Rams schemes & coaches — including big changes in 2026

How Rams’ Nate Scheelhaase Became Architect of the Aerial Assault
In an exclusive interview, the Los Angeles Rams’ passing game coordinator provided an insightful look at his work, life, and vision for the future

Brock Vierra

https://www.si.com/nfl/rams/onsi/los-angeles-nate-scheelhaase-became-architect-aerial-assault

WOODLAND HILLS, Ca. When news broke last offseason that the Rams were able to retain offensive assistant Nate Scheelhaase, the move came and went from the news cycle but it’s impact has driven the Rams to new heights in 2025.

“He’s a great coach,” stated Rams head coach Sean McVay. “He has great leadership, great capacity for the game, similar to a lot of our other great coaches. First and foremost, he has great character. There’s an ability to be able to connect with all different types. There’s an ability to own the game from an all-22 perspective. He’s excellent. I’ve really enjoyed working with him. He’s a great person, first and foremost, and he has a great family. He’s been outstanding, working with the receivers, but he has a tremendous impact on our team and our group as a whole.”

McVay highlights an important point about Scheelhaase’s magic and it’s his ability to connect. Earlier this season, Scheelhaase was gracious enough to sit down with Rams On SI for an exclusive interview and now that reports have emerged that Scheelhaase is a name being looked at for offensive coordinator jobs next season, with some believing he has head coaching potential, here is an inside look into the man who helped Los Angeles retake the skies.

The Man Who Stands Ahead Of The Curve

Via information accumulated across the Rams’ entire 2025 regular season, it’s clear that Scheelhaase is not only a respected coach within the facility, he’s one of the brightest minds in football, blending his intelligence with his emotional understanding to form a platform for which the Rams have set repeated high marks.

“He’s a smart dude,” stated Rams offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur. “One, he’s incredibly efficient with finding stuff around the league and what people are doing and keeping up with the times, which is so important. He’s just eager to not just know what we’re doing or what the Houston Texans defense is doing, but he’s eager to know what the landscape of the league is and that’s a big factor.”

“As coaches we’re the best thieves out there. Someone does something cool, we’ll steal it, make it our own and call it our own then not cite our source. He does an incredible job at gathering that stuff. He’s awesome with the receivers. He’s awesome in front of the unit. I don’t think he really cares about his future, but his future in my opinion is really bright. He’s where his feet are and we’re really lucky to have him.”

Scheelhaase is the man keeping the Rams ahead of the curve, introducing new offensive concepts into the meeting room, giving the offensive staff more than enough to create new offenses such as the game-changing 13 personnel package.

I asked Scheelhaase about offensive innovation and what does the next evolution of offensive football look like in his mind. Scheelhaase, like most brillant offensive minds, believes offensive football rotates on a cycle and that the teams who are able to best weather the storms of change are those who control the controllables.

Nate Scheelhaase

“As many times as people ask me that question, the more important question that I ask myself is, what doesn’t change,” questioned Scheelhaase. “What in the last ten years, or the last five years, what’s not changing? What are the consistent foundational things that are important no matter what kind of offense, no matter how things are changing defensively, no matter how you’re trying to attack people, what are some, some of the like, mainstay, foundational, pillar, items that like, man, if you want to have good offensive football, this is what it takes.”

Looking at patterns across the game has been a key piece to Scheelhaase’s success. There are many similarities in Scheelhaase and Sean McVay’s school of thought, using pre-snap looks to induce poor decisions by painting similar pre-snap looks and then masking the play through similar actions on a variety of calls/ designs.

“I’m always like looking for the next idea, the best idea but I’m also trying to figure out, as much as anything, what has been tried and true throughout the last two, three, four, five years, that still is true today…I think that it’s cyclical,” cited Scheelhaase. “As far as, like, what happens in football, the ability to attack people both pre and post snap, Sean [McVay], his offenses, how that’s affected and influenced NFL offenses.”

“I always think the pre-snap operation is a huge part of what happens in the NFL,” continued Scheelhaase. “I think you’ve seen us do some stuff, the motions, the shifts, the personnel changes, the tempo, those things have infiltrated the NFL in a unique way and I think just continuing to watch what quarterbacks are doing pre-snap, and watch how that affects offenses in a positive way, that’s probably what I feel like I pay the most attention to.”

And it is in that through that since being named Rams’ passing game coordinator in the offseason, the Rams finished the season on top of several statistical leaderboards. Matthew Stafford is the NFL’s passing yards and passing touchdowns king, while being tied for second for fewest interceptions thrown by a quarterback who played 17 games. As a result, Stafford is in a dead heat with Drake Maye for the MVP award.

But while Scheelhaase steals concepts for the Rams to exploit, it was actually Scheelhaase who stole from the Rams originally, paving his path to Los Angeles.

