rams striving for perfection–Rams benchmarks this season

Percentage of 3rd and 4th down dropbacks to actually throw the football at or beyond the sticks:

Aggressive:
Rams (71%)
Packers (64%)
Cowboys (64%)
49ers (62%)
Falcons (59%)
Patriots (57%)

Soft:
Browns (40%)
Raiders (40%)
Jets (43%)
Ravens (43%)
Bills (44%)
Bucs (44%)

— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) December 4, 2025

…

from https://theramswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/rams/2025/12/06/rams-are-the-most-aggressive-passing-team-on-3rd-and-4th-down/87621296007/?taid=693442d3383f9200018bb8ef&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=twitter

…According to Ian Hartitz of Fantasy Life, the Rams rank first in the league in throws at or past the first-down marker when facing third and fourth down. L.A. does so on 71% of their attempts in late downs….

This is partially because the Rams rarely have plays on third or fourth down. L.A. ranks last in third down attempts with 126 — nine fewer than the Indianapolis Colts — and 14th in fourth down attempts with 14. The Rams rank 13th in third-down conversion rate and sixth in fourth-down conversion rate.

The cause of all this: Matthew Stafford and Sean McVay. It would be safe to call both quarterback and head coach aggressive offensive minds who always look to keep drives alive rather than play the field position game. Stafford ranks second in the league with 160 first downs thrown, and his net yards per passing attempt (which takes sacks and interceptions into account) is first at 8.18 yards.

6 big areas of Rams statistical improvement, 2024 v. 2025

Red Zone Scoring Percentage (TD only) on Offense, 2024: 25th
Red Zone Scoring Percentage (TD only) on Offense, 2025: 3rd

Points per Game on Offense, 2024: 19th
Points per Game on Offense, 2025: 4th

Rushing Yards per Attempt on Offense, 2024: 29th
Rushing Yards per Attempt on Offense, 2025: 9th

Points per Game Allowed (Defense), 2024: 15th
Points per Game Allowed (Defense), 2025: 3rd

Defensive Takeaways, 2024: 14th
Defensive Takeaways, 2024: 4th

Rushing Yards per Attempt Allowed (Defense), 2024: 29th
Rushing Yards per Attempt Allowed (Defense), 2025: 8th

***

Average ranking overall (these stats only), 2024: 21.16th
Average ranking overall (these stats only), 2025: 5.16th

The Rams offense is firing on all cylinders 🚀 pic.twitter.com/fArAA5hqhb

— PFF (@PFF) December 10, 2025

LAFB Network@LAFBNetwork
The Rams have flipped one of last season’s biggest issues, leading the league with 100 first quarter points after finishing 31st a year ago. A massive turnaround that has changed the entire flow of their games

How McVay modernized the Greatest Show on Turf | Kurt’s QB Insider

Rams’ offense is as balanced as ever thanks to a 13-personnel revolution

Nate Atkins

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6881140/2025/12/11/rams-offensive-balance-13-personnel/?source=emp_shared_article

WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. — The Los Angeles Rams lined up at the 3-yard line with the end zone in sight. From under center, Matthew Stafford looked across at an Arizona Cardinals defense still in nickel personnel. He eyed the tight ends on both sides of his line. And he knew what was coming next.

“They run small people,” Stafford said, “and we run 13 (personnel).”

Blake Corum took the inside handoff behind Davis Allen as an offset fullback and followed him nearly untouched into the end zone.

The Rams rolled to a 45-17 win over the Cardinals, led by an explosive offensive performance. In addition to racking up 530 yards, they scored three rushing touchdowns and three passing touchdowns in the same game for the first time since 2001.

However, Sunday’s formula was different in flavor from those “Greatest Show on Turf” days. Led by Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner, those Rams teams found balance by running Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk behind Hall of Famer Orlando Pace, with defenses stretched on the perimeter to guard Hall of Famer Isaac Bruce and Hall of Fame semifinalist Torry Holt.

This season’s Rams have their own fearsome perimeter duo in Davante Adams, who leads the league in receiving touchdowns, and Puka Nacua, who ranks second in the league in receiving yards. But the balance has come through the less heralded members of the offense.

