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Brockers, Suh Building Camaraderie on Defensive Front
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 12 Replies
Communication is often an overlooked aspect of defensive line play. While verbal contact between a quarterback and his receivers is much more visible, the connections along a defensive front — while less acknowledged — are equally as important.
For this reason, when defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh joined the Rams this offseason, one of his primary focuses was on building chemistry and communication with the players he would be lining up next to — namely fellow defensive tackle Michael Brockers.
“To play this game you have to have your teammates and they have to have you, so [it’s about] creating that camaraderie, being out there with Brockers and all the different guys,” Suh said recently. “You probably don’t see it as much as you see it from a quarterback’s perspective, but as a front, for us all to be on the same front, we have to communicate.”
In order to build up chemistry and be able to communicate effectively, it’s important to understand personalities off the field.
For Brockers, that meant looking past Suh’s reputation around the league, one that sometimes sold him as someone who could be a bit overly aggressive.
“You hear all the tabloids about him, being mean, tough. [But] if you get to know him, sit down and really just get to know him as a person, everybody enjoys him,” Brockers said. “He’s a smart guy, a great guy to be around, [and] a great guy to come into this building with, so it’s been awesome.”
But six weeks into working with each other, Brockers and Suh feel good about the foundation they have set between them. And as both look towards training camp in July, they recognize how important it will be to keep their conversations going.
“I would say [it’s about] overall communication,” Suh said. “Understanding where people are lining up, how things are going to move, how he likes to play, and different things of that nature. It’s pure communication at its best... Just finding opportunities to get better, building camaraderie, and finding ways to continue to be successful going into camp.”
[www.therams.com]
Aqib Talib and Marcus Peters: How a Pair of Risk-Taking Corners Could Give the Rams the Edge
- By Faceplant
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 11 Replies
https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/06/20/los-angeles-rams-aqib-talib-marcus-peters-defense
By ANDY BENOIT
June 20, 2018
The 2018 season is shaping up to be the most anticipated year ever for the NFL in California. The MMQB’s Andy Benoit is diving into the storylines for our special offseason project: California Week. Check back regularly for more.
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — After the 2017 season, Aqib Talib got a call from Broncos football czar John Elway: The veteran cornerback, who’d just finished his fourth season in Denver, was being traded to San Francisco. “I told him, ‘I ain’t even gonna take no physical in San Fran, so there won’t be no trade,’ ” Talib says.
LOL!!!!!!
Elway asked which teams Talib would play for on his existing contract. (That deal was worth $11 million in 2018 and $8 million in 2019.) There were only three: the Patriots, Cowboys and Rams. This late in his career, Talib craved familiarity.
“I’m going on year 11, man. I’m not trying to go learn a whole new system. I wanted to go somewhere I’d be comfortable.” Talib says this while sitting on the curb of the sidewalk between the Rams’ practice field and parking lot.
The Richardson, Texas, native explained, “I’m comfortable if I can live at my house in Dallas and go just around the corner to work. I cut my bills in half. Or if I can go play in a defensive scheme that I’ve played in before. So I told him Dallas, New England or L.A.”
The Rams, it so happened, had already visited with Elway, and it wasn’t long before Talib got a call from L.A. coach Sean McVay. On March 9, Talib, who has been named to the last five Pro Bowls and was All-Pro in 2016, was dealt to L.A. for a fifth-round pick.
Aqib Talib.
AP Images
It was just one of four mega moves by the Rams in what has become the most intriguing, aggressive offseason in recent memory. On April 3 L.A. traded the 23rd overall pick to New England for wideout Brandin Cooks. A week earlier, the Rams signed free-agent defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh to a one-year, $14 million deal. And, before trading for Talib, they dealt a 2019 second-round pick and a 2018 fourth-rounder to Kansas City for Pro Bowl cornerback Marcus Peters and a sixth-round pick. Many believe the moves give L.A. a defense capable of matching the big-play aptitude of its vaunted offense.
Talib is a creature of habit. He keeps a meticulous notebook on each week’s upcoming opponent. “I go through first- and second-down plays on Wednesdays. Go through their big personnel—‘21’ [2 running backs, 1 tight end] and ‘12’ [1 back, 2 tight ends]. See what they like to do.
“Usually teams have an [offensive identity], they like to do something. They line up like this, they like to do that. Or they line up like that, and they like to do this.
“Thursday we go through all third downs—third-and-short, third-and-intermediate, third-and-long. Teams tend to do the same thing over and over again if you really watch. They might make it look different, they may dress it up a little.
“Fridays I do the red zone, situational stuff, two-minute. Things like that.”
NFL
Sean McVay vs. Kyle Shanahan: The NFL’s Best New Coaching Rivalry
This pattern is standard across the league, but you can’t help but smile at Talib’s enthusiasm as he describes it.
Though still an upper-echelon defender, Talib isn’t even the most dynamic corner Los Angeles traded for this offseason. That’d be Marcus Peters, who is new to Wade Phillips’s scheme and these days is often found sitting next to Talib, asking questions.
Both corners are more matchup-oriented than zone-oriented, but neither has traveled with specific receivers much in recent years. Talib very often played on the left side in Denver. And it was noted constantly that the left side is where Peters played in Kansas City. Many were perplexed that he didn’t shadow No. 1 receivers. Asked how often he heard about this, Peters, sitting in an outdoor lounge near the Rams’ locker room, says, diplomatically but edgily, “Man, I just do what the coaches ask of me.”
