‘It always starts with the quarterback’: How Matthew Stafford changed Sean McVay’s Rams offense

Jourdan Rodrigue and Mike Sando

https://theathletic.com/2903191/2021/10/21/it-always-starts-with-the-quarterback-how-matthew-stafford-has-changed-sean-mcvays-offense-in-l-a/?source=emp_shared_article

Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford builds each huddle from a deep, deep lunge, kicking back one leg so far that it looks like a panhandle jutting out from a tight circle of large bodies. He looks up at his teammates from that stance, talking up to them so his voice fills the space between his mouth and their helmets, and a natural shell built of hulking linemen extends up and over the sound as he stays low so he can lock his eyes into theirs.

How a quarterback commands a huddle is his unique identifier. It’s also a tell for his level of ownership of the system he runs. After only six games in the Rams offense, Stafford, his teammates say, is fluent. But Stafford has been running his huddle like that for over 10 years. And it’s only when he pulls in his funky kicked-back leg to break it and then aligns behind his center that it becomes clear just how much has changed in Los Angeles in the nine months since the Rams traded 2016 No. 1 overall pick Jared Goff (plus a couple of first-round picks) to Detroit for Stafford.

Where the Rams’ offense was once attached to head coach Sean McVay alone as its creator, commander and play caller, now Stafford’s fingerprints are everywhere, too.

Their offense has rejoined the NFL’s elite through the first six weeks of the season, reaching 34 points three times in a 5-1 start (in 2020, they crossed that mark just once, way back in Week 2). The Rams rank second to Kansas City in expected points added (EPA) per play, with Stafford leading the league in EPA per pass play. The offense is succeeding with a wider variety of pre-snap looks and running more plays out of shotgun and empty sets than McVay ever has while using play-action as a tool instead of as a crutch — not just from under center, but from the shotgun as well. Stafford’s superior processing ability and arm talent have increased post-snap flexibility as well.

“He has been better than I thought,” McVay said, “and I thought he was going to be really good.”

Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians recently revealed he can’t resist watching Stafford warm up before games. On more than one occasion, Arians has wandered over to where Stafford was throwing and quietly stood near enough to admire the quarterback’s arm.

“I love watching him throw,” Arians said. “He can make every throw, from every angle.”

The Rams are asking him to do just that; with play design that invites aggression and opportunity and the autonomy to change his targets, arm angles and leverage points based on what he sees and feels within the play.

In compounded spaces, or when defensive linemen’s arms wave into his throwing lanes, Stafford side-arms and slots passes to his receivers. Sunday, he threaded a 30-yard pass to receiver Cooper Kupp out to the right sideline between multiple defenders. Two quarters later, he flicked a no-look pass to Kupp for a touchdown that had teammates cackling over their replay tablets on the sideline.

It’s not just Stafford manipulating his arm to make difficult throws; he’s also using his eyes and shoulders to manipulate defenders.

“Matthew wants to dictate things. He wants to be able to move guys with his eyes. He wants to be able to use his shoulders, he wants to be able to send people where he wants them to go,” Kupp said. “I think that’s a huge advantage for us because if you don’t move he’s throwing it. He’s ahead of the game instead of being reactive and waiting for someone to move.”

Offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell said that the Rams still haven’t gotten used to Stafford’s no-look passes, even after months of spring and summer workouts and six live games. On one play in L.A.’s Week 5 win over Seattle, Kupp appeared to believe a ball was coming his way on an “under” concept. Stafford was looking at him, but instead hit Robert Woods on a longer pass downfield — and Kupp jokingly pointed to his chest after the play.

“As a receiver, as a pass-catcher, you’ve got to be ready for that ball at any angle,” said Woods, laughing. “Because he can get it out.”

Stafford averages 2.07 seconds to throw against the blitz this season, second-fastest in the league. Goff ranked 34th during his Rams tenure at 2.53 seconds on average.

Rams’ receivers are on alert.

“Some routes, some concepts, you’re like, ‘He’s not looking at me!’ ” Woods said. “And next thing you know, the ball is coming out like, ‘Oh, shit!’ You just gotta always be ready, because he’s so good that you just want to stay in your route. He can manipulate the defense and sometimes manipulate you. You’re just staying the course, trusting the assignment and trusting your route. … As soon as we come out (of our break), the ball is where it’s supposed to be.”

It’s routine for the Rams to play certain highlights from games during full-team meetings before players break into position groups, and frequently the coaching staff will put up Stafford’s no-look passes as the defensive players (and offensive linemen whose backs are turned in live-action) get to see it up close for the first time. They howl with delight.

“We’re like, ‘Holy cow, I didn’t even realize he did all of this,’” guard Austin Corbett said, chuckling.

“The way he works, the balls he’s throwing and getting it to these receivers, I ain’t never seen it done like that,” defensive tackle Aaron Donald said. “To be able to see it firsthand, it’s pretty cool.”