A True Hustler

Not many men can produce multiple NFL-grade wide receivers out of a program with the history of Iowa State, but at the same time, not many men can replace Juice Williams and then set program records. That’s Nate Scheelhaase. A standout collegiate quarterback who parlayed his on-field success to a coaching career that took him from his alma mater, Illinois to Iowa State, where he climbed up Matt Campbell’s coaching ladder to be his offensive coordinator, before being hired by the Rams for the 2024 season.

Back in 2022, when Scheelhaase was Iowa State’s wide receivers coach, he stole McVay concepts built for Cooper Kupp to turn wide receiver Jaylin Noel from a little-known prospect into a household collegiate playmaker.

“I remember sitting with Jaylin Noel after the LA Rams 2021 Super Bowl year, and watching Cooper Kupp stack, choice, decision-making based on coverages and, I mean I literally remember after his freshman year, watching that cut up and just showing him all the different looks that Cooper Kupp got, and saying man, we’re going to do this play with you this next year.”

“And then Jaylin ran a ton of that, I mean, all throughout his time there at Iowa State. So there was an appreciation, for Sean, the offense, of what they were doing here, for Cooper Kupp. So those things happen naturally.”

In the three years after the 2021 season, Noel recorded 206 catches for 2,586 and 18 touchdowns. The Houston Texans drafted Noel and Iowa State teammate Jayden Higgins, whom Scheelhaase recruited and coached, in the 2025 NFL Draft. Scheelhaase was on the opposite sideline for their debuts in week one.

Higgins and Noel made their first NFL catches in that game.

Why Scheelhaase Is Built to Lead

Regardless of what happens, there’s is a very slim chance Scheelhaase isn’t an offensive coordinator next season. He has the knowledge, the experience, the ability to successfully teach, and the resume for the job. He was interviewed twice last season, by Tampa Bay and Jacksonville, and to be frank, I thought the Jaguars’ job was a done deal.

Scheelhaase came back for a reason and that reason is to get a premier coordinator job in 2026, whether with the Rams or with someone else, while putting another year of experience within the McVay system under his belt. But when it comes to the prospect of Scheelhaase being a head coach, here’s why I believe he will be one within the next five years.

Scheelhaase, a very personable professional, spoke about the times his professional life crossed over with his personal, with that exposure benefiting both sides. Back at Iowa State, long before NFL wide receiver Xavier Hutchinson was making millions with the Houston Texans, he was making sure Scheelhaase’s eldest son was okay while Scheelhaase and his wife would run out of the house.

“Xavier Hutchinson literally babysat my oldest son,” stated Scheelhaase. “His girlfriend really was the one who babysat my son, but my son would be most excited about Xavier Hutchinson coming over. My son’s stows away the jerseys that he has…it’s more than just football with those dudes like Xavier Hutchinson.”

The Family Man Turns Into the Teacher

While Scheelhaase is a family man, having started his home in Ames, Iowa, before moving to Southern California, his job is what pays the bills and for any coach, the struggle of balancing work and home life is one that often leads to failures that affect both sides.

Whenever there are problems with either, they bleed into each other and that’s where Scheelhaase has the leg up. As someone who was in the collegiate ranks, who is now working at the highest level in the NFL, he has an ability to impact young players in a meaningful and beneficial way.

Scheelhaase joked that some of the receivers he’s worked with during his time with the Rams had never been in a huddle at the collegiate level. They’ve also only been utilized in one way, taking away the mental aspect of the position, leading players to be behind the eight ball once they get to the league.

Thus, Scheelhaase’s whole philosophy is about finding things that players know, concepts they’re comfortable with, designing his offense around those concepts while introducing new ideas with common tones. That system has led to instant success and a buy-in from his group.

A True Team Builder

Why has Los Angeles been such a fit for Scheelhaase? It’s because the Rams mimic the feelings of collegiate ball. There is a time and a place for everything and having an emphasis on fun has been the calling card for the franchise’s ability to get through tough times.

“Coach McVay, what’s cool about him is if you’re like, picturing an image of college football, the right culture, environment, five years ago, and what you want to build,” stated Scheelhaase. “The connection that you want the coaches and the players to have amongst each other. That’s what this place feels like. I feel like I’ve heard players say before, you know, the University of Los Angeles Rams and there is a little bit of that college feel that we have because of the connection that’s made, the authentic, real connection that’s made from a relationship standpoint that I do think is unique.”

“Again, for me, this is the only NFL environment that I’ve seen so I’m not able to compare to a lot of places, but I do know people love coming to work here every day and I do know that there’s a certain culture and environment that is the tone that’s set by Coach McVay, the rest of the staff, that is appreciated on a player level, on a coaching level, and that’s that is unique to our place, our environment.”

Why do I think he’ll be a head coach soon? Because that’s who you’re bringing into the facility. Those were the same words echoed by Davante Adams when he first came to the Rams and continue to be the standard for the team.

What is the biggest scheme story in football right now, per Kevin Stefanski?

"Immediately my mind goes to split safety zone. I give coach Fangio all the credit…it's putting an umbrella up on a lot of offensive schemes."

