LA once again has two NFL franchises

From MMQB: Los Angeles, that elusive jewel of the west coast that saw two franchises flee in the ’90s, now once again has two NFL franchises.

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COMPETITION IN L.A.

Los Angeles, that elusive jewel of the west coast that saw two franchises flee in the ’90s, now once again has two NFL franchises. A notoriously capricious community of fans will be expected to split its rooting interests between the Rams and the Chargers, two teams that combined for a 9–23 record last year.

For first-year head coaches Anthony Lynn (Chargers) and Sean McVay (Rams), it’s win or go home. It’s with this overarching sense of organizational urgency that the Raiders took to Los Angeles in 1982 following team owner Al Davis’s public feud with the city of Oakland and NFL ownership at large. The Raiders coach then, Tom Flores, took a 7-9 team with aging stars to a city with little patience for losers and in short order identified the nucleus of a team that wouldn’t have another losing season until 1987. Oh, and 1982 was a strike year.

“The L.A. audience was different,” says Flores, 80, now a color commentator for the team’s radio network. “We had good crowds immediately because we were competitive. We combined our fans throughout California with some of the fickle L.A. crowds and had a good crowd for a long time. But if you’re not winning, they won’t come. That’s the way it is there.”

Flores’s team finished 8-1 in 1982, taking advantage of a number of circumstances these Rams and Chargers won’t enjoy. He had a Super Bowl champion quarterback in Jim Plunkett, continuity on his coaching staff, veterans with playoff experience, and the benefit of a pre-internet existence (“There were a lot of things that happened that would end up on YouTube today, and honestly they would be pretty funny, if you’re not running the team,” Flores says.) The only thing either of these teams have in common with Flores’s Raiders is the venue; the Rams will once again play in the cavernous 93,000-seat L.A. Memorial Coliseum. The Chargers will play at the 27,000-seat StubHub Center in Carson, home of Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy.

“Bottom line,” Flores says, “there’s an unknown future for these teams if they don’t succeed immediately in the win-loss column. Football is sacred in many other parts of the country; it is not sacred in Los Angeles.”

Regarding the Chargers, two points about Anthony Lynn and his early moves as head coach that should get you up to speed on the man and his mission:

• During OTAs this year, the former NFL running back turned Rex Ryan protégé turned first-time head coach told his team explicitly that no one was to hit the ground during team drills. Under no circumstances, Lynn said, should a tackler bring a ballcarrier to the ground during the non-padded practice. This is common practice during the non-padded portion of the NFL offseason, but rarely are there significant consequences for the occasional lapse. Mistakes happen. Men who weigh more than 200 pounds and run 40 yards in under five seconds often don’t know their own strength.

But the Chargers found out very quickly that Lynn isn’t here for the games. “In OTAs, you’re not supposed to go to the ground,” says Chargers running back Branden Oliver, “but some guys get tripped up and stuff like that, and if he thinks you’re doing more than you’re supposed to he’ll tell you to get out, get off the field, even to big-name guys. So that really set a tone. He’s a players’ coach, he’s stern. When he puts his foot down, when he believes something, that’s the way it’s going to be, no ifs, ands or buts about it. And just from OTAs you can tell he’s the kind of coach you want to run through a brick wall for.”

• Lynn’s new boss, 44-year-old general manager Tom Telesco, has long had a hand not only in roster building, but also in roster and depth chart organization. Where some GMs across the NFL are content to buy the groceries and let the head coach prepare the meal, Telesco is not. Former head coach Mike McCoy, himself a first-timer when the Chargers hired him in 2013, operated on those terms with Telesco until his firing after the 2016 season, the team’s second losing campaign in a row. Lynn, on the other hand, has been more assertive from the get-go, intent to win or lose by his own design. It’s been refreshing to many of those who have had a hand in the team’s slip from 9-7 and a playoff berth in 2013 to the AFC West doormat.

Oliver, who has shown flashes of brilliance since going undrafted in 2014 but missed the 2016 season with a torn Achilles, is especially thrilled to be a part of Lynn’s simplified running game. With Lynn as offensive coordinator in 2016​, the Bills finished first in yards per rushing attempt (5.3) and rushing touchdowns (29). A former NFL running back himself, Lynn under Ryan resurrected the ground-and-pound mentality using a zone running attack, which will be a departure for the Chargers’ returning offensive linemen from last season’s man-heavy scheme. (Starting running back and former first-round pick Melvin Gordon rushed for a meager 3.9 yards per attempt.)

“We’ve got some new run concepts, and a scheme that’s a little simpler,” Oliver says. “We’ve got a guy like Philip [Rivers] who puts us in the position to win games, so we’re gonna see some special things.”

As for the Rams, the Sean McVay hire makes all the sense in the world on paper. Take the 32nd-ranked offense in the NFL and put it in the hands of the man who helped Kirk Cousins grow into one of the most prolific and accurate quarterbacks in the NFL. (If that sounds like an exaggeration, recall that Cousins passed for 4,917 yards last season in Washington, third-most in the NFL, and completed 67% of his passes, good for seventh.)

The bigger unknown when it came to McVay’s hiring was how his age (31) would translate into ability to lead and manage a football team of 53 egos and personalities on a middling franchise one year into relocating to the second-most populous city in the United States.

Andrew Whitworth took the leap of faith when he left the team that drafted him in 2006, the Bengals, to join the Rams at 35 years old on a three-year, $36 million contract to anchor an offensive line that allowed 49 sacks in 2016. Whitworth is one of two players on the roster who is older than McVay—who was a high school freshman quarterback running the triple option at Marist School in Atlanta when Whitworth was a redshirt freshman at LSU in 2001. Adding Whitworth may prove to be the best decision McVay and GM Les Snead have made early in the process of turning around the Rams, not simply for his pass blocking but for his experience in McVay’s offense. The scheme Whitworth learned under Jay Gruden in Cincinnati is, with slight variations, the same one McVay learned under Gruden in Washington. Former No. 1 overall pick Jared Goff spends much of his time with Whitworth quizzing him on how Andy Dalton handled certain situations in the offense.

In Whitworth’s estimation, the message McVay would deliver this summer would resonate and had the potential to set a permanent tone for the season, good or bad.

“You listen to him talk about defense, offense, special teams and you realize this guy knows football like no other. He’s special in that way,” Whitworth says. “But there’s something else that makes him special. I would imagine its very hard for a coach of his age to be as assertive as he has and cover the topics he has in a team meeting setting. Talking about character, about being accountable to one another, focus, discipline, the way we communicate with other.

“I think it’s a great place to start a football team. You see teams that are really successful when guys carry themselves the right way on and off the field.”

Connor Barwin, another veteran free agent acquired this offseason by Snead, came away similarly impressed with McVay: “He’s figured out what he believes in and what he wants to stand for and what he wants the team to stand for,” Barwin says. “That’s something that’s important, and something somebody might not expect out of a young coach.”

McVay has introduced in his short time with the football team a theme of competition. Whitworth says it was not as strong in Cincinnati, where he played in six playoff games between 2009 and 2015, losing each. Minicamp was an offense vs. defense battle royale more than it was a cut-and-dried installation period, with McVay turning two-minute drills and other team activities into games, assigning points for first downs, turnovers and defensive stops. Losing sides ran gassers. It was all refreshingly collegial, Whitworth says.

“I think one of the coolest things we did in OTAs was create competition times where it’s not just scripted plays,” Whitworth says. “It’s always a positive to create competition when you’re starting a football team. It’s a big step towards being the best version of yourselves.

“You feel like there’s bragging rights, and you create that to help guys not just go through the motions.”