how much can the offense improve in 2019

Jared Goff Isn’t Hiding From That Super Bowl Stumble
The supercharged Rams managed just three points against the Patriots on the big stage, but their young quarterback is using those failures to learn and move on—and up—this offseason.

Albert Breer

https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/06/03/jared-goff-rams-2019-andy-dalton-cam-newton-odell-beckham-mmqb

Some players and coaches treat a Super Bowl loss like it never happened and figuratively bury the result like a dead body. Others try to confront the setback at every turn, making it a talking point that they won’t avoid the past.

Jared Goff, in the aftermath of Super Bowl LIII, did neither.

The Rams scored three points in the game. Goff threw a devastating fourth-quarter interception, saw half his throws fall incomplete and posted a 57.9 rating. And the offense that 33-year-old coach Sean McVay had turned into the NFL’s most dangerous over the last two years in L.A. was rendered a speed bump on Bill Belichick’s path to a sixth title.

So how did Goff process the Super Bowl? How did he deal with it in the aftermath?

By treating it like any other loss. Or win, for that matter.

“Oh yeah. I went back and watched it the day after,” Goff said on Friday, after wrapping up the Rams’ third week of OTAs. “Postgame, tried to treat it like any other game where you’re evaluating yourself. Obviously, there were much bigger implications, but you just go through it like you would, and evaluate what you think you did well and what you didn’t do well, and move on.

“And yeah, it took longer than a regular game to move on from, because there wasn’t a game after it to fix what you’d done in the previous game. But it’s part of the process. Every year there’s a team that goes through this. This year it’s us.”

Goff then pointed out that losing the Super Bowl isn’t the curse it used to be.

He’s right, too. Eight of nine teams this decade to fall on the biggest stage made the playoffs the next year, six of those got through to the divisional round, five won at least one playoff game, and the last team in that spot, last year’s Patriots, bounced back to win it all the following season.

“It’s something we’re able to look forward to—you’ve seen teams come off losing it and win it the following year,” Goff said. “It’s not going to happen overnight, it’s not going to happen just because the Patriots did it—it’s not like, ‘OK, they lost two years ago and last year they beat us, so that’s our track.’ That’s not how it works, and we understand that.”

But, he continued, if the Rams follow the road that they have for the last 29 months or so, there’s no reason he, and the team, can’t bounce back quickly. For the quarterback, the first steps were taken that next day at the team facility, confronting what stood between him and the Lombardi Trophy.

Sean McVay has been pretty vocal about how disappointed he was in himself in the Super Bowl—and rest assured, Goff felt the loss same as his coach. He hasn’t been as outward about it, but he did beat himself up over how a stellar 18-game body of work to get the Rams to Atlanta somehow didn’t carry over once they got there.

And as he saw, it wasn’t just the opportunity that felt wasted in the aftermath. Moreso, it was a defensive effort against Tom Brady, Josh McDaniels and the Patriots offense that probably would’ve stood up as historic if he and the offense had played even an average game.

“The fact that our defense played the game they did, and Wade [Phillips] coached the way he did, all the plays we made—we got an interception on the first play of the game—and offensively, and me personally, we weren’t able to hold up our end, that’s what really bothered me,” Goff said. “At this point, late May, early June, I’m able to move past that, and you’re on to the next step of your career and your life.

“But for a while there, that was the big sticking point in my head.”

What he wasn’t going to waste was the experience, and the lessons that playing against a Belichick defense presented him. It was all there for him when he fired up the tape the next day.

Back in February, we detailed the Patriots’ defensive game plan in both the day-after and week-after MMQBs, first from the locker room and then with the McCourty twins. In each case, the overriding theme was New England not wanting to give McVay, Goff or anyone on the Rams roster any sort of tell into what they were doing—which meant playing differently than they had, and disguising everything.

It worked, and Goff concedes now that the Super Bowl experience illuminates where the L.A.’s high-powered attack still has room to grow.

“They’re so unique in that they change weekly in what they’re doing,” Goff said of the Patriots. “I think for me personally, if we were play them again, or any team that’s similar to them that can do that, you have to be able to adjust on the fly a little bit quicker.

“As opposed to waiting for something to happen, you have to actively adjust to what they’re doing, and adjust to what a team is trying to present to you, whether it’s something they showed on film or not.”

So the Rams are attacking that now, Goff explained, by trying to mimic game conditions in practice. For two seasons the Rams have for the most part been able to dictate the tenor of games to their opponents. What they’re preparing for now are the occasions where the opponent is capable of dictating the rules of engagement to them.

“We know the three or four defenses that’ll be 75 percent of the stuff we play this year, 80 percent of the stuff we play,” Goff said. “There’s that 20 percent that you don’t often get much work on, that we’re trying to actively work on, actively prepare for. And then when the game comes and those situations arise, we will be prepared.”

The Rams also drilled down this spring on third-down conversions (they ranked fifth in that category in 2018 but went 3-of-13 in the Super Bowl) and red-zone situations (they were 18th last year, the only category in which they were middling on offense). It’s a good example of the offense zeroing in on details, with the big picture in good shape.

