3 innovations to watch for from new coordinators
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3 LA Rams innovations from Coach McVay in 2020
LA Rams 3 critical innovations to watch for from LA Rams head coach Sean McVay and his three new coordinators to ensure success this year.
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The LA Rams are in a process of tuning up the team after a disappointing 2019 season. With a 90-man roster in place, the next order of business will be setting up the Rams to win once more. That sounds easy enough, but it’s one of the most difficult things to do in any professional sport.
After all, success is not simply lining up and your best players and outperforming the best players of the opposing team. If it were that easy, the LA Rams would be on the path to long term dominance in the NFL. But it’s not that simple. The LA Rams’ own success becomes one of the challenges to continued success.
Just win, Baby!
Each win puts a game video footage up for other coaches to analyze and counter. Each highly productive player suddenly becomes a free agent target of other teams. Each position coach who gives your team a competitive advantage suddenly is named on a shortlist for promotion on another team. The NFL system is designed to increase the gravity of high-flying teams to bring them back to the earth. Innovations are cloned, grafted, replicated, and duplicated until the competitive advantage becomes commonplace.
NFL teams that disappoint simply reload each year. That reload doesn’t occur by assembling a new coaching staff. Rather, the bad teams eventually poach coaches from successful teams. Good teams must then restock coaches and train them to perform to succeed. It may be a frustrating system, but it many ways it is an efficient way of redistributing coaching talent among all 32 NFL teams.
Is it live, or is it Memorex?
The Rams faced a bit of that redistribution of coaching talent after the end of the 2018 season, where they lost to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LIII. Despite the loss, the meteoric rise of the Rams from a 4-12 2016 season to 11-5 in 2017 to 13-3 in 2018 was quite an eye-opener to many in the NFL. Not only did the LA Rams suddenly spring back to life in the NFL post-season discussions, but the team did so while being led by the youngest head coach ever to compete in a Super Bowl.
Following that game, the LA Rams suddenly became the first stop for new coaches throughout the NFL. In fact, three new head coaches hired in 2019 were all linked back to the LA Rams head coach Sean McVay. While that may seem very complimentary, it flooded the NFL with the same offensive concepts, philosophies, and strategies.
Diamond or quartz?
The value we place upon something is frequently linked to how rare an object is. To the naked eye, quartz, cubic zirconium, and diamonds all have a translucent quality of sparkling brilliance. But it is the rarity of diamonds that give the gem its incredible value. So too was the offensive strategy employed by Rams coach McVay a bit of a rarity in the NFL. But the NFL has a way of clipping and grafting those innovative concepts off one coaching staff and onto another team. Each coaching hire “steals” a bit of that success to the new team.
So innovating is not enough. To continue to succeed, McVay’s coaching staff must continue to push the envelope, continue to improvise, continue to introduce new strategies and plays. In summary, the Rams must continue to innovate to win. That is why the Rams hired three new coordinators. Three new coordinators, three fresh perspectives, but all tied to one common theme – innovation. So what will they be cooking up this year?
Intensive play on special teams
The LA Rams found a difficult go of it in 2019 in special teams. That was on display virtually any time the team sent out the field goal unit last year. Greg “the Leg” Zuerlein was one of the most dependable kickers of the NFL in his career, but he wasn’t very accurate from 40+ yards in 2019. The overall team field goal accuracy was a paltry 72.7 percent in 2019. That was only good enough for 28th ranked in the NFL.
That opened the door for the Rams to hire special teams coordinator John Bonamego. And in rapid response, the Rams have signed up three kickers to compete for field goal duties in 2020. That competition is not just an open competition. The Rams specifically targetted kickers who had solid accuracy over 40 plus yards.
Drop back and… fake?
But it was not just the field goal kicking that went wrong in 2019. There was a matter of a fake punt gone wrong from the LA Rams own 29-yard line in a winnable game on the road against the Pittsburgh Steelers. At the time, the LA Rams were down 14-7 and had the ball in the third quarter. The Rams faced a fourth-and-one when the team dialed up a frequently successful fake punt. But this time, the fake ended up with a pass attempt which was intercepted. The team had become predictable in faking punts and it blew up in their face.