Judging from their work this spring, Rams coaches will often ask Peters to play on the right side. He has little concern about the switch. Same goes for Phillips. “We’re a ‘corners over’ defense,” the veteran defensive coordinator explains. “Our corners go with the wide receivers wherever they are. If both are on the left, both corners are on the left. If both on the right, vice-versa. So we haven’t worried too much in the past, because you have to learn to play both sides anyway.” Notably, the Chiefs have also been a “corners over” defense, with Peters taking the slot against two-receiver packages. But you only get this formation a few times a game.
AP Images
Wherever he is, Peters plays to his help, be it from teammates or the sideline. “It’s training wheels, man. The art of a corner ain’t nothing but training wheels. You’ve got two of them, and you’re in the middle. So it don’t matter what side you’re going to lean to, it’s always going to balance out.”
Still, some players lament flipping sides. It can be a drastic adjustment in technique. In March, Bears guard Josh Sitton put it into context every person can imagine, saying it’s like “trying to wipe your ass with your opposite hand.”
Asked about this, Peters, either deflecting or just plain missing the point, smiles and says, “I don’t know who wipes with their off hand. That’s nasty.”
Talib and Peters knew each other before joining the Rams, though not well. Neither can recall their first encounter.
“I might have first met him when [my Broncos] won the Super Bowl in the Bay,” says Talib. “I think one of those first nights we went out with Marshawn [Lynch, a Bay Area native].”
“Damn, where’d I meet him at,” Peters ponders aloud, resting his chin in his palm. “Probably on the phone. Or sometime before we played Denver. I’ve always been a fan of his.”
Much has been made about the big-play potential of the Rams’ offense, which led the league in scoring last year and has since added a true No. 1 speed receiver in Cooks. That hype will continue; McVay has coveted Cooks for years, and has been even more smitten since seeing him in practice. Receivers like Cooks are precisely why the Rams knew they needed quality corners. Plus, having those corners frees up their scheme.
NFL
The NFL’s Most Dynamic Team? 10 Thoughts on the 2018 Rams
“In [Talib’s and Peters’s] case, you can put the pressure on them to take out one receiver,” Phillips says. “That helps so much when you’re trying to design what you want to do. It’s such a matchup league, you know? If you have a guy that can match up, you can design different things on defense to help other areas.”
Whereas before the Rams had a play-stopper in Trumaine Johnson (whom they finally let walk in free agency this offseason), they now have a pair of play-makers. Talib and Peters might rank 1 and 1A in terms of aggressiveness at their position. Their off-coverage, route-jumping style is high-risk, high-reward.
“High risk is high reward,” says Peters flatly. “There’s a select few of us that can do it, to be honest. That’s what makes us so unique.”
Peters is quick to cite the value of the defensive backs coaches he has worked with since high school—listing each by name—and is grateful that all of his coaches told him “to just be Marcus. They never told me to change nothing about my game. We just want you to go out and be yourself.”
It takes a certain level of humility—even courage?—for a coach tell Peters this. Because the 25-year-old corner won’t just take chances—he’ll sometimes deviate completely from a designed coverage. A perfect example was his interception last year in Week 3 at the L.A. Chargers.
“I know exactly what you’re talking about,” he says quickly at mention of the play. You’ll sometimes see a corner improvise and convert zone coverage into man coverage. But on that play, Peters did the opposite, converting man coverage into zone. It’s almost unheard of, since going zone on your own means letting your assigned receiver run free. “Can’t too many of us do it,” he says.
It wasn’t done on a whim. “Philip Rivers doesn’t like throwing that route against me,” Peters explains, elaborating on how the intended target, veteran tight end Antonio Gates, relies more on body positioning than speed these days. It was this knowledge that inspired Peters to go rogue and attack the ball.
Some of Talib’s coverage decisions can be perilous as well, but as with Peters, his gambles tend to be premeditated. “If we’re in Cover 8 [a form of two-deep zone] and I get a certain look? That’s a play for me,” Talib says. “If we’re in Cover 1 [man-to-man], that’s a catch and tackle. I ain’t really trying to do too much. So I figure out where my opportunities are, on what looks.”
NFL
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Many corners study tendencies based on a wide receiver’s split—in other words, how far out the receiver is aligned. “But I think nowadays teams do a good job of running a lot of stuff from the same splits or just switching up their splits consistently,” Talib says. “It’s not like back in the day when somebody would line up at the bottom of the field numbers and run the Bang-8 [skinny post] every time. My rookie year that’s how it was—it was clockwork, every time.
“Now, it’s a new age of football. Splits are not as specific as back in the day. It’s more the receivers themselves now. The deep guys, the intermediate guys, the reverse screen guys. You just got to know the body that you’re covering and have a good idea of what you’re going to get.” Talib then goes into elaborate details on the various things you get based on personnel packages and situations. This is the lens through which he studies opponents.
AP Images
You get the sense that his favorite moments are in hurry-up situations. “It’s like playing Nintendo,” he says. “Remember in Nintendo when you were hurrying you’d always go to the same playbook? NFL offenses are the same way.”
This line of thinking will make the Rams a fascinating defense in 2018. Corners who play tendencies and attack routes are lethal when they’re behind a dominant pass rush that can force quarterbacks to throw on the defense’s schedule. But if the pass rush doesn’t get home, these same corners become susceptible to double moves and late breakdowns in technique. We’ve seen this throughout Peters’s and Talib’s careers. The Rams may have the league’s best interior rush with newcomer Ndamukong Suh and especially Aaron Donald, but they’re thin and unproven on the edges.
By ANDY BENOIT
June 20, 2018
The 2018 season is shaping up to be the most anticipated year ever for the NFL in California. The MMQB’s Andy Benoit is diving into the storylines for our special offseason project: California Week. Check back regularly for more.
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — After the 2017 season, Aqib Talib got a call from Broncos football czar John Elway: The veteran cornerback, who’d just finished his fourth season in Denver, was being traded to San Francisco. “I told him, ‘I ain’t even gonna take no physical in San Fran, so there won’t be no trade,’ ” Talib says.