The Rams ran 40 of their 70 plays on Sunday with three tight ends on the field. It’s not only their most in a game this season or in the Sean McVay era, but it’s also the most plays any team has run in that personnel grouping since the NFL’s Next Gen Stats began charting back in 2016.

The Rams are now 5-0 in games in which they’ve run 13 personnel for at least 10 snaps.

“When you’re playing with tight ends who can see the game through the same lens, it’s helpful when those last-minute, last-second moves before the snap happen,” tight end Colby Parkinson said.

This is an evolution that is part intentional and part circumstantial.

After years of living almost exclusively in 11 personnel with one tight end and three wide receivers to lighten opposing defenses, McVay and offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur wanted to sprinkle in some two-tight end sets as a way to expand an under-center, play-action approach that could shift more of Stafford’s responsibilities from his arm to his mind now that he’s 37 and managing a degenerative back issue.

For the first six games, an extra tight end was merely their appetizer to the main entree.

Then Nacua sprained his ankle against the Baltimore Ravens, and the offense stalled in the fourth quarter. A week of practice with few distractions while staying in Baltimore ahead of an overseas trip to London offered time to experiment for McVay, who coached tight ends with Washington from 2011 to 2013.

On the first drive against the Jacksonville Jaguars the following week, wide receiver Tutu Atwell pulled his hamstring. So the Rams went to a new three-tight-end package as an emergency valve to bridge them to the bye week. And then a breakout ensued.

Los Angeles scored four red zone touchdowns out of 13 personnel to beat the Jaguars 35-7. The tight ends combined for eight catches for 101 yards and a touchdown. However, the real emergence came through the one healthy starting wide receiver, Adams, who scored three touchdowns.

After a bye week of more self-scouting and with Atwell’s trip to injured reserve, the Rams decided to try more 13-personnel sets, particularly when they reached the red zone and the space tightened on the deeper perimeter routes they could run. Adams often remained the solo receiver with three tight ends on the field, and he kept scoring touchdowns, with at least one in six straight games.

All of a sudden, the three-time All-Pro receiver the Rams signed as a replacement for Cooper Kupp has gone from a shaky start with a new quarterback to the NFL’s leader in touchdown receptions with 14.

Defenses naturally adjusted to the touchdown binge Stafford and Adams have found. They’re always trying to keep an eye on Nacua, who got healthy from the ankle injury. So, as defenses deployed more dime and nickel looks, the Rams leaned into the 65-35 split they’ve always wanted in the backfield with Kyren Williams and Corum.

Since Week 9, the Rams’ run game ranks first in the NFL in expected points added, success rate, early-down success rate and first-down rate, according to data collected by Rams.com. The past two weeks, Williams and Corum have combined for 365 yards on 8.1 yards per rush and five touchdowns.

It’s the kind of run game Stafford has rarely gotten to work with in his career after going four calendar years in Detroit without a single 100-yard rusher.

“When he has that run game for him to have a breath before he throws it, it just opens up so much for him,” right guard Kevin Dotson said.

And when a 17-year quarterback is the one making pre-snap decisions on downs where a run or a pass is just as likely, he gets to be the one catching the defense by surprise rather than the reverse. That’s often how the no-look highlights come. And it’s a key reason why he has a league-high 35 touchdown passes this season with just four interceptions.

“He sees the game like no one I’ve played with before,” Parkinson said.

Any adjustment in approach and identity comes with a cost, and the Rams have felt that with Atwell. After signing a one-year, $10 million deal to return to Los Angeles, a player with 8.7 career yards per target didn’t have a clear role after he got healthy. The need for cleaner special teams led to different priorities on the game-day roster, and the Rams let three games go by before risking losing Atwell for the season.

But they’re making room for him now, as McVay said that Atwell will be activated ahead of Sunday’s home game against the Detroit Lions.

The benefits of the 13-personnel movement have outweighed the cost. One advantage is the runway it’s created for fill-in right tackle Warren McClendon Jr., who excels in pass protection but needs refining as a run blocker. Now, he’s insulated by a tight end to his right on a majority of plays.