How has that changed offenses? This was AWESOME. pic.twitter.com/aKVi0yPSuf

— Kevin Clark (@bykevinclark) April 3, 2026

Can more NFL teams copy the Rams’ TE-heavy offense in 2026?

Bill Barnwell

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/48750958/2026-nfl-tight-ends-13-personnel-rams-mcvay-trends-draft-jumbo-barnwell

Necessity is the mother of invention. Sean McVay had probably been thinking about his next offensive trick for years. He might have seen the vision early in his run as coach of the Rams, and he might have witnessed what other teams had done and thought he could do it better. There was a hint to the future over draft weekend a year ago, but it wasn’t until the 2026 NFL draft that we really saw how the league had been shifted — all as a result of one relatively minor injury.

When receiver Puka Nacua went down with an ankle injury against the Ravens last season and was ruled out for the subsequent week’s game in London against the Jaguars, McVay was faced with a conundrum. He had Davante Adams at wide receiver, of course, but there wasn’t much behind him on the depth chart. Tutu Atwell hadn’t been consistent enough to earn a larger role and had just missed the Ravens game with a hamstring injury. Jordan Whittington could theoretically step into the Nacua role, but only as a pale imitation of the real thing. Players such as Xavier Smith and Konata Mumpfield would see their roles increase later in the season, but they hadn’t played much by the time the Rams crossed the Atlantic.

What McVay did was almost entirely out of character for his offenses, going back to his first year with the Rams in 2017. McVay’s response to the Nacua injury was to go from 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end, three wide receivers) to 13 personnel (one running back, three tight ends, one wide receiver). While that seems logical enough, it undersells just how stunning of a change that is for McVay.

It worked. The Rams blew out the Jaguars. And while Nacua came back the following week, McVay didn’t stop. The Rams transformed their offense in the middle of the season, won Matthew Stafford an MVP, dominated opposing teams on the ground and came within a stop of making it to the Super Bowl.

And now, after a tight end-intensive Day 2 of the NFL draft, it’s becoming clear that other teams intend to follow in his footsteps. They’ll just need to master one problem: McVay’s offense is the only one that succeeded by going jumbo last season.

How did he change the league? Why did it work for the Rams? And can anyone else find success emulating McVay in 2026?

From 11 to 13

Go back to that legendary 54-51 win over the Chiefs in 2018. Outside of the two kneel-downs that ended the game, McVay’s Rams were in 11 personnel for every offensive snap. In fact, they were in 11 personnel on just under 91% of their offensive snaps that entire season, the highest rate in the NFL by more than 15 percentage points. Like every team, Los Angeles would occasionally shift into larger groupings near the goal line, but it was essentially living in 11 personnel.

Since McVay took over in 2017, six of the 10 highest single-season 11 personnel usage rates are from his Rams — including 2024, when the Rams were second in the NFL at 82.4%. The only team ahead of them that season was the Falcons, whose offensive coordinator was Zac Robinson, McVay’s former assistant in Los Angeles. The other teams in the top 10? The 2022 Bengals and 2023 Panthers, whose offenses were built by Zac Taylor and Thomas Brown. You can guess which coaching tree they came from.

Outside of 2020, when they leaned into 12 personnel (one running back, two tight ends, two wide receivers), McVay’s Rams have perennially been among the league’s most frequent users of 11 personnel. That has always been on purpose. Like many other great offenses from the past, McVay has wanted his concepts to look identical without giving away pre-snap or personnel tells. The Rams have sought out wide receivers who can block like Cooper Kupp and Nacua, giving them the ability to overpower defensive backs when teams have matched to those three-WR sets with their nickel (five defensive back) groupings.

The idea of using three tight ends? It simply wasn’t on McVay’s radar. When the Rams used 13 personnel in the early days of the McVay era, it was almost entirely as their formation for kneel-downs. The Rams used 13 personnel for a total of two snaps in 2021, zero snaps in 2022, one snap in 2023 and three snaps in 2024. That’s six snaps over the previous four seasons. And with Nacua on the field for the first five and a half games of 2025, the Rams didn’t run 13 personnel once.

Against the Jaguars in Week 7, though, McVay threw the changeup. He ran 13 personnel on nearly 39% of Los Angeles’ offensive snaps. The Rams won comfortably 35-7. While the headlines from the day revolved around Travis Hunter’s biggest game to date as a receiver and Adams’ three short-yardage touchdown catches, the real story was looming underneath.

Nacua returned the following week, but McVay had found something he liked, even with two star wide receivers on the roster. From that Jaguars game onward, the Rams were in 13 personnel for 323 of their 719 remaining offensive snaps (just under 45%). That was more than triple the 13 personnel usage rate for any other offense over the same span. Some of that was a product of playing from ahead most weeks, but the Rams were unquestionably a far larger and more multiple offense than they had been at any point during the McVay era.