LOL!!!!!!
Elway asked which teams Talib would play for on his existing contract. (That deal was worth $11 million in 2018 and $8 million in 2019.) There were only three: the Patriots, Cowboys and Rams. This late in his career, Talib craved familiarity.
“I’m going on year 11, man. I’m not trying to go learn a whole new system. I wanted to go somewhere I’d be comfortable.” Talib says this while sitting on the curb of the sidewalk between the Rams’ practice field and parking lot.
The Richardson, Texas, native explained, “I’m comfortable if I can live at my house in Dallas and go just around the corner to work. I cut my bills in half. Or if I can go play in a defensive scheme that I’ve played in before. So I told him Dallas, New England or L.A.”
The Rams, it so happened, had already visited with Elway, and it wasn’t long before Talib got a call from L.A. coach Sean McVay. On March 9, Talib, who has been named to the last five Pro Bowls and was All-Pro in 2016, was dealt to L.A. for a fifth-round pick.
Aqib Talib.
AP Images
It was just one of four mega moves by the Rams in what has become the most intriguing, aggressive offseason in recent memory. On April 3 L.A. traded the 23rd overall pick to New England for wideout Brandin Cooks. A week earlier, the Rams signed free-agent defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh to a one-year, $14 million deal. And, before trading for Talib, they dealt a 2019 second-round pick and a 2018 fourth-rounder to Kansas City for Pro Bowl cornerback Marcus Peters and a sixth-round pick. Many believe the moves give L.A. a defense capable of matching the big-play aptitude of its vaunted offense.
Talib is a creature of habit. He keeps a meticulous notebook on each week’s upcoming opponent. “I go through first- and second-down plays on Wednesdays. Go through their big personnel—‘21’ [2 running backs, 1 tight end] and ‘12’ [1 back, 2 tight ends]. See what they like to do.
“Usually teams have an [offensive identity], they like to do something. They line up like this, they like to do that. Or they line up like that, and they like to do this.
“Thursday we go through all third downs—third-and-short, third-and-intermediate, third-and-long. Teams tend to do the same thing over and over again if you really watch. They might make it look different, they may dress it up a little.
“Fridays I do the red zone, situational stuff, two-minute. Things like that.”
NFL
Sean McVay vs. Kyle Shanahan: The NFL’s Best New Coaching Rivalry
This pattern is standard across the league, but you can’t help but smile at Talib’s enthusiasm as he describes it.
Though still an upper-echelon defender, Talib isn’t even the most dynamic corner Los Angeles traded for this offseason. That’d be Marcus Peters, who is new to Wade Phillips’s scheme and these days is often found sitting next to Talib, asking questions.
Both corners are more matchup-oriented than zone-oriented, but neither has traveled with specific receivers much in recent years. Talib very often played on the left side in Denver. And it was noted constantly that the left side is where Peters played in Kansas City. Many were perplexed that he didn’t shadow No. 1 receivers. Asked how often he heard about this, Peters, sitting in an outdoor lounge near the Rams’ locker room, says, diplomatically but edgily, “Man, I just do what the coaches ask of me.”
Judging from their work this spring, Rams coaches will often ask Peters to play on the right side. He has little concern about the switch. Same goes for Phillips. “We’re a ‘corners over’ defense,” the veteran defensive coordinator explains. “Our corners go with the wide receivers wherever they are. If both are on the left, both corners are on the left. If both on the right, vice-versa. So we haven’t worried too much in the past, because you have to learn to play both sides anyway.” Notably, the Chiefs have also been a “corners over” defense, with Peters taking the slot against two-receiver packages. But you only get this formation a few times a game.
AP Images
Wherever he is, Peters plays to his help, be it from teammates or the sideline. “It’s training wheels, man. The art of a corner ain’t nothing but training wheels. You’ve got two of them, and you’re in the middle. So it don’t matter what side you’re going to lean to, it’s always going to balance out.”
Still, some players lament flipping sides. It can be a drastic adjustment in technique. In March, Bears guard Josh Sitton put it into context every person can imagine, saying it’s like “trying to wipe your ass with your opposite hand.”
Asked about this, Peters, either deflecting or just plain missing the point, smiles and says, “I don’t know who wipes with their off hand. That’s nasty.”
Talib and Peters knew each other before joining the Rams, though not well. Neither can recall their first encounter.
“I might have first met him when [my Broncos] won the Super Bowl in the Bay,” says Talib. “I think one of those first nights we went out with Marshawn [Lynch, a Bay Area native].”
“Damn, where’d I meet him at,” Peters ponders aloud, resting his chin in his palm. “Probably on the phone. Or sometime before we played Denver. I’ve always been a fan of his.”
Much has been made about the big-play potential of the Rams’ offense, which led the league in scoring last year and has since added a true No. 1 speed receiver in Cooks. That hype will continue; McVay has coveted Cooks for years, and has been even more smitten since seeing him in practice. Receivers like Cooks are precisely why the Rams knew they needed quality corners. Plus, having those corners frees up their scheme.
NFL
The NFL’s Most Dynamic Team? 10 Thoughts on the 2018 Rams
“In [Talib’s and Peters’s] case, you can put the pressure on them to take out one receiver,” Phillips says. “That helps so much when you’re trying to design what you want to do. It’s such a matchup league, you know? If you have a guy that can match up, you can design different things on defense to help other areas.”
Whereas before the Rams had a play-stopper in Trumaine Johnson (whom they finally let walk in free agency this offseason), they now have a pair of play-makers. Talib and Peters might rank 1 and 1A in terms of aggressiveness at their position. Their off-coverage, route-jumping style is high-risk, high-reward.
