the “13 personnel” discussion

Matthew Stafford Has a Warning For Everyone Who Wants to Copy the Rams’ 13 Personnel
Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford would like the rest of the NFL to know that copying Sean McVay’s 13 personnel ideas may not go the way they expect.

Doug Farrar

https://athlonsports.com/nfl/los-angeles-rams-matthew-stafford-sean-mcvay-13-personnel

The best coaches and play designers in any sport are the ones who adapt to the realities around them. Los Angeles Rams head coach and offensive mastermind Sean McVay was challenged when top receiver Puka Nacua suffered a sprained ankle with 10:02 left in the first half of the Rams’ 17-3 Week 6 win over the Baltimore Ravens. With Nacua off the field, McVay turned to something he had rarely used before — 13 personnel, with one running back, three tight ends, and one receiver. McVay hadn’t run a single play out of 13 personnel all season to that point, but he dialed up eight such plays in the second half, and all were run plays.

The real change happened the next week, when the Rams faced off against the Jacksonville Jaguars. In Los Angeles’ 35-7 blowout of the Jags, the Rams ran 13 personnel on 29 of their 72 offensive plays, a startling 40.3%. Quarterback Matthew Stafford, who overall completed 21 of 33 passes for 182 yards and five touchdowns, completed six of nine passes in 13 personnel for 59 yards and three of those touchdowns – one to rookie seventh-round pick Konata Mumpfield, one to veteran Davante Adams (who caught three touchdown passes on the day), and one to second-round rookie tight end Terrance Ferguson.

All four of Los Angeles’ tight ends – Ferguson, Tyler Higbee, Colby Parkinson, and Davis Allen – had catches in this game.

Nacua suffered no long-term effects from the injury — his 129 catches on 166 targets for 1,715 yards and 10 touchdowns last season confirmed that — but McVay was going to weaponize his offense with 13 personnel from then on, with Nacua as the primary receiver in those sets.

The 2025 Rams finished with by far the NFL’s most 13 personnel snaps — 331, while the Pittsburgh Steelers ranked second with 140 — and Stafford benefited from it in ways that would be any quarterback’s dream. Per Sports Info Solutions, Stafford completed 99 passes on 145 attempts in 13 personnel for 1,261 yards, 22 touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 134.8. To put that in perspective, three quarterbacks — Aaron Rodgers of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles, and Jacoby Brissett of the Arizona Cardinals — tied for second in the NFL with three touchdown passes out of 13 personnel.

So, as you would expect, the rest of the NFL is looking to add these 13 personnel concepts. It’s why 22 tight ends were selected in the 2026 NFL Draft, the most we’ve seen from that position since 2002.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should

In a recent appearance on the “Green Light with Chris Long” podcast, Stafford talked with Long, the former star defensive end, about why the Rams will still be ahead of the game while the rest of the league may be in copycat mode.

“People are like, oh man, you know, everybody’s gonna be in 13 next year, because that’s the way the league goes,” Stafford said. “And I’m like, ‘Well, they’d better have four guys that can all do everything. And that’s what we have. We’re so lucky in the room. You know, people talk about it as just the Xs and Os on the field.

“But these guys [the Rams’ tight ends] are really talented players. They can block at the point of attack. They can catch the ball intermediate down the field, the whole thing. And they’re smart enough to go learn all these positions and do all these things, and that takes a lot.

“We did pivot, because we probably had zero snaps of 13 personnel in training camp last year. Puka gets hurt, and… we [didn’t] have that many receivers available at that point. And so it was like, ‘Okay, well, let’s have a plan if something does happen here.’ And sure enough, we just kind of went into it.

“We liked the way it dictated the terms a little bit as far as, ‘Hey, here’s what we’re going to get from their defense. And sometimes we don’t know what we’re gonna get. We might get nickel, we might get penny, we might get base, we might get whatever you want to call it.

“But we had plans for all of that, and how we wanted to go attack it as we moved forward. There’s always a chess match going on in the NFL. I’m lucky to be playing for a coach that’s ahead of the curve on a lot of that.”

Defenses will now be on point for 13 personnel

One thing to consider is that NFL defenses have been behind that curve when it comes to dealing with three tight ends on the field. It has been an uncommon grouping in previous years, so when teams face a lot of 13 personnel, they haven’t built up the necessary practice repetitions to counter it.

That’s something Matt Nagy, then the Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive coordinator, told me in February, 2024, as the Chiefs were preparing to face the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII. The Chiefs were the most prevalent 13 personnel offense in the league at that time.

“Number one, we feel that we have a good set of tight ends who can do different things,” Nagy said. “When you’re in 13 personnel, are they receiving tight ends, or are they blocking tight ends, or are they both? We feel like we have a good mix there. So, it starts with personnel.

“The second part is, because there aren’t a lot of teams that do 13 personnel, a lot of defensive coordinators don’t have a lot of calls for 13 personnel. So, they’ve got kind of a limited menu. So now, you can do some different things. If a team shows a multitude of defenses against 13, we take a look at that and decide whether we want to go with it or not. We’ve been that way for a long time.”

Will that advantage disappear with a new influx of 13 personnel, and a corresponding need for defensive coaches to scheme against it?

Quite possibly. For every schematic action in football, there will be an equal and opposite reaction sooner rather than later.

So, intrepid NFL coaches — don’t automatically assume that just because you load up on tight ends for the 2026 season, your offense is going to reap the rewards. As Stafford said, it takes all factors working in concert for any revolution to happen.