Of course, what mattered more is that the offense worked. The Rams averaged 0.14 expected points added (EPA) per play last season, their best mark since 2018. Working out of 13 personnel, that jumped to 0.22 EPA per play. To put that in context, the only offenses since 2017 to average that much in terms of EPA per snap over a full season were the 2018 Chiefs and 2020 Packers. The 2007 Patriots, one of the greatest offenses in NFL history, averaged 0.24 EPA per play. The 13 personnel Rams weren’t far behind.

While Stafford deservedly earned plaudits for a career year, the Rams were quietly a historically efficient rushing attack. McVay’s run game posted a 51.6% success rate, a figure which trailed only his own 2018 offense and the 2022 Eagles for the best marks of the past decade. The Rams averaged nearly 5.0 yards per carry out of 13 personnel and more than 8.0 yards per dropback when Stafford attempted to pass.

Before the Rams

The Rams weren’t the first team to replace their smaller personnel with larger, tight end-intensive offensive groupings, of course. More teams look to McVay for inspiration and innovation than anybody else in the league bar perhaps Kyle Shanahan, but the Rams aren’t alone on this island. The league shifted toward smaller, wider groupings over the previous decade, and this return to bigger personnel started before the Rams adopted it in full force.

Let’s start with the usage. The league as a whole has dramatically shifted toward 11 personnel since 2007, when the Patriots changed the way offenses played football. In 2007, teams used a fullback (32%) about as often as they used three-wideout sets (31%). Just one team, the Bengals, used three-WR sets more than half of the time.

By 2018, the league’s usage of 11 personnel had doubled to over 62%. There were only three teams that didn’t use 11 personnel at least half of the time. The fullback had mostly disappeared, with most teams using them situationally on about 10% of snaps. That shift coincided with the league leaning more heavily into the pass and specifically into the short passing game, a trend that had started with the West Coast offenses of the 1980s before accelerating again last decade.

There were exceptions, of course. The Patriots got ahead of the curve by drafting Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez and leaning into 12 personnel (one running back, two tight ends). In San Francisco, Shanahan built his offense around many of the same principles as McVay, but he preferred playing with a fullback in Kyle Juszczyk out of 21 personnel (two backs, one tight end).

In recent years, the trendsetters might have been the Chiefs, who traded Tyreek Hill to the Dolphins and then more than doubled their usage of 12 personnel. Leaguewide, though, 12 personnel usage has roughly stayed the same over the past 15 years, with a slight uptick over the past two seasons. Given that there are plenty of teams that use something closer to a hybrid wide receiver or a “move” tight end (such as Mike Gesicki) as their second tight end in 12 personnel, defenses have grown more comfortable treating those players like wideouts and respond accordingly by going with their nickel packages.

What has also happened over the past few years is teams diving even further into those bigger personnel groupings. The Browns leaned heavily into 13 personnel in the 2020 and 2021 seasons before trading for Deshaun Watson. One of Kevin Stefanski’s assistants there was Drew Petzing, who became the Cardinals’ offensive coordinator in 2023. His Arizona teams continued to push the envelope on 13 personnel usage, running it a league-high 15.6% of the time in 2024.

Right behind the Cardinals were Arthur Smith’s Steelers, who had a quasi-offensive lineman in their 13 groupings with 6-foot-7 tight end Darnell Washington. The Bills went in a different direction, using a sixth offensive lineman on more than 14% of their snaps in 2024, most often tackle Alec Anderson. Offenses are accustomed to using extra linemen in short yardage, but the Bills were using a sixth lineman up and down the field and nearly twice as often as anyone else in the league.

Third tight ends and sixth offensive linemen aren’t exactly interchangeable, but they’re different ways of posing the same problem for defenses, and those offenses showed how malleable those concepts were between 2024 and 2025. The Bills drafted an excellent blocking tight end in Jackson Hawes, which led them to mostly abandon the sixth offensive lineman tactic for heavier 13 personnel usage. The Cardinals dealt with injuries to their tight ends, notably blocker Tip Reiman, so they leaned more heavily into playing a sixth offensive lineman. And the Steelers, lacking an explosive passing game, simply tried to bludgeon people with size by doing both, ranking first in six offensive lineman usage (18.6%) and second in 13 personnel rate (13.2%) last season.

We also saw teams go with these bigger groupings to try to salvage frustrating offenses. The Texans didn’t run a single snap of six-linemen offense during their 0-3 start. From Week 4 onward, though, Nick Caley’s offense averaged more than 14 snaps with six linemen on the field per game. The Dolphins didn’t run a single snap with six linemen between 2022 and 2024, but Mike McDaniel eventually went there during a difficult 2025. His offense didn’t run any six-linemen snaps before Week 8 but did for 13 snaps per game from that point forward.

Where the advantages lie

Whether it’s through playing three tight ends, six offensive linemen or both at various times, offenses are trying to create conflicts for the defense and its playcaller. While every offensive decision is about scoring points, some of the big advantages gained from these unique personnel packages might be as much about information and tells from the defensive picture. How does that play out?