“High risk is high reward,” says Peters flatly. “There’s a select few of us that can do it, to be honest. That’s what makes us so unique.”
Peters is quick to cite the value of the defensive backs coaches he has worked with since high school—listing each by name—and is grateful that all of his coaches told him “to just be Marcus. They never told me to change nothing about my game. We just want you to go out and be yourself.”
It takes a certain level of humility—even courage?—for a coach tell Peters this. Because the 25-year-old corner won’t just take chances—he’ll sometimes deviate completely from a designed coverage. A perfect example was his interception last year in Week 3 at the L.A. Chargers.
“I know exactly what you’re talking about,” he says quickly at mention of the play. You’ll sometimes see a corner improvise and convert zone coverage into man coverage. But on that play, Peters did the opposite, converting man coverage into zone. It’s almost unheard of, since going zone on your own means letting your assigned receiver run free. “Can’t too many of us do it,” he says.
It wasn’t done on a whim. “Philip Rivers doesn’t like throwing that route against me,” Peters explains, elaborating on how the intended target, veteran tight end Antonio Gates, relies more on body positioning than speed these days. It was this knowledge that inspired Peters to go rogue and attack the ball.
Some of Talib’s coverage decisions can be perilous as well, but as with Peters, his gambles tend to be premeditated. “If we’re in Cover 8 [a form of two-deep zone] and I get a certain look? That’s a play for me,” Talib says. “If we’re in Cover 1 [man-to-man], that’s a catch and tackle. I ain’t really trying to do too much. So I figure out where my opportunities are, on what looks.”
NFL
The NFL in California in 2018: The Best Year Ever?
Many corners study tendencies based on a wide receiver’s split—in other words, how far out the receiver is aligned. “But I think nowadays teams do a good job of running a lot of stuff from the same splits or just switching up their splits consistently,” Talib says. “It’s not like back in the day when somebody would line up at the bottom of the field numbers and run the Bang-8 [skinny post] every time. My rookie year that’s how it was—it was clockwork, every time.
“Now, it’s a new age of football. Splits are not as specific as back in the day. It’s more the receivers themselves now. The deep guys, the intermediate guys, the reverse screen guys. You just got to know the body that you’re covering and have a good idea of what you’re going to get.” Talib then goes into elaborate details on the various things you get based on personnel packages and situations. This is the lens through which he studies opponents.
AP Images
You get the sense that his favorite moments are in hurry-up situations. “It’s like playing Nintendo,” he says. “Remember in Nintendo when you were hurrying you’d always go to the same playbook? NFL offenses are the same way.”
This line of thinking will make the Rams a fascinating defense in 2018. Corners who play tendencies and attack routes are lethal when they’re behind a dominant pass rush that can force quarterbacks to throw on the defense’s schedule. But if the pass rush doesn’t get home, these same corners become susceptible to double moves and late breakdowns in technique. We’ve seen this throughout Peters’s and Talib’s careers. The Rams may have the league’s best interior rush with newcomer Ndamukong Suh and especially Aaron Donald, but they’re thin and unproven on the edges.
Why the Raiders are worse off with Jon Gruden in charge
- By CGI_Ram
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 45 Replies
https://www.thescore.com/nfl/news/1560250
Why the Raiders are worse off with Jon Gruden in charge
Coming off a stunningly disappointing 6-10 season in which no other AFC team took a further step backward, the Oakland Raidersdemonstrated this offseason why they'll be the perfect marriage for Las Vegas when the franchise moves to Sin City in 2019.
Raiders owner Mark Davis gambled big in January and perhaps mortgaged his team's future through a series of transactions that started - but certainly didn’t end - with the luring of Jon Gruden out of the broadcast booth for an outlandish $100-million coaching contract over 10 years. It's an unprecedented payout that alone guarantees Gruden more power than most NFL bench bosses enjoy.
Nine years had passed since the wide-eyed, cartoonish Monday Night Football analyst last coached in the NFL, and 12 since Gruden led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to double-digit wins.
Sure, Gruden isn't the first coach to return from a long respite, and some have found success.
Dick Vermeil took a 15-year break after leaving the Eagles in 1982, citing burnout at just 45 years old, and returned at 61 to coach the St. Louis Rams, whom he guided to a Super Bowl title three years later.
Bill Parcells took four years off after the leaving the Jets in 1999 and resurfaced in Dallas to coach the Cowboys at 62, winning 34 games in four seasons (but no playoff contests) before retiring after the owner had forced Terrell Owens upon him in 2006.
Pete Carroll spent 10 years away from the NFL after the Patriots fired him in 1999 before the Seahawkshired him in 2010, but at least Carroll spent most of those years rebuilding USC into a national college powerhouse.
In the Raiders' case, the full-court press on Gruden felt like a desperate attempt by Davis to spark his team by wrangling the hottest "name" on the market - which Gruden has been every year since the Bucs fired him in January 2009 - instead of following the league's trend of going young and player-friendly.
For years, Gruden had rebuffed offers, determining that analyzing from the comfy confines of ESPN's booth for a hefty paycheck beat the stress and anxiety of coaching in a league where everyone other than Bill Belichick is perpetually on the hot seat.
It wasn't until widespread layoffs at ESPN - resulting in hundreds of marquee industry names on the unemployment line - that Gruden suddenly, and conveniently, said the pull of the locker room was too great to ignore.
Davis doling out $100 million to make sure he landed his man smacks of the New York Knicksunabashedly upping their ante several times to Phil Jackson until finally convincing the Zen Master to come out retirement and lead basketball operations – with an eye-popping contract that paid $12 million annually.
How'd that work out?
