This is a great read from SI after the SB about Morris

I'll throw bits and pieces out there, but I recommend anyone that loves the chess game that football is take a read. My comments in red.

[www.si.com]

To be sure, there was brilliance in the plan Morris put together to combat Joe Burrow and the Bengals’ explosive offense a week ago. There were little things he noticed on tape, and in what Cincinnati said during the two-week run-up to the game. There were adjustments made during a 10-minute halftime staff meeting that paid off for the Rams in a very big way. We’re going to get to all of that. But the true genius in the job Morris and his defensive coaches did in shutting the Bengals out over the final 25 minutes of the Super Bowl is simpler than any of it. Really, it was just knowing when it was time to let their players take over.

So Morris put together a brilliant game plan, but just as important as the gameplan was, was to let his studs take over. Or am I missing something?

The look in Donald’s eye before the final series manifested in two of the biggest plays a defensive player could hope to have on the Super Bowl stage. The first was his one-armed wrangling of Bengals tailback Samaje Perine on third-and-1, the second his game-ending pressure of Burrow on fourth-and-1—and that isn’t necessarily new. He’s always played with an intensity and edge that most truly great players on his side of the ball have.

The difference this year—and really, just late this year—came with how Donald learned to channel it for his teammates, with in-season acquisitions Von Miller and Eric Weddle giving him little nudges along the way to use his voice more for the good of the team.

Yeah, those guys aren't here this year and they ain't coming back. So did AD slip back a tad in the leadership dept? Is that a problem? Does it even matter? IMO, not a big deal, but it could be a little thing. Add up a bunch of little things, they become a big thing.

“He's the epitome of a coach who can be an ignitor, where you’re just bringing people together and raising everyone’s level,” McVay says. “That’s what he’s done. And then, I couldn’t be more impressed with his ability to continue to put our great players in the right spots so that they can shine. And then his feel for the flow of a game calling it. He’s got this energy and presence, but he is so calm and has such a great demeanor on game day.

So is McVay full of it? Defending a buddy? Maybe on both, but then why say it at all? Or maybe it was true at the time, but for some reason between the SB and this season, he forgot how to put his best players in positions to win, can't get a feel for the flow of a game or raise anyone level? Seems unbelievable to me.

That’s where Morris’s weekly “Tackling Plan” was born. Each week throughout this season, the Tackling Plan laid out a number of bullet points for Rams defenders, to boil down each game to a small number of things they needed to do to win. In the days after the NFC title game, Morris presented four of those for the matchup with Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase & Co.

1) Stop the big play with two-high looks. The most obvious thing to Morris in studying the Bengals was the number of huge plays they made down the field to Chase and Tee Higgins.

“So early in the game, I put a cloud on top of the coverage and almost dared them to run,” Morris says. “And not from an arrogant standpoint. It was that these guys were really built on explosive plays.”

Of course he did, thats all he knows. The 2 high shell.

2) Combat the Bengals’ empty looks. Morris credited the advance scouts and quality-control coaches in finding that against “like” defenses—teams that play the Fangio scheme (Chicago, Green Bay, Denver)—Cincinnati was disproportionately lining Burrow up in empty sets, which allowed him to see the field and adjust faster and get the ball out quickly. That, to Morris, meant the Rams had to think, adjust and react accordingly.

But Morris can't adjust.

3) Physically and mentally affect the quarterback. This started with Morris’s reverence for Burrow—“I got so much respect for what Joe Burrow did this year.” Thus, he knew he couldn’t give Burrow an inkling of what the Rams were doing presnap.

“That was the beauty of Eric Weddle; he was able to be in tune to the game plan so much,” Morris says. “We talked about it prior, how we wanted to show two-high shells, and sometimes we wanted to show low-high looks and make them two-high shells, and he has the ability to go out there and put all those things together based on one call that I make and what we talked about through the process of the week.

So he does disguise coverage like 53 says he does. Huh, who knew. And Weddle ain't here, and Rapp and Scott aren't Weddle and I love Scott.I'm beginning to see the issues this year.

“[Burrow] really performed at his best this year, throwing it to Tee Higgins and throwing it to Ja’Marr, that’s where they made some of their big explosive plays. I wanted to be able to limit that exposure with questions. Which side is the cloud? Which side is quarters, which side was actually playing man? Was it both sides? Was it a replacement zone? I wanted to make him think about those things on the sideline.”

But all Morris runs is a 2 high shell, what is Morris even talking about? A replacement zone? He's making up words now. Actually, I know what that is. And I've recently been told Im a fraud and have been found out.