1. They force defenses to make personnel decisions they don’t love. As offenses shifted toward 11 personnel and getting more wide receivers on the field, defenses responded by using their nickel and dime sub packages more often. McVay and Shanahan wanted to relentlessly attack linebackers with their passing game to create explosive plays, and one of the ways to prevent that from happening was to flood the field with defensive backs.

As that shift played out on the field, teams pivoted their roster-building focus to account for it. Slot corners and nickel defensive backs began to get paid starter-caliber money. Two-down linebackers who specialized against the run and came off the field on obvious passing downs were marginalized in the process. Today, off-ball linebacker is the least-compensated defensive position, both at the top of the market and at the midtier starter level (when you take edge rushers who are listed as linebackers out of the equation). That third linebacker has gone from being a starter to a situational player.

But putting out multiple tight ends forces that third linebacker back onto the field. While defenses played their base defense only about 5% of the time against 11 personnel, that jumped to 58% against 12 personnel and over 80% against 13 personnel. The only teams that didn’t play their base defense against 13 personnel more than half of the time were the Bears, who faced it less often than any other team, and the Seahawks, who committed to staying in their nickel package with Nick Emmanwori as their third safety.

Similar rates hold true if teams put a sixth lineman on the field, as defenses match that with their base set more than 74% of the time. Some of that usage can be a product of teams going to those groupings in short-yardage and/or near the goal line, but even if we just look at what teams do on early downs outside of the opposing team’s 10-yard line, the base defense rates don’t change by more than one point. When defenses see those big personnel groupings walk onto the field, they’re sending a linebacker in for that nickel defensive back.

2. They shrink the defensive playbook by presenting something defenses don’t see very often. So many of the league’s great defensive coaches have exotic pressures lined up for particular opponents. Coaches such as Todd Bowles and Steve Spagnuolo have dialed up key pressures at the right moment on the biggest stage in years past, while one unexpected blitz pattern from Mike Macdonald helped the Seahawks blow out the Patriots in last season’s Super Bowl.

Many of those pressures come out of sub packages, with teams simply spending more time preparing their nickel and dime groupings than they would have in the past. Teams can dial those pressures up out of their base defenses as well, but they aren’t used as often and/or aren’t as explosive with a third linebacker coming as opposed to a speedier defensive back. (Defenses do still blitz 13 personnel offenses, but a defensive back comes after the quarterback only about 8% of the time.)

Defensive coaches naturally build most of their game plans and schemes to account for the things they’re likely to see most often out of offenses. As you give defenses things they see less often via your offensive personnel or pre-snap alignment, their checks and reactions to those looks are more predictable and consistent from week to week.

One way the Rams get there is by using a nub tight end, when the only eligible receiver on one side is an inline tight end, with the other receivers lined up to the other side of the field. The Rams lined up with a nub tight end a league-high 33% of the time. They lined up in trips out of 13 personnel 51% of the time, which ranked among the league’s highest rates.

What McVay does by leaning into these unique looks is limit the number of potential answers the defensive playcaller is likely to have on their call sheet. Lining up with a nub tight end creates an obvious place to run the football and forces the defense to deal with three or four eligibles to the other side of the field. Most defenses are going to be even more limited in what they have to counter two or three tight ends lined up next to each other. And if McVay and Stafford know what defense is coming before they even snap the ball, it’s easier to break the opposition.

Of course, defenses are trying to do the same thing. The weakest and most predictable link in the offensive chain at the moment is pass protection rules and how teams will try to block up certain pre-snap presentations by the defense. Mike Macdonald’s blitz philosophy is built around identifying those consistent rules and then taking advantage of where the line is heading to generate free rushers and mismatches for his defenders.

Whether on offense or defense, great teams are being intentional and deliberate about what they do pre-snap to help limit and define what the opposing team can do post-snap. And with the menu limited, great coaches are going to force opponents to lean on those weak spots and then pick them apart over and over again.

3. More size leans into what offenses want to do on the ground. The Rams and what happened to them in their Super Bowl loss to the Patriots after the 2018 season helped speed along the league’s shift from running the football. Taking a page out of Vic Fangio’s playbook, the Pats played a 6-1 front to take away the outside zone run game that Shanahan and McVay had built their offenses and play-action games around. The Rams didn’t score a touchdown all night, the league adopted those six-man fronts, McVay eventually lost faith in quarterback Jared Goff, and the entire football universe shifted.

The Rams became much more of a gap-scheme team in 2023, with their play-action game coming along for the ride. This also shifted their personnel around up front, with the Rams trading more athletic linemen who specialized in zone movement for bigger bodies who could overwhelm defensive linemen. They traded for Steelers lineman Kevin Dotson, who was stuck in a zone-heavy scheme. Dotson still struggles when asked to get his feet moving horizontally on zone runs, but he’s an excellent vertical blocker when the Rams run duo.

McVay already has arguably the league’s best blocking wideout in Nacua, and he will leverage Nacua’s ability by working play-action off it through the middle of the offensive line. Nacua will release next to a guard before running his route away from a suddenly-terrified linebacker. When McVay can make his pre-snap and even post-snap run motion look identical to the play-action game, it puts opposing defenders in impossible binds.