But the no-looks aren’t simply flair for the sake of it. Stafford’s utilization of them has unlocked new levels in the screen game — a section of the playbook McVay pulls from frequently.

“It’s kind of like how a behind-the-back pass in basketball is sometimes flashy, but sometimes it’s (used) to actually be a good play because it can manipulate the way a defense is playing you,” said Nate Tice, a former collegiate quarterback-turned-analyst for The Athletic and Substack’s “The Silent Count”.

“Same thing, on those screens — especially if it’s a zone, or if it’s man, and you’re trying to slow down the man-coverage defender — it just makes those guys hold (because) they’re trying to read the quarterback. Not a lot of guys can do that, and it unlocks a lot more.”

Stafford creates advantages by holding defenders with his eyes not only in coverages downfield but by inviting and manipulating pressure when the Rams go to their screen game.

“The best screens are thrown into a blitz, into a pressure,” Kupp said. “But if the person you’re screening off of feels the screen and they fall out of their pressure, then you get some really bad plays, too, (so) I think something that Matthew does a really good job of … is being able to use his eyes.

“It’s (making the blitzer) feel like they are winning. If the quarterback is looking away from you and you’re (executing) a backside pressure, you’re going to keep coming because you think you’ve got a clear shot at him. And (Stafford) just being able to hold his eyes until the last second, even sometimes he just flicks it out there without looking. That’s one of those things where the more you can invite that pressure and pull that guy toward you, the more you’re going to have open on the back side.”

Stafford using his eyes, shoulders and arm in these ways creates workable space for a pass-catcher and better coverage numbers downfield. He can leverage the ball toward that space by understanding where his “landmarks” are without looking at them, or by peeking briefly at the last moment and processing quickly enough to know whether the throw is sound, or not.

“I’m trying to always draw the defense in,” Stafford said. “The more guys coming to me, the better it’s going to be on the back end.”

Air Yards Per Attempt
6.7
9.2
% Attempts Past Sticks
33%
45%
% Attempts Past Sticks, 3rd Down
50%
70%
Avg Air Yards Past Sticks
-1.8
+0.6
EPA/Att on Throws Past Sticks
+0.34
+0.77
EPA on 20+ Air Yard Attempts
-6.1
24.5
% Attempts 30+ Yds Past LOS
2%
7%
Stafford is also making aggressive decisions where he sees them.

“In a lot of (the Rams’) deeper concepts, they have an alert, and then something underneath it and usually that’s a post and then over or a post and a dig. That’s the usual, old-school, everybody does it, and that’s just ‘Football 101,’” Tice said.

“Typically, it’s taught that you go ‘alert to No. 1’, so in a post-and-over combination, the ‘alert’ is the post, and then the ‘No. 1’ is the dig, or the over. That’s how you’re just taught. You (generally) kind of short-cut it … because you only throw the ‘alert’ like one out of 10 times. Some guys throw it one out of seven, one out of 20, some guys never throw it.

“Stafford, it’s more like one out of four.”

The Rams lead the NFL in percentage of pass attempts traveling beyond the sticks, both overall (50 percent) and on third down (70 percent). The chart above shows how different the 2021 Rams are from their McVay-era predecessors in both percentage of third-down passes beyond the sticks and in yards per pass play during those situations.

“We are an aggressive offense that has confidence in our ability to be able to connect on those types of plays,” McVay said. “We’ll never apologize for that.”

Matthew Stafford and the Rams’ huddle (Ben Liebenberg / AP Photo)
Because Stafford can make the requisite throws and get through his reads efficiently, the Rams have been able to widen the field space they use on passing plays and frequently increase the number of eligible downfield receivers. The most visible illustration of this is their increased usage of empty sets.

Stafford has attempted 73 passes from empty sets this season, 15 more than any other quarterback. Fifty-eight of those attempts have come on early downs, a big shift from past form. Goff’s total was 83 on early downs all last season. Stafford has eight touchdown passes from empty sets, tied with Patrick Mahomes for most in the league.

The Rams are also making explosive pass gains (16-plus yards) at a league-leading rate without the exaggerated use of play-action, which was a staple before Stafford’s arrival. They rank 30th in play-action rate on early downs (24.5 percent) after ranking third (43.2 percent) with Goff over the previous two seasons. Some of the concepts the Rams have long run from play-action have carried over, but Stafford is more frequently executing them from dropback actions, which typically place more of the burden on the quarterback.

Some of the numbers defy logic.

The league at large enjoys a huge bump in explosive pass rate while using play-action on early downs, from 13.2 percent of attempts without it to 22.8 percent when the tactic is used.

The Rams’ rate of explosive pass gains is an NFL-high 22.8 percent without play-action, and a third-ranked 31.4 percent with it (that’s right, the Rams’ rate of explosive pass gains is the same without play-action as the league at large enjoys with it).