4) Put your demons to sleep. The image of Deebo Samuel slicing through the Rams’ defense for a 44-yard touchdown on a tunnel screen in the second quarter of the NFC title game kept Morris up at night—and it wasn’t just the play itself, it was that it was part of a recurring theme for his unit. All year they’d had their issues in the screen game, and so confronting that problem would be Morris’s final point of emphasis. It was even more so after Morris listened to what the Bengals were saying about dealing with the Rams’ front.

“They talked about spreading it out, they talked about getting the ball out of his hand, using a lot of quick game and things of that nature,” Morris says. “So I wasn’t going to be lulled to sleep pressuring him, or putting extra people in the backfield, and allowing them to screen us to death.”

Morris said he was “shocked” the Rams didn’t see more screens from the Bengals. What they did see really didn’t go anywhere—Joe Mixon had five catches for a single yard, Perine didn’t record a catch and the receivers’ big plays did, indeed, happen downfield.

So is Morris saying he changes up his defensive gameplan depending on the team? But he doesn't do that. He must be talking about just sticking to his tried and true 2 high shell.

That brings us to the plays that defined the game. Morris picked out five. Two came before the half. Three happened after the break, and the adjustments the Rams made during it.

Play 1
Rams 7, Bengals 0. 0:36 left in the first quarter. Third-and-10, ball at Rams’ 11.

Three plays earlier, Chase had beaten Ramsey down the field for 46 yards, which had followed Mixon picking up the Bengals’ initial first down of the game, on a 13-yard run. The call was Crank 1 Y Special, with “Special” indicating there’d be double teams on the two receivers to the field (Chase and Boyd), and Ramsey would be on his own to the boundary. To disguise it, the Rams gave Burrow indicators that they were in a two-high or quarter/half look, before switching into the actual coverage at the snap.

So some man coverage, who knew.

Play 2
Rams 13, Bengals 10. 0:48 left in the second quarter. Third-and-6, ball at Bengals’ 25.

This one comes back to another pregame point of emphasis.

“Throughout the week, we had stressed how good this team had been in two-minute, end-of-the-half,” Morris says. “They were putting up points, man. They played the middle eight as well as anybody throughout the season. And I told the guys going into the game, whether they were in tight games or behind in the first half, for whatever reasons, the middle eight had been their deal.”

That came into focus with Jessie Bates’s pick of Stafford at the two-minute warning. Burrow followed with three quick completions. The Bengals then used their first timeout ahead of the third-and-6. Another first down would get Cincinnati going, with two timeouts left, and reprise visions Morris had burned into his head all week, of a catch Higgins made on the Ravens, and one Chase made on the Packers in two-minute situations to swing games.

Morris got the Rams in their “gold” front, which presented the overload to Burrow’s left and put Ramsey on Chase to that side—again putting the onus on his best corner, this time with showing just a single-high safety behind him, to buy his rush time.

At the snap, Burrow looked to Chase. Ramsey had him. He then progressed, and the hope was that a postsnap switch to zone, after showing man presnap (and having Chase manned up to the outside) would get Burrow to hesitate. It did. The “Tess” pressure call got home on Morris’s bet that Burrow’s protection would slide to the overload. Leonard Floyd engaged left tackle Jonah Williams, Greg Gaines looped around Floyd, Williams slid to Gaines, and that freed Floyd to take down Burrow.

Does this sound like a moron DC to anyone? Serious question.

Halftime

And that allowed for Morris and the position coaches to work through a plan. First, the Bengals had started to take his invitation to run the ball—and Mixon was averaging 5.7 yards per carry—so Morris talked to defensive line coach Eric Henderson on showing more five-man fronts to bottle that up. Second, Morris worked with secondary coaches Ejiro Evero and Jonathan Cooley on getting into dime, with a sixth defensive back, more on third down (something outside linebackers coach Chris Shula brought perspective on from the booth) as Morris planned to crank up the pressure over the second half.

So again, halftime adjustments and a guy that sounds like he knows what he talking about. Not just, oh, I guess we should play more press man in the 2nd half and hope that by luck or magic, our front gets home...

Play 3
Bengals 17, Rams 13. 11:03 left in the third quarter. Third-and-3, ball at Rams’ 11.

One benefit of going with more pressures and five-man fronts coming out of the half is it would make it tougher for the Bengals to double Donald. And on this particular play, that was the idea. The Rams lined Ernest Jones up on top of center Trey Hopkins, with Gaines then engaging him, to ensure Donald would be singled up on right guard Hakeem Adeniji. The rest went as expected.

