Rams’ altered offense in 2023: why it worked

Sean McVay Radically Altered the Rams’ Offensive Identity in 2023. Here’s Why It Worked

Last season, Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay realized that it was time for major offensive change. Here’s why it went so well.

DOUG FARRAR

https://athlonsports.com/nfl/los-angeles-rams/sean-mcvay-kyren-williams-matthew-stafford-los-angeles-rams

[me note: this is all based on an interview w/ McVay that was posted on 7/23, here…2nd youtube in the thread: https://theramshuddle.com/topic/mcvay-speaks/#post-151485  ]

Sean McVay is one of the NFL’s most brilliant offensive minds, but you already knew that. Through his time as the head coach of the Los Angeles Rams, and even before then when he was honing his craft as one of Mike Shanahan’s most prominent assistant coaches with the then-Washington Redskins, McVay has done as much as anyone over the last decade to help define how modern offensive football is designed and played.

The thing is, McVay wasn’t entirely happy with the ways in which his offense was structured in 2021 and 2022. That may seem odd, given that the 2021 season ended with the Rams beating the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl LVI, which made McVay the youngest head coach ever to win a Super Bowl.

The Rams ranked eighth in Offensive DVOA in that Super Bowl season, but the run game was a problem all season long, and those issues were still apparent in 2022, when McVay’s team went 5-12, quarterback Matthew Stafford was injured for a good part of the season, and all the bells and whistles in the world couldn’t hide the fact that the Rams couldn’t get around the negative aspects of their offensive personality at the time.

In a recent episode of “The Athletic Football Show with Robert Mays,” McVay opened up about the issues at hand.

“Here’s the thing — we were able to execute the pass game at a really high clip,” McVay said. “But the Super Bowl? We couldn’t run the ball at all. We had to run a jet sweep just to get a first down. We had a third-and-1 and a fourth-and-1, and we had to run a jet sweep just to get a first down. That caught up to us, and it really showed up in 2022. We fortunate enough, and the players always find a way, and we were excellent on defense, too. That was a big factor, but that has to evolve.

“When you look back on it, you say, ‘We got away with some stuff offensively,” but we weren’t a complete offense. We needed to be a complete offense. That’s what the good ones are — they have the ability to do either/or. And if you can’t, it catches up to you.”

It did catch up to the Rams in both of those seasons. In 2021 and 2022, the running back cabal of Sony Michel, Darrell Henderson, and Cam Akers wasn’t enough to give McVay the running game he wanted, and his historical preferences for inside and outside zone runs, which he learned from the elder Shanahan, didn’t present the power, sustainability, and physicality McVay really preferred on the field.

Perhaps the most graphic example started with 5:44 left in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LVI. The Rams were trailing the Bengals, 20-16, and they had third-and-1 at their own 31-yard line. Akers got nowhere on third down. So, as McVay said, the Rams had to get tricky on fourth down with a sweep handoff to receiver Cooper Kupp. The seven-yard gain allowed the Rams to keep things going, but again, this was not the optimal process.

The fifth-round selection of Notre Dame running back Kyren Williams in the 2022 draft was about to become a big thing, though few knew it yet. In his rookie season, Williams gained just 139 yards on 35 carries, averaging 4.0 yards per attempt. He forced five missed tackles, and had one run of 15 or more yards.

In 2023, Williams ran the ball 241 times for 1,205 yards, which adds up to a 5.0 yards per carry average. He forced 51 missed tackles — eighth-most in the NFL — and his 10 runs of 15 or more yards also ranked in the league’s top 10.

Zone or duo?

What was the difference? The Rams decided to flip their run game ideals in a major way, and Williams was the ultimate purveyor of that switch. Now, instead of leading with inside and outside zone, the Rams went much more with man blocking concepts. No NFL team had more man-blocking runs than the Rams’ 204 in the 2023 season. To give you an idea of the unusually high frequency there, the New England Patriots ranked second in the NFL with man-blocking runs… with 127.