Overall
20th
1st
No Play-Action
14th
1st
With Play-Action
23rd
6th
Leaning toward dropback actions instead of relying on the play-action game frees another eligible receiver to attack downfield instead of remaining in the backfield to “sell” the run fake. The quarterback gains the full width of the space in front of him to work with, visually and physically, instead of taking a longer wind-up at the snap, then turning his back during an action from under center and looping toward one segment of the field.

“(McVay) has this whole new section on his call sheet named, ‘Dropback,” joked Tice. “What (the Rams) kind of started doing is, ‘Now we don’t have to do play-action or boot, we can just drop back and now we can actually hit the entire width of the field as opposed to half of it. Teams can’t just overload and hope the pass-rush gets home because Stafford is (dropping back) and hitting backside digs and daggers and overs and actually pushing the ball, going for the posts.”

The Rams aren’t completely abandoning play-action (their usage rate dipped to 8.8 percent against Arizona — a five-year low for a single game — and 11.1 percent against Tampa Bay, then jumped to 28.1 percent against Seattle). They now apply it selectively instead of co-dependently. They’re even adjusting how they run the action itself when they do use it — where Goff ran just three of his 487 play-action snaps from shotgun during his time in Los Angeles, 15 of Stafford’s 45 play-action passes have come specifically from the gun.

“You can do so many different things,” McVay said. “You’re not limited in the ways that you can utilize him. … We have a lot more things that we’re doing both in the gun and underneath the center that you’re presenting to the defense. … It always starts with the quarterback, and Matthew’s ability to do all of that makes you more multiple in what you can present, as opposed to exclusively being one thing or the other.”

Matthew Stafford and Sean McVay (Joe Nicholson / USA Today)
In a game where things will almost certainly go wrong and the margin for error is razor-thin, a team’s greatest advantage is the amount of workable solutions the player who touches the ball on every offensive play can provide.

“If you’re putting it in one guy’s hands over and over and over, and he’s making you right over and over and over, it’s just math,” Tice said. “Say he gives you just a one percent advantage … but we have him throw the ball 15 more times, you just create that little bit more because he’s going to find the right answer for you.”

In previous years, between the installation of heavy play-action to the way the field literally reduced into smaller and smaller segments as time passed, to the communication between McVay and Goff, to the Rams’ declining offensive production, it became clear that those solutions were growing harder to find. The play calling became so catered to Goff, so careful, so controlled by the play caller and not the quarterback, that McVay’s own frustration (and in turn, his role in their deteriorating professional relationship) escalated.

McVay became known during Goff’s tenure as a puppeteer, communicating adjustments from the sideline into his quarterback’s ear right up until the mandatory cutoff with 15 seconds left on the play clock. Even if that storyline was sometimes exaggerated, there was an element of truth. Perhaps the most notable change in the Rams’ offense to this point is the control McVay is comfortable ceding to Stafford in uncontrollable situations and unpredictable moments, and the problems he believes Stafford can solve in real time.

“If I’m wrong, he still has a chance of making it right,” McVay said. “And those are the things you’re looking for … I think the guys that really separate themselves are the ones (who), when it does go a little bit off-schedule, have the ability to make it right.

“It’s easy to let go when he does those things.”

Stafford’s 13-yard no-look pass for a touchdown to Kupp in Sunday’s fourth quarter against the Giants displayed well how things have changed for this Rams’ offense, from the moment he pulled his leg back in and broke the huddle to the unfolding design of the play to the ball spinning out of his hand in one direction as he stared the other way.

The concept was familiar — tight end Tyler Higbee flipping from the edge into the quick-outlet space to allow the extra pressure defender to overcommit toward Stafford, who could’ve simply dumped the ball off for a catch-and-run there, Kupp running a slide route and coming out behind the block of bodies in the box with space — but it was different, too. Stafford’s play-action fake came from out of shotgun, where he didn’t flip his back toward that free defender. And then, Stafford stared down Higbee — apparently the natural outlet for the pass right over the middle of the field — which kept the defending safety from carrying over to Kupp (the ultimate recipient of the sideline pass) at the end of his route.

The play design was vintage McVay. But the throw was an autonomously-made decision, and it also was vintage Stafford, who understood how the concept would unfold and how each defender could be manipulated.

McVay’s fingerprints, and Stafford’s too.

“He is truly an extension of the coaching staff on the field,” McVay said. “A lot of the stuff that we’re doing is a reflection of things that he owns.

“It always starts with the quarterback, it always will, and that’s what he’s done.”

"Matthew Stafford's loyalty probably cost him the Hall of Fame."

— @ColinCowherd revisits the Rams/Lions trade with the two teams set to meet Sunday: pic.twitter.com/FFkx652SKk

— Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) October 21, 2021