You don’t pay an NFL head coach $10 million to merely handle Xs and Os, so it’s no surprise that reports quickly surfaced after Gruden's hiring that Raiders GM Reggie McKenzie would see his power diminish under the new sheriff.
Meanwhile, several of the team’s decisions since Gruden's hiring indicate an aimless franchise that isn’t rock-solid from top to bottom despite the supposed change in culture he was expected to bring. They include:
Pass-rusher Khalil Mack is entering the fifth and final year of his deal despite racking up 36.5 sacks over the past three seasons and making the Pro Bowl in each of those.
Mack skipped the team's mandatory camp earlier this month and NFL Network recently reported that he and the Raiders remain far apart. That Oakland hasn't locked up one of the NFL's best young defensive players is curious.
Given all that, Gruden must show he's worth $10 million annually and is equipped to coach today's players when training camp opens in July.
The Raiders have talent - including quarterback Derek Carr, Mack, wide receiver Amari Cooper, safety Karl Joseph, and guard Kelechi Osemele - but they're also leaning heavily on several aging veterans. Marshawn Lynch, Leon Hall, Reggie Nelson, and Bruce Irvin are all over 30, and asking them to stay healthy and productive on the downside of their careers is a tall order.
Meanwhile, the AFC West is a tough division. The Chiefs are reloading around young gunslinger Patrick Mahomes while Philip Rivers and the Chargers are looking to carry over the momentum of winning six of their last seven games in 2017.
The Raiders pushed all their chips forward to bank on Gruden – and they might very well come to regret that decision.
Geoff Mosher is an award-winning sports reporter, radio host, and TV personality with more than 20 years of experience covering all major sports and leagues. He also hosts regularly on 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia and co-hosts "The Sports Shop" on Facebook.
(Photos courtesy: Getty Images)
Why the Raiders are worse off with Jon Gruden in charge
Coming off a stunningly disappointing 6-10 season in which no other AFC team took a further step backward, the Oakland Raidersdemonstrated this offseason why they'll be the perfect marriage for Las Vegas when the franchise moves to Sin City in 2019.
Raiders owner Mark Davis gambled big in January and perhaps mortgaged his team's future through a series of transactions that started - but certainly didn’t end - with the luring of Jon Gruden out of the broadcast booth for an outlandish $100-million coaching contract over 10 years. It's an unprecedented payout that alone guarantees Gruden more power than most NFL bench bosses enjoy.
Nine years had passed since the wide-eyed, cartoonish Monday Night Football analyst last coached in the NFL, and 12 since Gruden led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to double-digit wins.
Sure, Gruden isn't the first coach to return from a long respite, and some have found success.
Dick Vermeil took a 15-year break after leaving the Eagles in 1982, citing burnout at just 45 years old, and returned at 61 to coach the St. Louis Rams, whom he guided to a Super Bowl title three years later.
Bill Parcells took four years off after the leaving the Jets in 1999 and resurfaced in Dallas to coach the Cowboys at 62, winning 34 games in four seasons (but no playoff contests) before retiring after the owner had forced Terrell Owens upon him in 2006.
Pete Carroll spent 10 years away from the NFL after the Patriots fired him in 1999 before the Seahawkshired him in 2010, but at least Carroll spent most of those years rebuilding USC into a national college powerhouse.
In the Raiders' case, the full-court press on Gruden felt like a desperate attempt by Davis to spark his team by wrangling the hottest "name" on the market - which Gruden has been every year since the Bucs fired him in January 2009 - instead of following the league's trend of going young and player-friendly.
For years, Gruden had rebuffed offers, determining that analyzing from the comfy confines of ESPN's booth for a hefty paycheck beat the stress and anxiety of coaching in a league where everyone other than Bill Belichick is perpetually on the hot seat.
It wasn't until widespread layoffs at ESPN - resulting in hundreds of marquee industry names on the unemployment line - that Gruden suddenly, and conveniently, said the pull of the locker room was too great to ignore.
Davis doling out $100 million to make sure he landed his man smacks of the New York Knicksunabashedly upping their ante several times to Phil Jackson until finally convincing the Zen Master to come out retirement and lead basketball operations – with an eye-popping contract that paid $12 million annually.
How'd that work out?
You don’t pay an NFL head coach $10 million to merely handle Xs and Os, so it’s no surprise that reports quickly surfaced after Gruden's hiring that Raiders GM Reggie McKenzie would see his power diminish under the new sheriff.
Meanwhile, several of the team’s decisions since Gruden's hiring indicate an aimless franchise that isn’t rock-solid from top to bottom despite the supposed change in culture he was expected to bring. They include:
- Hiring assistant coach Tom Cable to fix the offensive line after Cable struggled with that same responsibility in his prior stop with the Seahawks.
- Dealing a third-round pick to the Steelers for troubled receiver Martavis Bryant, only to find out there could be another issue between the receiver and the NFL regarding its substance-abuse policy. Bryant has already served 20 combined games of suspension in his career and has only started 16 contests.
- Releasing 30-year-old wideout Michael Crabtree after three seasons in which he averaged 77 receptions, 847 yards, and eight touchdowns while replacing him with an older Jordy Nelson, who didn’t even reach 500 yards last year.
- Using the 15th overall pick on UCLA offensive tackle Kolton Miller, a choice met with skepticism among scouts who spoke to theScore. One personnel executive called the decision “head-scratching.”
Pass-rusher Khalil Mack is entering the fifth and final year of his deal despite racking up 36.5 sacks over the past three seasons and making the Pro Bowl in each of those.
Mack skipped the team's mandatory camp earlier this month and NFL Network recently reported that he and the Raiders remain far apart. That Oakland hasn't locked up one of the NFL's best young defensive players is curious.
