Rams Super Bowl chances + "how did they get so good" articles & vids

The Rams have as good a shot at the Super Bowl as anyone

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/patriots/2017/12/23/sean-mcvay-rams-story-nfl-season/BwrFN6WAogIau9jjASmmGI/story.html

Dan Orlovsky signed with the Rams on July 20, right before the start of training camp. The Rams needed a third arm, and they wanted the 12-year veteran to help mentor Jared Goff, the No. 1 overall pick in 2016 who struggled in his rookie season.

Orlovsky, who played for five other NFL teams and seven other head coaches in his career, was immediately blown away when he met the Rams’ new head coach, 31-year-old Sean McVay.

“In the first offensive meeting I sat down, and within — I don’t want to exaggerate — less than three minutes, I turned to Jared Goff and I said, ‘You have no idea how lucky you are,’ ” Orlovsky, who was released at the end of camp, said by telephone last week. “And Jared knew it, too. He giggled and he said, ‘I know.’ ”

Well, the secret is out. The Rams and their wunderkind coach are the biggest story of the NFL season (sorry, Jacksonville). They’re 10-4 entering Sunday’s game at Tennessee, on the verge of clinching their first NFC West title (and playoff appearance) since 2004, and with Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz going down, the Rams have as good a chance as any NFC team of reaching the Super Bowl.

And the Rams aren’t just winning games, they’re dominating. Look at these scores: 46-9 over the Colts; 33-0 over the Cardinals; 51-17 over the Giants; 42-7 at Seattle. They also beat the Saints and won at Dallas and at Jacksonville.

The Rams are a fascinating, textbook example portraying the value of good coaching in the NFL. The Rams were dead last in the NFL in scoring offense last season under Jeff Fisher (14.0 points per game). This year, they’re tied with the Eagles at No. 1 in the league (31.3 points per game). No team in NFL history has ever gone from worst to first.

And the Rams are doing it with a second-year quarterback whom many had written off as a bust last year, and a first-time head coach who also calls his own plays. In a season with several impressive candidates, McVay still seems like the obvious choice for Coach of the Year.

“I didn’t think they’d be scoring-35-a-game good, but I thought they would be much, much better,” Orlovsky said. “I would always get texts in camp, ‘Hey, does Goff have any chance?’ And my response every time was, ‘I honestly think he’s going to be a good player.’ Nine out of 10 times the response back was, ‘Well, you’re the only one who thinks that way.’ ”

The Rams already had a stout defense leftover from the Fisher era, led by Defensive Player of the Year candidate Aaron Donald. They also quietly had a solid offseason under general manager Les Snead. They added veteran receivers Sammy Watkins and Robert Woods, and found a gem in third-round pick Cooper Kupp (team-leading 804 receiving yards). Most importantly, they fortified the offensive line with center John Sullivan and left tackle Andrew Whitworth.

McVay runs a West Coast system similar to the offenses run by Mike Shanahan and Gary Kubiak, heavy on zone stretch runs and play-action. It has created a star out of third-year running back Todd Gurley, who also was headed toward bust territory until McVay arrived. Now Gurley is an MVP candidate with 1,817 yards from scrimmage and 17 total touchdowns.

But most impressively, McVay has made a star out of Goff. He gets plenty of help from offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur and veteran quarterbacks coach Greg Olsen, but McVay was hired to be a quarterback whisperer, and he is very involved with coaching the position.

Goff enters Sunday’s game with 3,503 yards, 24 touchdowns, and just 7 interceptions for a 98.9 passer rating. That he ranks among the top 10 quarterbacks in touchdowns, yards, passer rating, yards per attempts (7.98), and completions over 25 yards (30) is a shocking turnaround from last year, when Goff went 0-7 as a starter and ranked among the worst in every passing statistic.

“What Sean has done an unbelievable job with, he understands that if you’ve got a good run game and a good play-action game on first and second down, and you can keep a defense off balance, you’re going to have success,” Shanahan, who hired McVay as an assistant tight ends coach in Washington in 2010, said by telephone last week. “He’s doing things that the quarterback can read very quickly. He understands that the development of a young quarterback is try not to put him in too many third-and-long situations.”

The Rams utilize play-action early and often, and Goff has sold it well, with 1,031 yards, 5 touchdowns, and 1 interception out of play-action. His 103 play-action pass attempts are third most in the NFL (behind Minnesota’s Case Keenum and Seattle’s Russell Wilson), his 10.01 yards per attempt are fourth, and he has a 103.7 passer rating (statistics courtesy of ESPN’s “NFL Matchup”).

Orlovsky, a former UConn quarterback, just watches the Rams from afar now, and spends his free time breaking down the coaches’ tape and posting it to Twitter (@danorlovsky7). Several teams run a similar offense, but Orlovsky highlights how McVay adds new wrinkles to create wide-open receivers, and how McVay runs the offense with an impressive feel for pacing and keeping the defense off balance.

The @RamsNFL are checking all the boxes and will be a flat out problem once the playoffs come around. They’ve cracked the #NFL code of getting your best players to play with detail, and be unselfish! @RamsNewsNow #LARams @LATimesfarmer #rams #RamsNation pic.twitter.com/Q6eATxZGeG

— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) December 20, 2017

“I’ve marveled at it this season, the way they’re changing their tempo,” Orlovsky said. “They have like five tempos. [McVay] is like Greg Maddux, where he doesn’t necessarily overpower you, but you have no idea what’s coming and he’ll make you look silly.”

The Rams were mocked in some circles for hiring a 31-year-old head coach, but it looks like they hit the jackpot in McVay, a former Georgia high school state player of the year and the grandson of former 49ers executive John McVay.

Sean McVay was hired at 24 to coach Washington’s tight ends and quickly rose through the ranks. When Shanahan was fired after 2013, not only did McVay survive the coaching change to Jay Gruden, he was promoted to offensive coordinator, where he spent the next three seasons working with Kirk Cousins in an entirely new offensive system.

“You could tell right away that he was motivated, extremely bright, related to players extremely well,” Shanahan said of hiring McVay in 2010. “And the thing that really caught my eye as he became our tight ends coach is his attention to detail. And right away, he knew the entire running game as well as the passing game, and that’s hard for a young man to come in and pick things up so quickly.

“Over the next three years, I told people, ‘Well, Sean will definitely be a coordinator, he will be a head coach, as well.’ You knew very quickly that he had a lot of confidence knowing the game inside and out. It gave him instant credibility with the players.”

That credibility has helped him overcome any concerns about his age. He’s younger than Sullivan and Whitworth, and also Orlovsky, but McVay has used his youth to his advantage.

“My feeling was that there were 54 guys on the team, and Sean was the 54th,” Orlovsky said. “And it wasn’t that the team didn’t respect him and revere him and look to him as their head coach and leader. He just makes you feel like he’s in it with you. There’s just more of a buy-in feeling.”