The top 4 teams in dead money this year (Rams, Bucs, Packers, Eagles) all made the playoffs. Thats incredibly rare to have happen

— Jason_OTC (@Jason_OTC) January 8, 2024

On the other end of it no team had a better offseason than the Rams. They shaved off $58M in 24 cap charges during that timeframe and are in the playoffs. pic.twitter.com/fYsJNJ7s2q

— Jason_OTC (@Jason_OTC) January 8, 2024

.@RamsNFL @Stevelavila @BigDuke50 I love watching great run blocking. It never just happens. It takes lots of work. It takes lots of practice and its ALWAYS worth it. #BaldysBreakdowns pic.twitter.com/hIJbhgqXao

— Brian Baldinger (@BaldyNFL) January 9, 2024

If you haven't seen this yet, this is a good week to read @JourdanRodrigue on Matthew Stafford. https://t.co/UOSrX8EHUH

— Dan Pompei (@danpompei) January 9, 2024

…

Matthew Stafford’s fingerprints, flair permeate revived Rams offense

Jourdan Rodrigue

https://theathletic.com/5173815/2024/01/04/matthew-stafford-rams-offense/

It was the early summer of 2021 in the dreamy haze of California’s central coast when Matthew Stafford understood for certain that Sean McVay was a little bit nuts.

“A lot nuts,” McVay recalled, grinning.

He, the head coach of the Los Angeles Rams, and Stafford, the quarterback for whom McVay had urged the team to trade a few months prior, met at a vineyard near Santa Barbara with their wives. “Had some wine, thought we were just gonna hang out,” Stafford said. “Then he pulls a piece of paper out.”

It was full of hand-drawn concepts outlining an idea McVay had about how to incorporate certain types of plays into an offense he, Stafford and then-offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell were reimagining upon Stafford’s arrival in L.A. Stafford stared at the paper, and at McVay, for a moment. “Yeah, sure. I’ll learn it. Let’s go.”

“It’s good to be careful who you drink wine with,” Stafford added this December, laughing about the memory. The Rams ran that particular package of plays, he estimates, “like 75 times” in 2021 and Stafford threw for over 1,200 of his 4,886-yard total out of it. “We still use it,” McVay added, “we just dress it up differently now.”

Two years and a Super Bowl later, the coach and quarterback have re-invented the Rams’ offense a second time. Both of them needed to begin again: McVay’s offense lacked balance in an injury-laden 2022 and so did he. Stafford exited the season after just nine games after suffering a spinal cord contusion, watching from the sideline as the Rams imploded and speculation swirled about his possible retirement or even a trade.

In Stafford’s first season in L.A., McVay moved away from the Rams’ previous dependency on play-action and leaned on more of a dropback passing scheme. The 2023 version of the Rams’ offense blends both.

Where McVay historically deployed a predominantly zone running scheme — with smaller, quicker offensive linemen — the Rams are now a physical, gap-first rushing attack and use as much motion in their run game as they always have in the pass. The bulked-up offensive line has paved the way for lead rusher Kyren Williams and a newly efficient run game, and the blend between dropback concepts and play-action has helped protect Stafford. The Rams rank No. 7 in offensive EPA per play, which has helped turn the 5-12 disaster of 2022 into a 9-7 record and a playoff spot despite turning over two-thirds of the roster last spring.

The engine that makes the entire system go is Stafford, who at 35 is having an undeniably cool season. Simple statistics (24 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, 3,965 yards and a 62.6 completion percentage in 15 games) don’t really tell his story like his game film does. He is sixth among quarterbacks in EPA per dropback and tied for fourth in plays that go 20-plus yards. In December after returning from a sprained UCL in his right thumb that caused him to miss a game, Stafford went on a 170-throw streak before registering an interception (he had two in Week 17) and tossed a combined six touchdowns and 573 yards with no interceptions against the top defenses of Cleveland and Baltimore. This week, he was voted to the Pro Bowl.

“I don’t even think the stats do justice to what an impact he’s making on our team and that’s saying a lot because I know the stats are really impressive,” McVay said. “The level of play, the confidence that he breeds with everybody else, the command, the leadership, the things that he enables us to be able to do offensively that you wouldn’t be able to do with other quarterbacks, it’s all of those things.”