Given all that, Gruden must show he's worth $10 million annually and is equipped to coach today's players when training camp opens in July.
The Raiders have talent - including quarterback Derek Carr, Mack, wide receiver Amari Cooper, safety Karl Joseph, and guard Kelechi Osemele - but they're also leaning heavily on several aging veterans. Marshawn Lynch, Leon Hall, Reggie Nelson, and Bruce Irvin are all over 30, and asking them to stay healthy and productive on the downside of their careers is a tall order.
Meanwhile, the AFC West is a tough division. The Chiefs are reloading around young gunslinger Patrick Mahomes while Philip Rivers and the Chargers are looking to carry over the momentum of winning six of their last seven games in 2017.
The Raiders pushed all their chips forward to bank on Gruden – and they might very well come to regret that decision.
Geoff Mosher is an award-winning sports reporter, radio host, and TV personality with more than 20 years of experience covering all major sports and leagues. He also hosts regularly on 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia and co-hosts "The Sports Shop" on Facebook.
(Photos courtesy: Getty Images)
Phone Scam
There is a phone scam going around. They leave a message stating that there are 4 serious crimes posted against you and you need to call them back as the local police are coming to arrest you. Apparently it is more of an east coast thing but I am on the left coast.
I know most wouldn't fall for it but just a heads up in case you're old like @VegasRam
I know most wouldn't fall for it but just a heads up in case you're old like @VegasRam
R.I.P. Leon White, Rams Center
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 5 Replies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Van_Vader#Football_career
Imgur
Leon White was a nationally ranked center who was recruited by forty colleges. He played offensive line at the University of Colorado, where he became a two-time All-American and earned a business administration degree.
In the 1978 NFL Draft, White was drafted as a center by the Los Angeles Rams with the 24th pick of the 3rd Round (80th overall).
During White's first season, he was put on the injured reserve list, but in his second season, he played in Super Bowl XIV against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was forced to retire after only a couple of seasons due to a ruptured patella.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/6583256/wwe-vader-dead-63-heart-surgery/
WWE legend Big Van Vadar has died, aged 63, after undergoing heart surgery earlier this year.
Leon White, better known by his ring name of Vader, was diagnosed with a severe case of Pneumonia around a month ago.
Vader became a huge star with WWE in the early 1990s after becoming a major household name with WCW.
The legend battled with fellow icons such as The Undertaker, Sting, Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels.
His career in the ring began after a successful NFL career that ended prematurely because of injury.
Imgur
Leon White was a nationally ranked center who was recruited by forty colleges. He played offensive line at the University of Colorado, where he became a two-time All-American and earned a business administration degree.
In the 1978 NFL Draft, White was drafted as a center by the Los Angeles Rams with the 24th pick of the 3rd Round (80th overall).
During White's first season, he was put on the injured reserve list, but in his second season, he played in Super Bowl XIV against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was forced to retire after only a couple of seasons due to a ruptured patella.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/6583256/wwe-vader-dead-63-heart-surgery/
WWE legend Big Van Vadar has died, aged 63, after undergoing heart surgery earlier this year.
Leon White, better known by his ring name of Vader, was diagnosed with a severe case of Pneumonia around a month ago.
Vader became a huge star with WWE in the early 1990s after becoming a major household name with WCW.
The legend battled with fellow icons such as The Undertaker, Sting, Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels.
His career in the ring began after a successful NFL career that ended prematurely because of injury.
Waldron Expects Gurley to Continue Improving as Dual-Threat Running Back
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 9 Replies
Waldron Expects Gurley to Continue Improving as Dual-Threat Running Back
When running back Todd Gurley first joined the Rams in 2015, it was clear what strengths he would bring to the franchise. In his time at Georgia, Gurley made a name for himself as a dynamic rusher who provided a rare blend of power and speed.
And while he continues to demonstrate both skills as one of the top running backs in the league, last season proved that Gurley can bring more to the table than just his abilities as a rusher.
In 2017, Gurley recorded 64 receptions for 788 yards and six touchdowns — nearly doubling his production from the previous two seasons combined.
And now, as he gets set to enter his second season under head coach Sean McVay, Gurley is ready to continue developing as a true dual-threat running back.
“There’s always room for improvement,” Gurley said recently, “but my main focus is to help the team as much as possible. Focus on running the ball and the routes will take care of themselves.”
Throughout the offseason, passing game coordinator Shane Waldron said the team made a point to have all five running backs go through drills with the receivers. By doing so, Gurley and the rest of the room will have more opportunities to compete in both the running and passing game.
But Gurley in particular has taken that emphasis one step further.
After each practice, the running back can often be found catching passes at the jugs machine — a habit that has helped him to improve his individual receiving abilities, in addition to the route-running he does with the rest of the team.
And for that reason, Waldron is confident that Gurley will continue to improve as a receiver in 2018. Although, admittedly, he was unsure of just how much better the Georgia product could be after such a stellar 2017.
“Man, he’s pretty good right now,” Waldron said with a laugh. “But the one thing with Todd is you see him everyday, he does all that stuff like a pro. So I think like anything else, even though he is one of the greatest in the world at what he does, his work ethic and [with] what he puts into it in getting those extra reps, I think he can do nothing but improve.”
[www.therams.com]
When running back Todd Gurley first joined the Rams in 2015, it was clear what strengths he would bring to the franchise. In his time at Georgia, Gurley made a name for himself as a dynamic rusher who provided a rare blend of power and speed.
And while he continues to demonstrate both skills as one of the top running backs in the league, last season proved that Gurley can bring more to the table than just his abilities as a rusher.
In 2017, Gurley recorded 64 receptions for 788 yards and six touchdowns — nearly doubling his production from the previous two seasons combined.