4. The Rams can still get vertical against defenses that don’t match up well there. It’s even easier to do that out of 13 personnel, where McVay now replaces two wide receivers with two tight ends. The Rams don’t have any superstar blocking tight ends like George Kittle or Rob Gronkowski, but they can do just about anything McVay wants on a snap-by-snap basis. McVay can run the same things out of 13 personnel that he runs out of 11, but defenses can’t necessarily run the same concepts out of their base defense to match. All this stuff creates more conflict for middle-of-the-field defenders — the players McVay wants to target in the pass and play-action games.

Here’s a good example. Every offensive playbook at every level of football has some version of four verts. Most defenses aren’t expecting four verts, though, when three tight ends are on the field. Against the Lions in 2025, the Rams split out their tight ends and ran four verts with Nacua in the slot against Detroit’s base defense, which was running a Tampa 2 look that Stafford has seen a lot during his career. By placing the running back away from Nacua and running vertical routes, the Rams got linebacker Jack Campbell to work to the other side of the field, leaving a large swath of space for Nacua to work into. The result was essentially a throw against air from Stafford to Nacua for 39 yards.

The Rams run four verts out of 13 personnel and Puka Nacua's free up the seam for a huge gain. pic.twitter.com/nOI42Z3ut7

— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) May 10, 2026

Add motion and unique pre-snap looks, and things get more complicated. The Rams start this play against the 49ers with three tight ends to one side of the field and Mumpfield split out alone to the other side. The 49ers bring safety Ji’Ayir Brown down before the snap, at which point rookie tight end Terrance Ferguson comes in motion to Mumpfield’s side. At the snap, Brown blitzes, leaving third linebacker Luke Gifford to cover Ferguson. The Rams run a “switch verticals” concept, forcing Gifford to try to cover a more athletic player in open space. It isn’t the prettiest route you’ll ever see, but Ferguson is matched up against a (very good) special-teamer who saw about 10 defensive snaps per game last season. That’s a mismatch created by the three-TE grouping, getting a base defense linebacker on the field, and it goes for 32 yards.

Rams run switch verts out of 13 personnel to create a chunk play for Terrance Ferguson. pic.twitter.com/INOc44gQWw

— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) May 10, 2026

Ferguson’s role in these 13 personnel groupings stood out, as Stafford loved targeting him on vertical routes. It was shocking to see a rookie tight end, who made all of 11 catches on the season, getting iso-ball back-shoulder throws 20 yards downfield like he was Ja’Marr Chase. However, the Rams very clearly believed in Ferguson’s ability to win downfield. It helps when those snaps are coming against linebackers who don’t typically cover much open ground or even play many defensive snaps at all.

5. It creates a universe where teams are building cheaper offenses. While I’m not sure this applies to the Rams, leaning into tight end-heavy builds is a way for front offices to save money at receiver, especially in spots where the marginal returns might not be very significant. Everybody wants a Nacua, Chase or Justin Jefferson, of course, and they’re happy to pay the market rate for that privilege. As you start getting into second or third wideouts, though, the prices become less palatable.

The Rams paid Adams $20 million and Atwell $10 million last season, but I’m not sure that was money well spent. Adams was excellent near the goal line and could have had a 20-touchdown season given how often he got open in short yardage, but he wasn’t always on the same page with Stafford throughout the rest of the field. It was telling that the Rams explored trading him this offseason. Atwell, meanwhile, fell out of favor, hit injured reserve and played only a handful of snaps after he returned. The Rams didn’t bring him back or replace him on the roster this offseason.

While wide receiver compensation has skyrocketed, the tight end market has slowly chugged uphill. No tight end has managed to make $20 million per year on a contract, but 23 wideouts are making that or more per year on their existing deals. The best wide receivers are making double what the likes of top tight ends Kittle and Trey McBride are earning.

In the middle class of receivers, there’s a disconnect. Would you rather have Wan’Dale Robinson and Rashid Shaheed, each of whom signed for $17 million per year this offseason, or Kittle and McBride, who are at $19 million per year? Starting tight ends such as Cade Otton ($10 million) and Isaiah Likely ($13 million) signed for what third or fourth wide receivers such as Dontayvion Wicks ($12.5 million) and Jalen Nailor ($11.7 million) agreed to on their own offseason pacts.

There will always be a market for superstars, and the Rams were reportedly interested in A.J. Brown this offseason. But once you get past the true target vacuums and matchup destroyers at wide receivers, general managers might find it more cost-effective to build their secondary and tertiary options in the passing game around a tight end because they’re likely to be much cheaper to sign to extensions after their rookie deals expire.

And that leads us to Day 2 of last month’s draft. After Kenyon Sadiq came off the board to the Jets in Round 1, eight tight ends came off the board in Rounds 2-3. Since 1970, there have been only two years when as many as nine tight ends came off the board by the end of Round 3 or eight tight ends were selected between Rounds 2 and 3. It happened in 2023, when the likes of Sam LaPorta, Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft were drafted on Day 2, and then again two weeks ago in Pittsburgh.