Stafford’s fingerprints on the offense, and his flair, are expressed in each game and in every piece of the playbook. He’s holstering finger-pistols after big throws. His throwing arm sleeve — worn to protect the elbow he spent much of 2022 managing — has been copied by younger teammates in practice (“he comes to L.A., (and) he throws the shooter sleeve on,” joked receiver Cooper Kupp). Stafford has slimmed down a little and sped up a little, too, partially to match schematic changes and partially out of self-preservation.

Stafford is making every throw with every arm angle possible — when healthy, he always has. Side-arm and submarine zips on third down to Tyler Higbee and Demarcus Robinson while on the move in Weeks 15 and 16 are highlights that come to the minds of teammates and coaches, as does a 23-yard shot to Puka Nacua while absorbing a big hit against the Ravens. Of course, the no-look passes always get mentioned.

“He’s got every club in the bag,” said offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur. “I don’t know … how many clubs you get, but he’s stealing.”

Even Stafford’s run fakes are executed with a certain style. In Week 15, after Stafford flipped an end-around handoff to Robinson off a run fake, he nonchalantly walked away with his back to the play. “He just makes it cool,” McVay said. “It just makes it look cooler than what the play is designed (to do). Like, ‘Sh–, I didn’t think it would look that cool.’ He just puts his own personality on these plays.”

Against Cleveland in early December, Stafford got a defensive look at the line of scrimmage that he thought might come up and had discussed with McVay and the coaching staff earlier that week (the counter was added on McVay’s call sheet by Saturday). The Rams’ initial play call was a duo run, but Stafford audibled into the new play, got everyone reset and then hit Nacua for a 70-yard touchdown.

Matthew Stafford must have been licking his chops when he saw this look from the Browns pre snap pic.twitter.com/ZGEogv8EUX

— Ted Nguyen (@FB_FilmAnalysis) December 4, 2023

McVay broke down the play in the all-team meeting the following week to show every player and coach what happened. “(He’s) playing quarterback and doing our job,’” McVay said. “… I’m sitting there saying, ‘Sh–, that’s a pretty good idea. I should’ve thought of that earlier in the week.”

Stafford’s ability to make plays like that — with that kind of flourish — affects his teammates, many of whom spent their teenage years watching him play in Detroit.

“The dude is a legend,” said rookie defensive tackle Kobie Turner. “I just feel a complete sense of calm and peace whenever he’s on the field. … And then he got a little swag to him, when he puts his guns in the holsters. I remember (McVay) detailing, he was showing us some of the film from a previous game we had played and he said, ‘You should never get tired of seeing good ball.’ … He’s the guy.”

Since the day he arrived, Stafford has collaborated with coaches and teammates on play design and strategy. No better example arrived than in the Rams’ Week 4 win at Indianapolis, on a first-and-10 in the second quarter. From under center, Stafford signaled to send Nacua into a cross-formation motion from his initial alignment, and as Stafford collected the snap, Nacua shot through the C-gap, then bent around in an arc and upfield for the 32-yard catch off of a run fake.

Nacua didn’t mind essentially running a semi-circle gasser only to arrive at a spot on the field 15 yards ahead of where he aligned pre-snap.

“The whole time, I feel like I’m running the 200-(meter) curve!” he said, laughing. “Like, just don’t fall over! Keep sprinting! You’ll end up there at some point.”

Stafford thought up the semi-circle in training camp and workshopped it a few times with Nacua and receiver Tutu Atwell. The idea behind the play was to make the defense think it would be one of the jogging-start run blocks that the Rams use on some of their duo plays — hence Nacua cutting upfield through the C-gap, and the play-action involved. Faking the run with the motion and the play-action brought an extra defensive back closer to the line of scrimmage and opened a void in the middle of the field. Off of that successful concept, Stafford said they kept building variations.

“Certain times, that’s sifting a backside defensive end. Other times it’s inserting through the C-gap,” he said. “It’s inserting through the backside B-gap as well. It was a new way to get to something we did in the past, from the front side. It’s off of a lot of the runs that we do. It’s presenting a lot to a defense, right?”

Rams motioning Puka Nacua and releases him through the C-gap. All to run an Over route back to the side he started.