And now, as he gets set to enter his second season under head coach Sean McVay, Gurley is ready to continue developing as a true dual-threat running back.
“There’s always room for improvement,” Gurley said recently, “but my main focus is to help the team as much as possible. Focus on running the ball and the routes will take care of themselves.”
Throughout the offseason, passing game coordinator Shane Waldron said the team made a point to have all five running backs go through drills with the receivers. By doing so, Gurley and the rest of the room will have more opportunities to compete in both the running and passing game.
But Gurley in particular has taken that emphasis one step further.
After each practice, the running back can often be found catching passes at the jugs machine — a habit that has helped him to improve his individual receiving abilities, in addition to the route-running he does with the rest of the team.
And for that reason, Waldron is confident that Gurley will continue to improve as a receiver in 2018. Although, admittedly, he was unsure of just how much better the Georgia product could be after such a stellar 2017.
“Man, he’s pretty good right now,” Waldron said with a laugh. “But the one thing with Todd is you see him everyday, he does all that stuff like a pro. So I think like anything else, even though he is one of the greatest in the world at what he does, his work ethic and [with] what he puts into it in getting those extra reps, I think he can do nothing but improve.”
[www.therams.com]
Sean McVay vs. Kyle Shanahan: The NFL’s Best New Coaching Rivalry
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 16 Replies
https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/06/18/sean-mcvay-rams-kyle-shanahan-49ers-coaching-rivalry
Sean McVay vs. Kyle Shanahan: The NFL’s Best New Coaching Rivalry
The league’s most-admired offensive trend-setters are set up to face each other for years as NFC West counterparts. Both came up under Jon Gruden in Tampa, honed their styles and strategy with the Redskins, and went west last year to inject new life into storied franchises. McVay’s Rams and Shanahan’s 49ers will be compelling theater in 2018, and likely for a long time
By ANDY BENOIT
Getty Images
Every year at the combine I meet with dozens of NFL head coaches, coordinators and assistants. It’s unfiltered, off-the-record football talk, and the question I always pose before departing is, From a schematic standpoint, which offenses impressed you most last year? Who are you studying this offseason?
This year, for the first time, every coach cited the same two teams: the Rams and 49ers. More telling, these were the only teams cited. No one mentioned the Patriots, Saints, Falcons or Chiefs. The Eagles came up, but only when we were talking run-pass options. The NFL is a copycat league, and the entire league spent this offseason trying to copy the leading contenders from the NFC West.
This is the story about the two coaches behind these envied offenses, where they learned their schemes, how those schemes work, what it means for the rest of the league—and why it’s about to give us the NFL’s greatest coaching rivalry.
Kyle Shanahan first met Sean McVay in 2010. Shanahan, now 38, was the offensive coordinator for his father, Mike Shanahan, with the Redskins. McVay, now 32, was hired by Washington as an offensive quality control coach. “I was basically Kyle’s assistant,” says McVay, who would become the tight ends coach in the second of his four years under Shanahan.
“I could tell within about five minutes that he was going to be a very good coach,” says Kyle Shanahan. “He was exactly what I wanted.” Both young coaches entered the league as quality control guys under Jon Gruden with the Buccaneers—Shanahan in 2004-05, McVay in 2008. Quality control is the grunt work of coaching.
You gather and organize the scouting data on other teams. You break down the same on your own team. You draw the plays the head coach or coordinator will install. Anything that makes the jobs of other coaches more efficient, you do.
“Having had that experience, we were able to speak the same language,” says McVay. “That West Coast offense verbiage.” A quality control job under Gruden may be overwhelming in the short-term, but it’s big boon to a coach’s development long-term.
Gruden is known to liberally add plays to his system. If he sees something another team runs well, he’ll install it. His quality control coaches are left to track seemingly endless concepts around the league. They learn a lot very quickly.
Shanahan, as Falcons coordinator, with McVay, then the Redskins’ coordinator, and Washington coach Jay Gruden in 2015./ Getty Images
McVay to this day still has many of Gruden’s mannerisms. This was even more pronounced early in his career—something Shanahan and others would tease him about. The two young Redskins coaches admired one another, but their lives were not aligned for a close out-of-office friendship. McVay was a bachelor; Shanahan had a wife and young kids. They also have different personalities.
“Sean is going to be more rah-rah, positive, high-energy, warm,” says Kirk Cousins, who had Shanahan as a coordinator in 2012-13 and McVay as a coordinator under Jay Gruden in 2014-16. “Kyle’s going to be more direct, tell it like it is. I think that’s the biggest difference.”
New Titans offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur, now 38, was Washington’s QB coach from 2010 to ’13, later worked as Shanahan’s QB coach for two years in Atlanta and was McVay’s offensive coordinator last year in Los Angeles.
“Kyle’s intentions are extremely pure,” LaFleur says. “He wants what’s best—he just has a different belief in how to motivate people. Sean is more positive. They’re both demanding, just very different leadership styles.”
Wide receiver Pierre Garçon played for both Shanahan and McVay in Washington and now is with the former in San Francisco. He describes McVay as “more playful,” but touts Shanahan’s dry humor, which even after six years, can be hard for the veteran to detect.
“He’ll crack a joke when you’re not expecting,” he says. “And now he’s the head coach, so it’s even harder to know if he’s serious or not. When young guys come in, they’re not sure if he’s messing with them or if he’s being serious, because he keeps such a straight face.”
As football guys, both have always been precocious.
“The first time I met Sean, I knew this guy was going to be a future head coach,” says LaFleur. “He’s so damn intelligent. His memory is as good as anybody I’ve ever been around. It’s scary good. He can see one thing from another team five years ago and recall the game and what quarter it was in, what part of the field it was on.