Another has been finding a role for Terrance Ferguson. The team’s top draft pick in April saw just eight snaps in the first five games due to blocking concerns. It’s a progression that can often take a rookie tight end an entire year to build the strength needed for the pro game. That’s all a lesser concern when he’s one of three tight ends on the field as opposed to the lead option.

With 198 snaps over the past eight games, Ferguson has learned firsthand the nuances of the game through what Stafford, McVay and LaFleur are calling. That experience has grown with the loss of Tyler Higbee, and Ferguson saw a season-high 45 snaps in Sunday’s win.

“Thirteen personnel causes a lot of problems for (the defense). A lot of base defenses are a lot simpler, so they can’t do as many things out of it because nickel is everyone’s 11-personnel set,” Ferguson said. “It makes it easier on us. It’s the mismatches 13 personnel creates with the big bodies blocking safeties, and if you want to put big guys out there, we can run routes as well.”

The other benefit has been load management.

Adams has dealt with two hamstring injuries in his 12th season. When one popped up early in the game against the Carolina Panthers, the Rams leaned more into the run game and tight ends.

Nacua’s season was off to an explosive start as a high-volume option, only for injuries to his head and ankle to force questions of how to make his physical yards-after-catch style sustainable. Since he returned, his snap count has fallen to below 75 percent in all but one game. Now, he’s more of a drive starter and third-down option than the man carrying each possession.

“I think it’s helped to give us an identity,” McVay said of the 13-personnel sets. “It’s really done a lot of the things that I talked about relative to taking advantage of all our players. But it’s also lessening the workload that allows some of the skill players, particularly the wideouts, to be fresher in some known pass situations. …

“I do think the multiple personnels and the more multiple we can be while taking advantage of our players, and then how does that ultimately give us matchup and tactical advantages both from a personnel and a schematic standpoint against the upcoming opponent, are all the factors. It’s an organic evolution based on some things that ended up happening.”

Defenses will adjust to what a team shows on film, and the tests are coming in different ways. The Lions live almost exclusively in base defense to keep two of their best defenders on the field together, linebackers Jack Campbell and Alex Anzalone. Meanwhile, the Seattle Seahawks often live in nickel and dime personnel to confuse quarterbacks behind a potent pass rush, and they can afford to do so with a run defense that has not allowed a 100-yard rusher all season.

With two games in five days that could decide a loaded NFC West race, the Rams have to lean into their most multiple and personnel-diverse ways to keep their best players at peak form.

In a season that was supposed to be all about Stafford, Adams, Nacua and Williams, the 13-personnel revolution has become the glue.

How the Rams Remodeled Amid False Narratives and Built Another Super Bowl Contender
GM Les Snead lays out his football-biology experiment, precisely as he and coach Sean McVay want it played, like when Los Angeles is at its best.

Greg Bishop

https://www.si.com/nfl/how-the-rams-remodeled-amid-false-narratives-built-super-bowl-contender

In Les Snead’s office, behind the minimalist standing desk, opposite the bookshelf filled with volumes on greatness, process and history, there is a list. It’s just eight bullet points long, each scribbled in black Sharpie, all caps and fairly neat handwriting for a sports executive. The header, just above the list, is underlined in red. It says:

Those words, only 46 total, are short and straightforward, one concept building into the next, all concepts forming a greater whole. Those words also come wrapped in infinite complications, the kinds that separate good football teams from great ones and champions from all the others.

Snead began mapping out this football-biology experiment four seasons ago, in the same months the team he built in Los Angeles won Super Bowl LVI in February 2022. In those 46 words, he formulated an organizational philosophy, one implemented from that season through this one.

Back in early 2022, after the triumph, celebration and exit interviews, on the same day he would depart team headquarters for the beginning of a gloriously shortened offseason, Snead looked over his list one last time. He added a box at the end. It then read, in full:

Must have COLLECTIVE competence
Must remove INCOMPETENCE
Must have collaboration
Must have competition
Competition assists in cleansing incompetence
ALPHA cells must do what is best for the COLLECTIVE
Transformation of organism occurs when Stress & Heat is applied
Dying, Sick, Healthy, Elite

And there it was, football biology, the elements that formed the kinds of players Snead wanted to pursue. Had pursued. Would pursue, in that offseason and every subsequent spring.

