McVay understands that Gurley needs to get the ball

‘Idiot’ Sean McVay understands that Todd Gurley needs to get the ball

Rich Hammond

https://theathletic.com/1434267/2019/12/04/idiot-sean-mcvay-understands-that-todd-gurley-needs-to-get-the-ball/?=twittered

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Sean McVay is not an idiot.

Never mind the Seahawks, 49ers or any other team. McVay’s biggest challenge this season has been in trying to convince skeptics that there’s nothing askew with running back Todd Gurley. McVay apparently is just a moronic coach who regularly forgets to call plays for his star player, one with 2,000-yard potential.

That’s essentially what McVay has been saying, sometimes in jest — like Wednesday, when he joked that the reason for Gurley’s recent increase in usage was “me not being an idiot” — but often with sincerity. Week after week, when Gurley totaled anywhere from five to 15 carries, McVay stood before reporters after the game and said that, gosh, he just didn’t do a good job of getting Gurley the ball. His bad. Sure.

It’s been almost a full year since The Great Gurley Debate started. During a game against Philadelphia on Dec. 16, 2018, something happened with Gurley’s left knee. He had 22 touches that night, a total not again matched until last month. McVay and Gurley essentially are the only two high-profile people in the organization who haven’t at least tacitly acknowledged some sort of management plan for Gurley this season.

The more pertinent question became: Was Gurley physically incapable of handling major carries, or were the Rams preserving him early in the year with designs on a late-season workload push?

Welcome to judgment day. The Rams, for all practical purposes, need a victory Sunday night against Seattle at the Coliseum to keep their wild-card playoff hopes alive. Their best path to victory, as evidenced by the Rams’ five games against the Seahawks under McVay, is to give the ball to Gurley.

The Rams have a 3-2 record against Seattle since the start of the 2017 season. In the three victories, Gurley averaged 19.7 carries and 116.3 yards. In the two losses, he averaged 14.5 carries and 47.0 yards.

Teams usually throw the ball more when they’re trailing, but it’s not as though the Rams got blown out in either defeat. They lost 16-10 early in the 2017 season, then lost 30-29 this October in what was a close game throughout. Gurley had 15 carries while quarterback Jared Goff attempted 49 passes.

The Rams need to ride Gurley on Sunday. The Seahawks are far from porous when it comes to run defense, but they do rank in the bottom third of the league in yards against per carry. And they have allowed 13 rushing touchdowns this season, tied for third-most in the league.

Seattle also has had trouble covering tight ends, but given the still-uncertain status of Gerald Everett — the Rams’ top downfield threat at tight end who missed last week’s game with a knee injury and was listed as “did not participate” in Wednesday’s walk-through — the Rams would be wise to ride Gurley.

But can they? Gurley had 25 carries and three receptions against Chicago in a 17-7 home win on Nov. 17. The following week, he totaled only nine touches in a 45-6 blowout loss to Baltimore. But don’t read too much into that Ravens game, which was an out-of-whack outing for pretty much every Rams player and coach. Last Sunday against Arizona, Gurley had 19 carries and one reception before he left the 34-7 victory early in the fourth quarter.

Gurley has not recorded at least 20 touches in consecutive games since early November 2018. The three-time Pro Bowler, who typically speaks with reporters on Thursdays, was not available for comment on Wednesday, but those around him insist that he’s ready for a major role against Seattle and is capable of executing it.

“I think we just want to continue to establish the run, for sure,” Goff said. “I think that’s definitely part of what we want to do — always has been, always will be. He’s a big part of that, and as long as he’s playing running back for us, I expect that to be the case. He’s doing a good job, and I think he’s excited for it.”

Gurley has not recorded a 100-yard game this season, although he certainly would have Sunday if the Rams kept him in during the fourth quarter. Gurley finished with 95 yards and averaged 5.0 yards per carry for only the third time this year. Gurley also had a 20-yard reception, his second-longest of the season.

The Rams totaled 132 yards on the ground, their most since 166 in the season opener at Carolina.

“I think the most important factor in that question is that we’ve had efficiency when we have run the ball,” run-game coordinator Aaron Kromer said. “When you have efficiency, you can hand it to the running back again because it is second-and 4, second-and-6. You might have gotten a first down, and now you’re in a situation where you can hand the ball off again or have a hard play-action fake.

“That’s when the games have not worked in our favor that way. We haven’t been able to do that. I don’t think there’s ever been a choice not to give someone the ball. It was a choice that the game brought upon us as it unfolded.”

This is interesting, and not something previously mentioned by a Rams coach. The Rams this season are averaging 4.37 yards per carry when they run the ball in first-and-10 situations. That’s 13th-best in the league. A year ago, they averaged 5.5 yards on first-and-10 runs. However, in 2017, the Rams averaged only 4.36 yards on first-and-10 runs, so that’s not the only answer to the run-game problem.

Kromer probably is onto something here, though. Last week against the Cardinals, the Rams averaged 5.25 yards on first-and-10 runs. That set up, as Kromer mentioned, a lot of play-action attempts, and the Cardinals bit hard on a lot of them. For the first time in a long time, the Rams offense looked like its former, productive self, with solid balance and the opposing defense kept off-balance.

What does that mean for this week? The Seahawks allow an average of 3.94 yards on first-and-10 runs, which is pretty solid. If they can maintain that success against the Rams, particularly early in the game, McVay will need to avoid the temptation to go away from the run, as sometimes happens with him.

“You don’t want to make the same mistakes that you ended up making earlier on in the season,” McVay said, in part referencing the Rams’ loss to Pittsburgh, in which Gurley vanished in the fourth quarter even though he’d been running well.

So yes, there are times when McVay’s self-criticism is valid. Gurley’s usage is not one of those times. Even Goff grinned and rolled his eyes Wednesday when McVay’s “idiot” comment was relayed — “He’s being hard on himself,” Goff said — and the truth about Gurley’s situation probably will never get fully revealed.

McVay did push back against one idea, though — one that suggested the Rams, as part of strategy, limited Gurley early in the season so that he would be fresh for December.

“No, no, it has nothing to do with that,” McVay said. “It was really just, you’re just kind of working through the 2019 season — the best way to utilize all of our players and figuring out what our identity is. I think we’re still working through that, but (it) didn’t have anything to do with (load management). Shoot, we’re just trying to win a game. So, certainly it wasn’t ever with the mindset of looking ahead before anything was accomplished.”