Which, of course, is a reminder that despite how last year ended, there’s a lot to look forward to in L.A. With that in mind, a few other nuggets from my talk with Goff …

Goff’s work with his throwing coaches has consumed a lot of his offseason. Like more than half of the NFL’s starting quarterbacks, Goff does his personal work at 3DQB in Orange County. Tom House’s partner, Adam Dedeaux, has focused Goff on consistency in his stroke this offseason (House’s star pupil, Tom Brady, is off the charts in that area), and Goff has the advantage of being a drive away, making him a daily visitor at points this offseason.

“Everything he’s done, and I work with him daily, is about being repeatable, being able to repeat the same stroke,” Goff said. “When people ask me about it, I equate it to a swing coach in golf, or if you’re a tennis player, your personal coach, somebody who’s able to teach you how to be consistent. And seeing my mechanics my rookie year, which I’d thought were good, and even my second year, which I thought were really good, to where I am now, and how much more consistent and accurate and on top of it I am, is all a credit to them. They’ve been tremendous for me.”

Goff’s belief is that consistency in the skill position should help too. Two years ago the Rams imported Sammy Watkins and Robert Woods, and drafted Cooper Kupp and Josh Reynolds. Last year it was Brandin Cooks and Gerald Everett. This year, for the first time in his career, the skill group around Goff will be much the same, which has facilitated the offense’s ability to focus on the smaller stuff.

“That’s definitely part of it, especially with a short offseason,” said Goff. “You feel like you pick up where you left off, and more literally than other teams can say that. We finished in February and picked up in April with the same 11 guys, besides our center and left guard, and it’s been pretty seamless. We continue to run what we run through this spring stuff and OTAs, and we’ve worked on different wrinkles.

“To be able to continue that chemistry with the receivers and the offensive line has been tremendous.”

This year is different from last year. And for really good reasons.

“Way different. Way different,” Goff said. “Last year, being in that first round of the playoffs, playing the Falcons, the previous season we were 4-12, so you’re thinking, ‘OK, this is kind of fun, I like the playoffs, this is cool.’ And you go through it and you lose, and you’re like, ‘Wait, wait, I want to go back to that. That was fun, I shouldn’t have taken that for granted.’ This past season, you’re like, ‘OK, we belong.’”

Which brings us to the question of sustainability. Goff is 24, Todd Gurley is 24 (even with questions on his health), Cooks is 25, Aaron Donald is 28, and the Rams have become the kind of place where veterans (Ndamukong Suh last year, Eric Weddle and Clay Matthews this year) come to make a run at a ring. And it’s through those guys that Goff has gotten an appreciation for what’s going on.

“For me, personally, the best example is when we sign free agents, and we’ll talk to them about where they been, and the culture [in those places], and they’re like, ‘Dude, it’s nothing like this. It’s not even close,’” Goff said. “That’s where we sort of take a step back and try not to take it for granted. I understand I’m in a very fortunate situation, and I’m going to try and take full advantage of it.”

The Rams broke through in 2017, and took a major leap forward last year. Now, how they process the memory of Feb. 3 will play a big part in whether they take the next major step. “When you have that last game and you don’t get a chance to redeem yourself, there’s not a next week’s storyline. It’s like, ‘Alright, this is the story of the whole offseason.’ And now you have to deal with it.”

That’s what this spring has been about in L.A.

his ability to keep working on maybe getting through, if a particular look doesn’t happen, getting through some progressions, and just really making it hard on him in that regard throughout OTAs to really force more of the strenuous situations that are going to occur, so that when they do occur in season, we are prepared and ready to attack that.”

That’s a big theme this year. Adjustments, responses to different defensive looks, reacting to different situations. This was a big thing about OTAs–a lot of it was situational.

I have to say, sitting in my humble seat and trying to follow these things, if I would name one key thing to learn from last year, it’s adjusting both from play call to play call and also within a given play.

Indrid Cold

IMHO, it isn’t about pre-snap communications and audibles when there are unexpected looks. The audibles are still pre-planned, practiced stuff. McVay has shown to be a great schemer and his standard fare will beat the crap out of most teams/schemes even when they know it’s coming. The crappy games (the magic sub 80 QB rating games that we read about on here ad nauseum), appear to me are when the standard fare doesn’t work based on defensive scheme, talent that minimizes our strengths, or shitty weather (hello Chicago).

The next steps are less on Goff (again IMHO) than McVay to be an in-game adjuster. Goff is fully capable of executing when there’s something successful to execute. In the SB, facing 5 man fronts and quarters zone behind, we kept trying our standard fare (outside zone run, intermediate/deep routes). Screens and dink-and-dunk might have countered that…kind of what the Pats did to us. Hey, we’re in trouble, let’s throw a 5-yd crossing pattern to Edleman. We also finally got beat when Billy B/McDaniels inserted the FB in the 4th quarter. Several back breaking runs off that adjustment.

And it’s not a formation thing, as if go to more 12 personnel solves it. (Although I’d like to see some roster flexibility to “go jumbo and say we’re running right at you, fuck you stop it.”). Probably a very minority opinion, but McVay growing as an in-game coach is more important the perceived short-comings of Goff, Gurley’s knee, etc. And he didn’t like getting schooled in the SB, so I have full confidence he’ll get it done.