Despite bringing all four of their regular tight ends back this year, the Rams were one of those teams, using a second-round pick on Ohio State’s Max Klare. Klare was one of the more athletic and rangy tight ends available, but we also saw teams prioritize blocking tight ends. The Jaguars, who have former Rams assistants Liam Coen at head coach and James Gladstone at general manager, used their second-round pick on Texas A&M’s Nate Boerkircher, who had 36 career catches across four college seasons. The Bears, who already have Colston Loveland and (for now) Cole Kmet on their roster, used a third-round pick on Stanford’s Sam Roush.

It’s clear the Rams are going to continue their newfound interest in multi-tight end sets. Correlation isn’t causation, but it would be no surprise if teams tried to emulate the Rams by leaning more into 12 personnel, 13 personnel and six-linemen sets as a way to attack the light boxes and smaller personnel groupings the best defenses in football want to run out. (That includes the Rams themselves, who played dime at the highest rate in the NFL last season.)

There’s only one thing that has to change: Everyone else needs to get much better at executing out of 13 personnel to survive. As it turns out, there’s only one problem with offenses other than the Rams running 13 personnel: It doesn’t work.

So … is it a good idea?

All the numbers and arguments I brought up in favor of 13 personnel are true. And yet, simultaneously, just about every one of the teams besides the Rams that went to bigger personnel groupings as a way to manipulate defenses didn’t make their offenses better in the process.

The average offensive snap in 2025 generated 0.02 EPA. The average 13 personnel snap generated minus-0.01 EPA, but much of that is weighted toward the Rams, who were both the league’s most frequent user of 13 personnel and most successful doing so. The league’s other 31 teams averaged minus-0.06 EPA per play when they used 13 personnel. To put that in context, the Vikings averaged minus-0.06 EPA per play across all their offensive snaps last season, which ranked 27th in the league. “Turn your offense into that thing you saw with J.J. McCarthy and Max Brosmer!” isn’t exactly going to thrill coordinators or their teams’ fans.

The same effect was present for six offensive linemen groupings. Teams averaged minus-0.03 EPA per play with six linemen on the field, which would have ranked between 26th and 27th in the league — the offenses of the Panthers and Saints. No metric can calculate the joy of seeing an offensive lineman catch a touchdown pass, but teams weren’t getting a boost from going to those jumbo packages.

Could there be an explanation for why the numbers were so disappointing? I wondered whether teams were using these groupings in short-yardage situations, when the EPA swings might be more extreme.

If we just look at how non-Rams offenses did on early downs on the first 95 yards of their trip to the opposing end zone (leaving out plays that started inside the defense’s 5-yard line), 13 personnel snaps averaged minus-0.05 EPA per play, right in line with how they performed in total. Six-linemen snaps improved to 0.00 EPA per play, which would have been closer to 21st in the league in terms of broader offensive efficiency, but we’re still not seeing anything suggesting that these tactics are making offenses significantly better.

What about the teams that chose to really lean into these groupings? We know the Rams originally started using 13 personnel on offense because of Nacua’s injury, only to stick with it once McVay liked what he saw. Were other teams more likely to try out these tactics because their offenses weren’t any good to begin with?

Leaving the Rams aside, there were eight franchises that used either 13 personnel or six offensive linemen on 120 or more offensive snaps in 2025: the Bears, Cardinals, Commanders, Dolphins, Jaguars, Lions, Steelers and Texans. Those teams averaged 0.03 EPA per play on offense last season. When they used 13 personnel, they didn’t fall quite as hard as the rest of the pack, but their 0.01 EPA per snap was still a step backward. They also dropped off to minus-0.02 EPA per play with six offensive linemen on the field. If anything, it looks like they might have been good at realizing that they were solid candidates to make these changes, although they also took a step backward on offense working out of these groupings.

Could they be experiencing some kind of positive effect on the plays when they aren’t using these bigger personnel groupings, like taking advantage of a physically taxed defense or giving defensive coordinators more to prepare for in the weekly game plan? It’s possible, but the defense is also getting bigger with these personnel groupings, so there’s an impact on how hard the offense is getting hit with these snaps.

It’s also worth noting that great offenses that dipped their toes into these waters also saw positive results. The Bills mostly shifted away from six offensive linemen sets into 13 personnel after drafting Hawes, but they averaged a whopping 0.47 EPA per play on offense across 67 snaps when they were using these larger groupings, the best mark of any team in the league. The Patriots, who used six-linemen sets regularly during the second half of the 2025 season, averaged 0.11 EPA per play across all their offensive snaps and 0.24 EPA per play with those bigger personnel sets on the field, ranking second in the NFL in both categories.

Why did it work for the Rams — and can it still work for other teams?