Sean McVay knows he has some fresh legs in the receiver room lol pic.twitter.com/4yqP8sIFlv

— Nate Tice (@Nate_Tice) October 3, 2023

The vineyard play sheet may have surprised Stafford once, but he quickly realized that there would never be a wrong place or time to talk through a football idea. McVay and Stafford have drawn plays on napkins at restaurants, roughly diagrammed concepts in the air or grass on the field, and sometimes even huddle around a large laundry receptacle in the Rams’ locker room with Kupp after practices.

“I’d say (Stafford) doesn’t stop there. I think he likes to do the whole thing. He wants to be a part of the whole deal,” Kupp said. “He wants to understand everything. He wants to know what the line is doing, why they’re doing it, what the looks are. I think that’s what gets him really excited.

“I mean so many times it’s like, ‘Hey, this would be sweet, huh? This would be kind of nice,’ and then he draws it up on the board. Most of the time I’m like, ‘Yeah, you know what, that looks really good. Half of that stuff I don’t know what it is, but go ahead and go for it.’ And he runs out with a smile on his face to Sean’s office. I’d say 50 percent of the time he comes back with a smile. The other time he’s like, ‘No, he didn’t like it.’ (But) he gets his stuff in pretty often. He’s got the respect of the head coach, certainly, and of the team.”

Sometimes, ideas are soft-launched to LaFleur before McVay. There’s a reason. In his third year with McVay, Stafford has learned exactly how precious the call sheet is to the head coach. McVay cut his teeth under San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan, who was notorious for relentlessly debating every idea and suggestion for the plays that ended up on his own sheet.

Every scenario must be meticulously considered, a process akin to catastrophizing.

“When is this play likely to be called? What are the different defensive structures that they could present? Does this give us the ability to attack the coverage contours and then do we have answers for the potential problems that could arise? It’s all of those things,” said McVay, for every detail of every play.

“There’s things that you say or want done, or think could be good on a Monday, that are shot down by Wednesday, then become more likely and on Friday are on the sheet,” Stafford said. “That’s the way football goes.”

Stafford comes off as unflappable, with little slips of dry humor or jabs of sarcasm. Yet there is some hard-to-define darkness in him, too.

Big hits seem to energize him — “Maybe we should punch him in the gut before games, huh?” McVay riffed after Stafford, already playing through the thumb injury, took a gut-crunching shot by a Seattle defender in Week 11 while running a trick play and was intercepted. Stafford responded with two scoring drives, and the Rams began the 6-1 winning streak that will carry them to the postseason.

“Something about him always plays with a pretty good edge when he has got something to work through,” McVay said.

Environmental chaos and stress — physical and mental — somehow seem to be clarifying for Stafford.

“I have to be completely present, in figuring out how to solve problems on a 10-second clock, with 100,000 people screaming at me,” Stafford said. “You’ve got to be in it. If you’re not, it hasn’t worked for me. I try to live as much as I can that way. Kind of have to, when I’m here. When you’re building plays, plans, whatever it is, you’re kind of all in on those moments to try to figure out the best way to attack whoever it is you’re playing.

“You’re gonna have good days, bad days. Good plays, bad plays. I think, for me, being able to move on to whatever is next — no matter what happened before. … It’s not always easy to do. But it’s something that I think is important.”

Then there’s the 60 minutes Stafford spends in the headset with McVay and the coaching staff during games each week. Stafford can’t respond to the streams of information he receives. The voices in his head diagnosing the defense, the call sheet and the dozen-plus-word play calls — he receives two in case he needs to check into the second option — and the voices in the stadium collide in a dizzying, audible tug-of-war.

In this madness, Stafford still has a flair that his teammates absorb. “In the huddle you get his little one-liners that he throws in there,” said Kupp, laughing. “Sean keeps talking in his ear, calling the play, and (Stafford) is like, ‘I’d give you guys a play, but Sean’s still talking right now.’”

The rest of the havoc arrives after the headset cuts out, after Stafford’s orchestration of this motion and that shift against the defensive look, after the snap itself. Enormous people churn and crash against each other in front of and all around Stafford, and some of them aim for him and he disappears for a moment.

Then you see it: His arm slinging out to one side, his shoulder dipped. The ball leaves his hand in a shot to the right. His eyes are looking left. All it is, is cool.

I spoke with several high-ranking executives about Steve Wilks, the #49ers’ defensive coordinator and a highly sought-after head coaching candidate.