Trick plays need to know when to use them, and when not to use them. The Rams had relied too heavily on trickery and paid the price. The greatest innovations for the Rams on special teams will be to return to fundamentals. Playing like the team can trust the kicker and All-Pro punter Johnny Hekker will go a long way for the Rams in 2020. The innovation? Less is more. Just solid tackling, coverage, and booming kicks. Sometimes the greatest thrills in football can be simply doing the little things right.
New defensive formations
The LA Rams will remain a 3-4 defense. But the team emphasized the defensive line in the effort to add talent to the team in the offseason. While there is room to debate whether the Rams intended to do so exists, there is no debate that is what the Rams did in free agency. The Rams not only retained Michael Brockers but added the tremendously strong nose tackle, A’Shawn Robinson. Adding Robinson not only opens the door to shifting Aaron Donald around on the defensive line but adds a possibility of standing him up to serve as a surprise edge rusher as well.
That means the Rams could go with three, four, or even five defensive linemen on any given play. How does the offense double up an Aaron Donald when all five offensive linemen are covered in a play?
Rogue Ramsey
Perhaps the innovation I’m most eager to witness is how the LA Rams will make use of All-Pro cornerback Jalen Ramsey in 2020. Ramsey was already a threat to NFL quarterbacks when he stepped onto the field. But now, defensive coordinator Brandon Staley will be playing a game of cat-and-mouse with quarterbacks who will be tasked with finding Ramsey on the defense before virtually every offensive snap. The newly introduced Staley and Ramsey have resonated a solid bond, and the pair have already discussed moving Ramsey about the defensive backfield to confuse offenses.
But the Rams have more than one card up their sleeve on defense. After all, the team is betting that a superior strategy will overcome the lack of experience among the linebackers this year. And in many ways, they could be right. After all, with an ever-changing defensive front, and defensive backs capable of sliding into virtually any coverage, the linebackers will have some flexibility to do what they do best, gravitate to the back and deny positive yards. The Rams edge rushers for this defense are the true wild card. If the Rams hit big with outside linebackers Leonard Floyd and rookie Terrell Lewis, this defense could be scary good.
Innovations to run and pass on offense
The LA Rams found success by running two tight-end formations and sending the uncovered TE into his route. That was just one of the keys to an offensive rejuvenation in December 2019. The Rams discovered a number of innovations late in the season which I expect will see plenty of opportunities this year. Let’s discuss what that entails.
The team rediscovered the power of the tight end. Not only as a blocker but as a receiver. As defenses grow faster on the edges, counting on collapsing a pocket before the quarterback can locate his receiver, the tight end becomes a valuable counter move. Whether lined up next to the tackle, split out, or in the offensive backfield, a solid pass-catching tight end pressures the defensive secondary. But when lined up in a tight formation or in the backfield, they provide an added blocker which negates speed rushes and hole plugging linebackers.
Multiple backfield sets
The Rams pushed defenses hard with an offense that featured wide receivers as a staple for gaining yards. Now that other offenses are finding ways to replicate that type of offensive pressure, look for the Rams to change direction and feature the offensive backs in 2020. Why? Simply stated, it works. That’s the takeaway Coach McVay had from Super Bowl LIV, and that’s what he’ll put into the offensive playbook in 2020.
The Rams did not draft running back Cam Akers and sign rookies James Gilbert and Xavier Jones after the 2020 NFL Draft just to handle the ball between pass plays. The team plans to add their talents to the untapped potential of second-year veteran Darrell Henderson and veteran Malcolm Brown in multiple-backfield sets. The Rams remain a run-based offense and demonstrate that each season. Much like special teams, 2020 will feature the Rams getting back to what worked in the past. Look for a significant improvement to the run game this year.