That’s where my thoughts on how and why the Rams were able to thrive out of 13 personnel begin, and why it might be difficult for other teams to emulate what McVay did last year. The evidence, at least in 2025, suggests that teams can’t take an otherwise-bad offense and make it much better by going with bigger bodies and larger personnel groupings. It’s more likely a tactic that can make an already-effective offense even better.

The Rams might have also been the team best suited to transition from 11 personnel to heavy 13 usage given their style. They were already using their wide receivers like tight ends when it came to blocking on run concepts (and then worked their play-action game off those concepts). Even as an 11-heavy offense, they were the league’s narrowest team in 2024 in terms of pre-snap formational width, something that naturally extends over to an offense with so many tight ends on the field.

It’s more difficult for offenses that typically spread receivers out wide — like last season’s Cardinals and Bengals — to convert to packages with multiple tight ends, given that they’re more likely to end up inline closer to the formation. Just splitting those tight ends out wide where the receivers used to be doesn’t make for a better offense … just a slower one.

It’s inevitable that teams are going to use these bigger groupings to run the ball. Coaches are going to see bigger bodies on the field and numbers advantages in the box. For a team like the Bills, these larger personnel packages were almost always an excuse to just run; nearly three-quarters of their plays out of 13 personnel or six-linemen groupings were rushing plays, and they were very successful on those snaps.

For most teams, though, the run/pass split should lean more heavily toward throwing the football out of 13, because that’s where the real advantages lay. Offenses averaged 0.06 EPA per pass dropback (which includes scrambles) and minus-0.02 EPA per designed rush last season, for a difference of 0.08 EPA per play. Don’t interpret that to mean that teams should throw the ball 100% of the time, but generally, passing was more efficient than running, which isn’t a surprise.

Out of 13 personnel, though, that gap doubled. Teams averaged 0.13 EPA per snap when they dropped back to pass and minus-0.03 EPA per rush attempt, for a difference of 0.16 EPA per play. That’s a far more dramatic difference. It’s only realistic to suggest that the difference comes from defenses expecting the run, as they should given the personnel grouping, but that’s an opportunity for offenses to take advantage of 13 personnel. Offenses ran the ball nearly 60% of the time out of 13 personnel last season; they should be throwing at something closer to a 50-50 split, if not more often. The threat of the run out of these personnel groupings is more important than actually running the ball.

You might expect that to be a product of play-action, but that surprisingly wasn’t the case in 2025. The Rams ran plenty of their boot and naked game to create easy completions for Stafford, but offenses were more efficient throwing the ball when they didn’t use a play fake with 13 personnel. Offenses were more than 10 points better by QBR and 24 points better by passer rating when they just used a traditional dropback out of 13 personnel a year ago.

And teams have to use that passing game to be ambitious. With the extra linebacker on the field, they want to use 13 personnel to try to create chunk plays. Pass attempts between 0-10 yards produced 5.2 yards per dropback, but pass attempts between 11-20 yards, between the linebackers and safeties, generated nearly 12 yards per dropback in 2025. That 7-yard split is larger than the gap we see when teams throw in those same ranges out of other personnel groupings, when it comes in closer to 4 yards per attempt.

There’s one other factor that made the Rams so devastating out of 13 last season, and it’s going to be tough for them to repeat in 2026. They simply did not take any negative plays. Stafford dropped back 132 times out of 13 personnel a year ago. He was effective as a passer, going 87-of-126 for 1,063 yards with 20 touchdown passes. Those are very good numbers but not too far off from where he was out of the other personnel groupings during his MVP season.

The big difference? Stafford threw zero interceptions and was sacked one time. He had a few scrambles under pressure for short yardage and missed a few throws, including a potential touchdown to Ferguson and a fourth-down conversion to Tyler Higbee. But if you can drop back 132 times and produce negative yardage only one time, you’re going to have an incredibly efficient and effective offense.

The league as a whole was also better at avoiding negative plays out of 13. Interceptions came on 1.4% of pass attempts and sacks came 4.5% of the time. Those figures rose to 2.1% and 6.5%, respectively, out of all personnel groupings. That could be a one-year fluke, but over the previous five seasons, interception rates and sack rates out of 13 were still lower than they were on all offensive snaps, albeit by a smaller amount.

Will teams that want to emulate the Rams by loading up on tight ends succeed with their own 13 personnel groupings in 2026? I’m not so sure. Offenses that treat these bigger personnel packages as a fundamental part of their scheme will practice them more, which will help. They’ll have spent more to acquire players who fit into those schemes, which should theoretically be a positive, although the reality is blocking tight ends were cheaper and easier to find in the past than they are this offseason.

For most of those teams that went with tight ends in Rounds 2 and 3, though, I don’t know that adding tight ends is a simple solution to building an efficient offense. The Rams weren’t a great offense because they used 13 personnel. They were a great offense that managed to survive out of 13. And even that required a near-historic run of avoiding negative plays. The Rams will be efficient out of 13 again in 2026, but that will be because they have great players and a brilliant coach, not because they’re doing something the rest of the league should emulate.