His Rams had lost Super Bowl LIII and won it three seasons later. The GM who built both teams better understood what he wanted, what mattered and how to form not an individual dream team but a collective that played better together when stocked with the preferred football biology in question. If that meant F— Them Picks, a prominent theme during the championship season, owing to myriad, high draft selections that Snead had traded to assemble a roster capable of winning the whole thing, well, so be it. The general manager even wore a T-shirt emblazoned with that phrase to the victory parade.

The philosophy he formulated over that season became an illustration resembling a science experiment and hangs next to that whiteboard on Snead’s office wall. It’s laid out in the Rams’ colors—royal blue background, gold letters, white diagrams—with a rendering of a football player at the center and FOOTBALL BIOLOGY running up the left side in large font. It’s Rams football, precisely as Snead and his head coach, Sean McVay, want it played. Like when Los Angeles is at its best, in that season or in this one.

“The premise is, in your body, you’re gonna have these alpha cells,” Snead says of that seventh bullet point. “A cancer in the locker room is [when] a cell goes rogue. The point being, football is an ecosystem. Right?”

Among the most complicated on earth.

Snead then launches into the remainder of a three-minute-long answer. The gist: He will be on the right side of that evolution, his roster stocked with alpha cells that have not yet or will never become cancerous, per his metaphor. “What’s best,” he says, “for the collective.”

Most watch the Rams in 2025 and see an antithetical approach to the one adopted by Snead, McVay and all others in 2021. Love Them Picks should be the Rams’ new ethos. But while F— Them Picks provided a catchy catchphrase, not to mention a defiant, deserved middle finger to Snead’s critics, the phrase itself, and the framework around it, are both actually misleading.

“That’s the other thing,” Snead says inside his office in mid-November. The approach in 2021 vs. in 2025 is “not as different as you think.”

The GM suggests more research, then says, “In a lot of ways, I imagine the approach has been the same.”

The day before our meeting in Woodland Hills, Calif., Snead broke from his typical, in-season routine. Instead, he attended “Take your husband to work day” with his wife, Kara. She’s consulting for a scripted TV show about a professional football league that’s in production. Les accompanied her to the Paramount lot. He spoke with actors Christopher Meloni, Mandy Moore, Chace Crawford and Chloe Bennet. He watched the crew film a scene in which decision-makers cut a player from their fictional league. He swapped notes on releasing players. He wasn’t starstruck, though. He wanted to know how they made television shows.

Twenty-four hours later, his takeaway centers, naturally, on those processes he heard about and watched unfold. Les saw precision, a surrendering of results to process, intentional preparation and adaptability. That staff reminded him of the Rams’ offensive coaches. Some of their processes recalled parts of his own approach.

He’s asked, in that office, after the day on set, with that science diagram hanging over his left shoulder, while he stands and paces, then sits, stands and resumes pacing, whether he finds descriptions of his approaches in 2021 and 2025 to be true. Most who’ve written about those Rams seasons in relation to each other describe the approaches as opposed to each other. For instance, from 2016 through 2022, Los Angeles ranked fifth in the NFL in total money spent on offseason transactions. The Rams also traded their first-round pick in each season from 2016 through 2021.

This approach, the continuum, netted L.A. two Super Bowl appearances and one title. Sure, the Rams went 5–12, cementing their first nonplayoff season since 2016 with their first losing record since then, too. Still, the remodel continued.

Snead is told that the Rams drafted 27 players on their 53-man roster this season. Does he love draft picks, then? Did he always? “I tell people all the time,” he says, regarding F— Them Picks, “[the slogan is] cool, fun moment, but I didn’t come up with it.”

He didn’t believe it, necessarily, not beyond his own fearlessness to trade high draft picks for elite talent, when the situation—right team, right season, right run—demanded calculated risk. But while Snead did make high-profile trades, he made most of those before the championship season. While he also began, yes, collecting picks, whether compensatory for players who departed or trading back in other drafts. At one point, Snead recalls someone pointing out that Los Angeles had the third- or fourth-highest tally of picks in the NFL.

What’s often presented as binary approaches—freewheeling gambler or draft builder scared straight—Snead sees more as a continuum. An approach that’s grounded in FOOTBALL BIOLOGY but adapted to the circumstances of any season. Which explains the 2022, ’23 and ’24 seasons in relation to the current one.