“They went to what most people call a 5–0 protection, their five on our five,” Morris says. “And when that happens, that’s usually a good matchup for us with No. 99. … And what he did with that guard was one of the most impressive sacks I’ve seen all season. Going with the one against Arizona that he had on the first play of the game, it looked exactly the same. He’s able to walk a grown man back to the quarterback and bring him down to the ground.”

Again, halftime adjustments, the right play call that dictated the line calls or at the least influenced the line call, then the GOAT delivering. Seems legit.

Interestingly enough, the adjustment to play more dime worked there, too, where Taylor Rapp was in at a linebacker spot to cover Boyd’s choice route—“He absolutely did a great job in coverage, moving his feet, sitting tight, being patient on the route, and absolutely taking away Joe Burrow’s first read,” Morris says.

Now to me, thats just interesting stuff that you would never know as a casual fan, unless you had intimate knowledge of the play call. I love reading stuff like this.

Play 4
Rams 23, Bengals 20. 0:48 left in the fourth quarter. Third-and-1, ball at Rams’ 49.

The call was a fire zone, designed to cause chaos in the backfield. “Where you should try to run versus a dime defense, we’re shooting a guy through the bubble, we’re letting the other guy wrap around with some movement up front, and we’re getting the movement by the line,” Morris says.

“We were able to get to one we really liked, one of our pressures,” Morris says. “And we get to that pressure and then I watched Aaron Donald again take a man, hold him up with one arm, switch his mindset from pass rush to playing the run, just because of the call, be able to push the man back, and not only push the man back into the hole so he couldn’t get through there, he’s actually able to grab the running back with one hand and pull him back across the line of scrimmage.

“Now, he didn’t do that alone. There was Greg Gaines, squeezing that thing from the other side to make that hole tighter, there were people in the box that were shooting their hands. But he absolutely did that. I just marvel at the strength, marvel at the ability to do that.”

AD wrecking things like he does, but with the help of a defensive play call. Interesting. Seriously, when you watch it, does anyone actually know it was the playcall that aided AD, or just thought, wow, what a play by AD. I thought it was a heck of a play myself with no thought to Morris.

Play 5
Rams 23, Bengals 20. 0:43 left in the fourth quarter. Fourth-and-1, ball at Rams’ 49.

Here’s where Morris put the pressure on all his cover guys—“everybody’s got a man now.” And this would become a player’s play more than even Morris anticipated. The call was a four-man rush with all that man coverage while giving the cover guys help to the inside.

At the snap, Burrow immediately looked to Higgins. David Long saw where the play was going—he was on tight end C.J. Uzomah, but felt how fast Uzomah was trying to get to the flat, and stopped for a second, gambling that they were clearing him out to run Higgins across the middle. So when Burrow looked, not only was Darious Williams covering Higgins, but Long was sitting in the passing window. Burrow hesitated, and that was all L.A. needed.

“By the time that happens it’s too late,” Morris says. “And they did double Aaron Donald. They did exactly what you’re supposed to do as a coach, and he wins on the edge of the left guard so fast that the help can’t even get there before he gets his arms around [Burrow]. Because the man was that determined and knows that much—he’s seen double teams, he knows what they look like, he’s not gonna quit. And when he felt that, he was gonna win that thing.

“That’s what I mean by this thing is done by the players. That wasn’t any genius call that I made. That was the players going out there and executing their job at the highest level.”

When Morris said the double was there, I was confused, because all any of us saw was Donald roasting Adeniji one-on-one. But Morris was right. If you look at the play, Hopkins was peeling off to help on Donald at the snap. As Morris says, Donald simply anticipated where that help was coming from, rushed away from it to give Hopkins a longer path to get him, and won so fast that Hopkins couldn’t make it there in time.

This is where even if Long is a jag, he had the requisite experience to see this coming. Durant doesn't, neither does Rochell or Kendrick. And to me, that means there are gonna be hiccups in the secondary and Morris is a little more hamstrung, just by trying to protect against it. Maybe I'm all wet.

Could he help the players? Of course Morris could, and did. But another part of the deal was always going to be knowing when to get out of the way and let his defense be just that.

So what I took away from this was just how much goes into every single play the average joe (me included) never sees or at the least doesn't even realize what he is seeing. The other take away is that this is not last years defense. Gone is D. Williams, Miller and Weddle. I think Morris really leaned on those guys, esp late in the season and without those guys, his D has to be watered down. And lastly, coaches coach and can put guys in position to succeed, but at the end of the day, players have to make plays.

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Don't waste your time looking back, you're not going that way. - Ragnar Lothbrok