One of the things he does best is simplifying complex schemes for players. Wilks’ unique ability to connect personally with his… pic.twitter.com/iBIhgViX8j

— Jordan Schultz (@Schultz_Report) January 10, 2024

Rams’ Puka Nacua breaks rookie records for receiving yards, catches

By Jourdan Rodrigue

https://theathletic.com/5184707/2024/01/07/puka-nacua-nfl-rookie-receiving-record/

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – With a 7-yard catch in the third quarter of Sunday’s Week 18 matchup, Los Angeles Rams receiver Puka Nacua broke the NFL rookie receiving yards record long held by former Houston Oilers receiver Bill Groman.

Groman’s initial high mark of 1,473 yards has stood since 1960, and he achieved it in 13 games in the 14-game season.

A catch one play later meant that Nacua also broke the rookie record for receptions, held by Jaylen Waddle (2021). Nacua was then substituted out of the game.

“As much as it will say ‘Puka Nacua’, I wish it could say all 11 guys out there (on the record),” said Nacua after the game. “It really takes all 11. They should all feel that award just as much as I am.”

Nacua will end his rookie season with new high marks of 105 catches and 1,486 yards.

A fifth-round draft pick out of Brigham Young, Nacua has recorded over 100 yards in seven games this season, tying the rookie record set by Odell Beckham Jr. in 2014 and matched by Justin Jefferson in 2020 (both first-round draft picks). With receiver Cooper Kupp recovering from a hamstring injury to start the 2023 season, Nacua burst onto the NFL scene. His 59 catches in his first eight games set an NFL record for all players. Entering the Week 18 matchup against the San Francisco 49ers, Nacua ranked No. 4 in receiving yards (1,445) and No. 8 in catches (101).

The Rams sat several starters Sunday because they are assured a playoff spot next week. Quarterback Matthew Stafford, Kupp, running back Kyren Williams, defensive tackle Aaron Donald and inside linebacker Ernest Jones all were out. Tight end Tyler Higbee (shoulder) and offensive lineman Joe Noteboom (foot) also didn’t play due to injuries. The 49ers also elected to rest starting quarterback Brock Purdy ahead of their playoff stretch.

The Rams beat the 49ers 21-20.

Carson Wentz, whom the Rams signed during their Week 10 bye, started for them on Sunday.

Wednesday, Wentz said “we’ll do our best” to get Nacua the record, adding, “he’s a stud. Puka’s been a stud. Seeing it from afar, but then coming in here and seeing it up close and personal … I don’t know if he really knows how good he is. He’s still a kid, but I think the sky’s the limit for him and it’s cool that he’s getting the recognition that he is and hopefully he can get that record.”

But it took a little more time than players and coaches anticipated, because of how the game unfolded. Nacua had a 19-yard touchdown catch in the first half, leaving him a yard short at that point of passing Groman’s record. The Rams offense would usually kneel out a second-quarter clock with just 11 seconds remaining in the first half, but Wentz tried to push the ball down the field likely because the Rams wanted to be cautious about Nacua’s playing time in the second half.

“‘Don’t do anything dumb,’” Wentz said, laughing, when asked what was going through his mind at that point.

Rams coach Sean McVay also said Wednesday that the team would be “smart with” Nacua although they wanted to give him the opportunity to “do something special.”

Nacua’s consecutive catches in the third quarter ultimately broke both records.

There’s another interesting layer to Nacua’s milestone. Some senior members of the Rams’ scouting department, plus general manager Les Snead, once worked with Groman after his playing days in Atlanta.

Snead and senior personnel executives Brian Xanders and Taylor Morton learned from Groman in the Falcons scouting department and Morton ultimately was promoted to Southwest area scout upon Groman’s retirement in 2003. Groman was deeply admired by the three younger scouts.

Twenty years later, Snead, Morton and Xanders were among those with the Rams who scouted and drafted the player who broke Groman’s record.

Worst team in the playoffs with this @Eagles

SB caliber talent on this offense not being utilized #nfllive

No plan
No execution pic.twitter.com/SlnkphzJql

— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) January 9, 2024

.@RamsNFL @cj_wentz @AsapPuka opening drive TD; had to be a great feeling for Carson. Next stop…Motown. @Lions #BaldysBreakdowns pic.twitter.com/QGaLCb2aX9

— Brian Baldinger (@BaldyNFL) January 9, 2024