These Rams feature not only the 27 drafted players but also the 13 starters Los Angeles chose itself. And, while there are high-profile offensive players among that group—Puka Nacua, Tyler Higbee, Rob Havenstein and Kyren Williams—the Rams are back in Super Bowl contention because of Snead’s defensive overhaul from the title season to now. Which is why he prefers to describe the three seasons between the championship and this one not as a rebuild but a remodel.

The entire Los Angeles defensive line was hand-selected: Jared Verse (2024, first round), Braden Fiske (2024, second), Kobie Turner (2023, third) and Byron Young (2023, third). While Snead spent high draft selections in recent seasons on that part of his remodel, he also stocked the Rams with depth from players selected later in the draft, which allowed L.A. to sidestep the everyone’s-gone conundrum familiar to teams that actually do gamble on one super season, whether they win or fail. He still paid Matthew Stafford to come back two seasons ago. He still signed elite wideout Davante Adams. He still extended Kyren Williams, Tutu Atwell and Alaric Jackson. Thus: the continuum at work.

That defensive front is beyond the traits Snead and McVay value highly—a defense that’s disruptive even if only rushing its front four. Most Super Bowl winners this century deployed defenses with only that—the ability to disrupt, without too many blitzes, while sending additional players into coverage.

He points to Week 2 of last season—a 41–10 blowout loss at Arizona, in the Rams’ first season after Aaron Donald retired—as the first time he noticed how special that group could be. Kyler Murray played as well as he could play that day, but Snead’s drafted front four was still disruptive.

“They will evolve as they become more disciplined,” Snead thought then. He realizes the nature of his comparison, a savage blowout loss into an early turning point. “There was actually a rose there,” he says. “Now, a lot more thorns went into that rose bush.”

Snead was right, by the way. More right than even he expected. Because those 2021 Rams—a team supposedly built for the future, dismissed, not part of the organizational calculations—well, that roster featured 32 players the Rams drafted, or five more than this season. The drafted Rams made for two fewer starters that season, but even then, there were 11. And for those who might note that these Rams haven’t drafted, say, Aaron Donald or Cooper Kupp, they also drafted Nacua and that defensive line.

The numbers point not to antithetical approaches but the same approach, throughout.

McVay, when told this numerical comparison last week, laughed through the phone line. “We kind of just joke with it,” he said. “Because we had traded capital for some of the big resources, and it became a fun narrative. But we never really believed that. We knew how important those picks were. It’s really about maximizing all avenues to acquire talent. They’re all damn important.”

He paused. Laughed again. “But don’t let a good little narrative get in the way of having some fun and making a T-shirt, right?”

This, yes, consistency in approach is not lost on those who are part of how Snead shapes football teams. Like Nacua, for instance. As a fifth-round find in 2023, his draft class alone featured Steve Avila (37 starts at center), Young (26.5 career sacks), Turner (22.5 career sacks) and 14 total players that amplified the Rams’ roster depth, which has been critical this season. “Out here, being new to the NFL, new to California, (I saw) the love of football that you could feel from all of these guys. Our guys stick together. You build that deeper relationship.”

McVay completed the second part of the Rams’ 2025 transformation, turning the players that Snead and his team chose, like from the ’23 draft class, into the collective of FOOTBALL BIOLOGY that has made Los Angeles the odds-on Super Bowl favorite through 15 weeks, just like Nacua laid out above.

In McVay, Snead sees an endless growth cycle that hasn’t ever stopped. He’s a New Year’s resolution type, Snead says, except that McVay completes his resolutions. “I tell people he may have one every week,” Snead says.

He’s asked, ballpark, what percentage of people in his life display that follow-through. That percentage, he says, is tiny, closer to one percent than 100.

Hence, this season and the narrative that’s still, somehow, being corrected. Stafford told SI that part of the reason he continues to play football—and for the Rams—is because of the roster Snead constructed and the biology at play. Stafford says he could sense this season at the end of last season. “I felt good,” he says, “about our team.”

That feeling started with the approach Snead deployed in 2021 and in 2025. Love Them Picks. Somebody really needs to get these guys some T-shirts.