McVay: Lesson Learned--Peter King

McVay: Lesson Learned

[profootballtalk.nbcsports.com]

Bill Belichick will look back one day (for all I know, he already has) and think how incredible Super Bowl 53 was for his team, and for his already historic reputation. The Rams averaged an NFC-best 33 points during the regular season. The Rams scored three points in the Super Bowl. Great for the Patriots, to be sure—one of the best defensive efforts on a big stage in NFL history. But really bad for the Rams too. And now, dissecting that day and what it means for L.A.’s future, it’s hard for the Rams to not look back with some regret.

That’s what brought me to Rams camp one morning this summer. Logic said they might have a what if? Super Bowl hangover. In the head coach’s office, I didn’t see one.

“Best I’ve ever felt going into a season,” coach Sean McVay said, odd considering this was his shortest off-season of 12 as a professional coach, seeing the Rams had played into February. Odd, too, because McVay’s offense was downright lousy in the 13-3 Super Bowl loss. But the McVay I encountered was classic McVay, not chastened McVay. He spent time this off-season decompressing in a big way, getting engaged, and going to Cannes and Italy’s Amalfi Coast. “I slept better,” he said. “I was able to kinda just unplug. I think that created a renewed sense of energy and enthusiasm.”

McVay’s always been good at being honest with himself and his team. You might hear the relentless Vermeil-like optimism, but he is good at self-scouting the bad stuff too. And when McVay looks back at the three-point nightmare of the Super Bowl, he knows that to ensure his team plays deep into January consistently he needs to continue to emphasize—in play-calling and player-molding—who the Rams are. And that’s an aggressive, attacking, fast team—not a conservative one parrying with a respected foe.

I had heard McVay be critical of himself for his approach to the Super Bowl, pointing to the Rams’ sixth play as a metaphorical reason. It’s an innocent-enough play, an incompletion in the left flat from a pressured Jared Goff to Robert Woods. And no one play cost the Rams here. But the sixth play is an interesting one. It’s easy to see, looking back, how the Rams could have and should have tried to expose the Patriots’ quarters coverage—four defensive backs fanned across the field in coverage, between eight and 19 yards off the ball at the snap—using the speed of Brandin Cooks and the deep accuracy of Goff as weapons.

But the weird thing about this play, and about the Rams’ effort in the Super Bowl, is how uncharacteristic it was. L.A. had taken shots all season. And 10 minutes into a scoreless game against the Patriots, the Rams could have taken a shot and sprung to a 7-0 lead. On first and 10 from the Pats’ 49-yard line, McVay had three receivers from a triple-bunch formation tight to the formation to the right; Cooks was split left, alone on the left side. Cooks split the area between cornerback Stephon Gilmore and the near safety, Devin McCourty. Goff had 3.75 seconds from the snap of the ball to release it before Patriot pressure got to him. At about 3.1 seconds, Cooks was past McCourty and had a couple of steps on Gilmore, and he began to streak to the post. Goff didn’t pull the trigger. At 3.75 seconds, pressured, Goff threw it away, short left, to avoid the sack.

McVay’s the kind of coach who’s not going to be critical of his players publicly. And you get the feeling that, though he wishes Goff had laid the ball way out there for Cooks to run for, McVay is more angry with himself for being so buried in the minutiae of planning for the big test versus Belichick, he didn’t stress enough with Goff to attack, attack, attack.

“We got to a certain play that did have answers versus quarters coverage,” McVay said, pointing to the sixth Rams play, “but I think the biggest thing that you look at is, are you putting your players in a position to really understand and own the intent of what we’re trying to get done? And that’s where I feel like I fell short because whatever we’ve asked of our guys … What could I have done leading up to that game to have a better contingency plan and better communication specific to the ownership that we want to be able to have from coaches and players … Where I felt like I didn’t do nearly a good enough job is putting us in a position to really have an answer based on whatever they activate coverage-wise.”

In other words: Because the Patriots had been almost exclusively a single-high-safety defense for the season, and because here they were with two safeties deep, in a rare four-across cover scheme, it was up to McVay to not only call the right play (which he did) but then to emphasize to Goff exactly what he was seeing, and what deep shot might be there to be made. And he didn’t stress that enough either in preparation for the game or in the coach-to-QB communication as he called the play.

McVay’s lesson learned for 2019, both for him and his quarterback: “Let’s make sure that you’re just so not just driven by what you see on the tape that when it does end up being something different, you’re really not as ready as you expect to be, specific to putting your players in a position to be ready.”

Not to mention what that one play would have done to the psyche of the game. “I think it [could have] changed New England’s approach,” McVay said. “One of the things that I thought both Bill and [defensive coordinator Brian] Flores did an outstanding job of is, they’re gonna continue to play these coverages or these certain defensive structures until we made ‘em pay. We were never really able to do that. If you end up making a play like that early on in the game, then maybe it changes the narrative.

“These kinds of things come up in every single game. It’s one thing to train guys for capability. It’s another thing to train them for capacity. Capability, guys can follow directions if you give specific orders. But capacity is the ability to give them contingency plans and the tools to be able to solve the problems even if it’s maybe something that you haven’t gone in and really practiced throughout the course of the week.

“That’s where I feel like I fell short for my team.”

McVay and Goff watched the Super Bowl—in its entirety and then specific plays like the sixth. “If you’re going to say it’s a learning opportunity, you can’t run away from it,” McVay said.

Goff is 24. McVay is 33. Imagine what the Rams have accomplished in two seasons together, rebuilding on the fly with the youngest coach and one of the youngest quarterbacks in football: They’ve won 26 games; only New England (29) has won more. They’ve scored 1,004 regular-season points, the most in football over those two years. They played very well defensively and lousy offensively in the Super Bowl. It’d be a surprise if the clunker stuck with a young team.

“The cool thing about both Jared and myself,” McVay said, “is we’re growing together. I hadn’t had a whole lot of experience even coordinating or calling plays before I got to be a head coach. He’s got a refreshing security in himself. He starts a handful of games as a rookie but our growth and maturation together … I think what we’re both gaining a real appreciation for is the experience. There’s no doubt in my mind the next time that he sees something similar [to the sixth play in the Super Bowl], he’s gonna make that play.”