

DO THE ROBOT

The Rams are the latest team to experiment with the “Mobile Virtual Player,” which essentially is a tackling dummy on wheels that can be moved via remote control.

The Rams used the two dummies during pass-defense drills Tuesday to simulate receivers.

“In this day and age,” Fisher said, “when we’re so concussion-conscious and contact-conscious, with live contact between players, you want to reduce it as much as you can but you still have to have the contact. This is an opportunity to hit a bag with some movement, and a bag that moves around pretty fast.”

Fisher then quipped, “It was kind of cool. If they could get it to go upstairs, I could have it do bed check.”

CAMP NOTES

The Rams will hold a closed, special-teams practice Wednesday, then return to full-team practice Thursday morning. … Fisher said there would be no full tackling in any practices before Saturday. “I, personally, always wait until preseason,” Fisher said. “And that’s the first thing we address in the game, is tackling. That’s always an issue. There’s always more missed tackles in the first preseason game than there are in the second and third and fourth, because you just haven’t done it from a live, go-to-ground standpoint.”