Rams off-season starts April 10

Counting the days: Rams’ Sean McVay anxious to work with Jared Goff

Alden Gonzalez

http://www.espn.com/blog/los-angeles-rams/post/_/id/33411/counting-the-days-sean-mcvay-anxious-to-work-with-jared-goff

LOS ANGELES — Sean McVay has so much he wants to say to Jared Goff.

If only he could.

The collective bargaining agreement stipulates that players and coaches not talk shop this time of year. They can’t hold meetings, watch film, go over the playbook or do anything else that would be deemed football-related until the start of their voluntary offseason programs. For the Los Angeles Rams, that fateful date is April 10.

As of Thursday, it was 11 days away. That’s 264 hours. Or 15,840 minutes. Or 950,400 seconds.

McVay is “going nuts” counting down the time.

“That’s what’s so frustrating, because you want to be around these guys,” said McVay, the Rams’ 31-year-old rookie head coach, from the owners meetings in Phoenix on Wednesday morning. “He [Goff] wants to be in the building. You want to start teaching him our system and see how he’s able to articulate our verbiage, yell it in the huddle, and then be able to translate it to the grass.”

To say Goff means everything to the Rams is to actually sell it short. He wasn’t just last year’s No. 1 overall pick; he ultimately cost the Rams this year’s No. 5 overall pick as well. He isn’t just the franchise quarterback; he’s the face of a team desperate to revive fan interest in its return to the nation’s second-largest media market, with a $2.7 billion stadium under construction and the Chargers now playing across town. And he didn’t just struggle as a rookie; he put together one of the worst seasons in recent memory.

McVay was hired to fix Goff, to tap into his potential and finally make the Rams’ offense respectable.

That work is currently in someone else’s hands.

That would be Tom House, a former major league relief pitcher who turned himself into something of a quarterback whisperer. Through help from new offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur, who was impressed by the impact House had on Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan last year, Goff has spent the early part of his offseason working with House and Adam Dedeaux at 3DQB in L.A.

“We are in alignment with a lot of the fundamentals and a lot of the mechanics in terms of how we want to throw the football in an efficient manner,” McVay said of House and Dedeaux. “That’s what’s nice about it. Before he even goes and works with those guys, you know that your core beliefs are in alignment with some of the things they’ve been working on.”

Entering 2016, the Rams’ entire coaching staff, led by Jeff Fisher, fielded a combined one season of experience coaching NFL quarterbacks. The current staff is run by McVay, who helped turn Kirk Cousins into a Pro Bowl quarterback in Washington. There’s also LeFleur, the quarterbacks coach for the Redskins when Robert Griffin III was Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2012 and when Ryan was MVP in 2016 last season in Atlanta. And there’s new quarterbacks coach Greg Olson, who has 15 years of NFL experience as either an offensive coordinator, quarterbacks coach or both.

McVay will call the offensive plays in 2017, but won’t be so directly involved with the quarterbacks. Installing the offense will start by meeting with the quarterbacks, receivers, tight ends and running backs together. McVay will lead those discussions, but will then leave his position coaches to work with their respective players individually.

McVay learned that from Redskins coach Jay Gruden.

“It’s his ability to empower his assistants, trust them to do their job, and that’s what you want to be able to do,” McVay said. “I’ll try to be in there, but I also think it’s important for me to be visual and visible to the entire team.”

Goff ran the Air Raid offense at Cal in which he never took a snap from under center and never communicated a play from the huddle. He had to learn all of that in 2016, all while getting acclimated with NFL speed and intensity. As the NFL’s youngest quarterback, Goff never really challenged Case Keenum for the starting job during training camp and didn’t take over until the 10th game of the Rams’ season.

From Week 11 to 17, Goff had the NFL’s fourth-lowest completion percentage (54.6), the fourth-worst touchdown-to-interception ratio (0.71), the second-lowest Total QBR (22.2) and the fewest yards per attempt (5.31). He lost all seven of his starts and absorbed 25 sacks through his final six. McVay, who watched film with Goff as part of his interview process, sees a guy motivated to “respond.”

“It’s easy, when things don’t go well, to try to deflect and put the blame elsewhere, and all he did was take the accountability,” McVay said of Goff. “That’s what you like, and that’s what you want from your leader.”

The Rams will “start from scratch” in their tutelage of Goff, McVay added. He’ll first have to learn the verbiage of the new offense. Then he’ll have to understand the mechanics behind all the plays. Then he must communicate them effectively and efficiently in the huddle. And then, most importantly, he must implement it all on the field. It will basically be another rookie year for Goff, which is why McVay is so eager to get started.

They’ll have 10 weeks together before the midsummer break that leads into training camp.

“You can’t waste a single day,” McVay said. “Every minute is so precious and none more important than at that quarterback position, because of the amount of information that he’s going to have to absorb and be able to retain.”

Offseason workouts are broken up into three phases that restrict the amount of time on the field. The first, lasting two weeks, is limited to strength and conditioning. The second, lasting three weeks, doesn’t allow offense vs. defense. The third consists of four weeks for 10 OTAs, with no pads or live contact permitted. There’s also minicamp, which provides an extra week.

McVay would be in favor of a new CBA allowing more offseason dialogue between players and coaches, but he has no choice but to deal with the present set of circumstances.

“It’s really frustrating,” McVay said, “and that’s why that April 10th date can’t come around fast enough.”