Duo, which looks a lot like inside zone to a lot of people, was the Rams’ main construct. In 2023, they led the NFL in rushing attempts (111), rushing yards (499), rushing yards after contact (279), rushing touchdowns (eight), and EPA (12.90) out of Duo. And Williams had more attempts (55), yards (303), yards after contact (165), touchdowns (five), and a higher EPA (13.50) than any other back in the league.

Now, the Rams have doubled down on this philosophy — literally. They selected Michigan running back Blake Corum in the third round of the 2024 draft, and guess which NCAA back had the most rushing attempts (35), rushing yards (261), rushing touchdowns (three), and the second-highest EPA (8.19, behind only the 10.37 EPA put up by Oregon’s Bucky Irving) out of Duo last season?

Yup. It all lines up, and this has been McVay’s plan for a while. It really started with the desire to increase the level of production for Stafford between the tackles.

Big-on-big was a priority, both run and pass.

Interestingly enough, the Rams’ change of plans schematically in the run game came about after a focus on reinforcing their talent inside the tackles to better protect Stafford. Former left guard (now center) Steve Avila came over in the second round of the 2023 draft out of TCU. Right guard Kevin Dotson arrived in a whisper of a trade with the Pittsburgh Steelers before the 2023 regular season, and played well enough to earn a new three-year, $48 million contract with $32 million guaranteed. And to replace Avila at left guard, the Rams signed former Detroit Lions standout Jonah Jackson to a three-year, $51 million contract with $34 million guaranteed.

Some may believe it extreme to spend that much money and draft capital on the interior of one’s offensive line. McVay has been enjoying things too much to care what anybody else thinks.

“It was fun, man,” McVay said of last season. “[The Rams’ players] allowed us to do some cool [stuff]. [Kyren Williams] was a really good player who I thought was productive in both phases, [and] he wasn’t limited in what he could do. I do think there was a big genesis because of protection issues where we wanted to get firmer inside. [Getting] the personnel to solidify the interior parts of the pocket.

“And then, that organically evolved into, ‘These guys are pretty good at removing people vertically, and the physical elements of this game. Say what you want; these physical teams can sustain. Why have the Steelers always won? Why is Baltimore always good? I give a ton of credit to those guys up north, and what Kyle [Shanahan] and John Lynch have established [with the San Francisco 49ers]. They’re physical on both lines of scrimmage.

“Kansas City has won all these Super Bowls… they’re a physical frickin’ team. Physical players and tough players — they win. Mike Shanahan always used to say, ‘Tough times don’t last; tough people do. And I think there’s been an important emphasis on that kind of approach.

“And that organically evolved into, how many different ways can we run Duo? How many different ways can we be vertical? But I do think it’s important to stretch people horizontally while still being able to move people vertically in the run game.”

The final step? Installing all that new stuff.

Not that switching from primarily zone to man in the run game was an entirely unfamiliar process — the Rams did run the ball 97 times behind man schemes in 2022. The real trick was integrating it with McVay’s total offense, including the passing game.

In the end, that wasn’t a problem at all.

“It’s what we’ve put on tape, but ideally, you want to package plays,” McVay said. “The guys I have the most respect for know how to sequence things. We talk about these coverages that make the quarterback decide post-snap… well, what if we make the defenses decide post-snap? Is it run? Is it pass? Is is play-action? Is it a screen? What are the different phases of offense you can activate where [the plays] start out looking the same, but they’re different, that fit your players? That’s the thing — I have to be cognizant and disciplined… you watch these offenses around the league, and they’re doing so many cool things, but do we have the time on task to get good at it?”

Yes, the Rams had the time, the wherewithal, and the personnel to make that major philosophical shift for the better. So, when Sean McVay’s offense is blistering your defense with power runs as much as with cutting-edge passing concepts in 2024, don’t be surprised.

Last year was the year for that.