“I think Kyle is a visionary—just look at the different styles of offense he’s been able to work with. Starting with our days with Robert Griffin back in 2012, where he had the foresight to create an offense that was conducive to what Robert did well.”
Cousins paints a similar picture of Shanahan’s adaptability. “When I came to Washington and Kyle installed the offense, he explained that we throw hot [routes], so we don’t need to deal with changing the protections very often, just let the system work for you.
But I heard that when Kyle went to Atlanta, Matt Ryan said, ‘You know, I’d like to have sight adjustments [a sibling of hot routes]. They sort of went back and forth on it, and ultimately Kyle relented. Kyle didn’t want to do [sight adjustments] in the past, but he was willing to adjust because it was something Matt had done before.”
Of course, a scheme can only be as good as the men executing it. As McVay puts it, “The number one thing is, it’s all about the players. All these plays can be cool, but I know this—and I’ve heard Coach [Bill] Belichick say this: Players win games. It’s about putting these guys in the right position.”
In a literal sense, putting players in the right position is the art of scheming. McVay might come from the Gruden tree, but it’s a core Shanahan philosophy that defines his system. “We want to have that marriage of the run and the pass game,” he says. Shanahan describes it as having different plays that start out looking the same.
As Cousins explains, “Sean’s and Kyle’s quarterback can have a lot of success in the play-action game because those passes look like runs. They create a lot of explosive plays off of that. They also create a lot of explosive plays when they can change the tempo and go no-huddle.”
Plays that start out looking the same generally stem from a zone-blocking ground game, where the offensive line moves in unison. Both coaches subscribe to this approach. The passing game is where their styles differ.
In the second half of last season, McVay used three wide receivers and one back nearly 90 percent of the time. He often aligned those receivers tight to the formation, where they were threats to run-block and had enough field around them to go left or right after the snap.
That two-way go, mixed with outside zone runs, make more play-design possibilities available. The Rams capitalized with a precise timing-and-rhythm aerial attack and clever backfield passing game that often leveraged running back Todd Gurley off the wide receivers’ routes.
Shanahan, on the other hand, played with two wide receivers and two backs on around half the snaps once Jimmy Garoppolo stepped in—an exceptionally high rate. Two backs or two tight ends is considered “base personnel,” which, as the conductor of Atlanta’s Super Bowl offense in 2016, Shanahan had employed more than every NFL team except Tennessee.
The second tight end—or often in San Francisco’s case the second back, fullback Kyle Juszczyk—serves as an extra, movable blocker, which adds significantly more variables to a running game. Having to account for those variables makes the defense more predictable in coverage, and Shanahan designs passes specifically exploiting that predictability.
Those pass concepts tend to be simple, but Shanahan gives them the illusion of complexity by sending backs and tight ends in motion before the snap and presenting the same routes from different formations. This not only adds window-dressing—it also often forces the defense to reveal whether it’s in man or zone coverage.
Shanahan deploys base personnel more than most other coaches, using the fullback as a movable blocker./ Getty Images
While Shanahan blurs a defense’s picture before the snap, McVay is more inclined to blur it immediately after. The Rams make great use of switch and stack releases, with receivers’ routes intersecting off the line, distorting defenders’ coverage assignments. He’s also become aggressive in jet motion and ghost reverse action, with wide receivers speeding across the backfield from one side of the formation to the other.
This isn’t to say Shanahan doesn’t employ switch releases or ghost action, or that McVay doesn’t use motion and formation wrinkles to decode a defense. As different as their schemes are, the coaches’ shared history creates plenty of overlap.
Nowhere is that more evident than in how they use their quarterback in the hurry-up approach mentioned by Cousins. Much was made last season of McVay rushing the Rams to the line and then talking into QB Jared Goff’s headset.
But McVay is far from the first to do that, and it’s a tactic Shanahan has employed. He leaned on it heavily last year when Garoppolo took the field before he could possibly have learned San Francisco’s entire system.
Another approach both coaches take is to emphasize the tailback in the passing game. McVay did this steadily with Chris Thompson in Washington, then got to Los Angeles and found out that Gurley was unstoppable outside in space. Screens and passes to the flat became a Rams staple. Shanahan made great use of star tailbacks Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman through the air in Atlanta.
In hopes of recreating that, the Niners this past offseason spent $30 million over four years for free-agent back Jerick McKinnon, formerly of the Vikings. He’ll pair at times with 2017 fourth-round receiving back Joe Williams and, more often, with Juszczyk, who last December was featured more on passes.
McVay designs plays to get the ball to Gurley in space, where he is devastating./ Getty Images
Ask either McVay or Shanahan about integrating backs into aerial designs, and they’ll launch into elaborate soliloquies about the nuances of that execution.
“Both guys are as detailed as anybody I’ve been around,” says LaFleur. “They do a great job of seeing the game with all 22 players in mind.”
They also see a game with its recent past and immediate future in mind. “They don’t just spin a rolodex and pick out a play and hope it works,” says Cousins. “They have a reason for every play they call. And I think in coaching that isn’t as common as you think. A lot of coaches feel comfortable just pulling plays out of a hat and hoping a few of them work. “
If the Niners and Rams fulfill expectations, plenty of NFL teams will start searching for the next young offensive-minded head coach. LaFleur’s background with both men, especially if it’s coupled with a strong performance from a Titans offense that lacks speed at wide receiver and is partly reworking quarterback Marcus Mariota, would propel him up many lists. (Though brace yourself for a cold dismissal if you bring this up to him. “We’re just trying to get the next practice right,” he says.)
Getty Images
The trend toward young offensive coaches includes not just McVay and Shanahan, but new Bears head coach Matt Nagy, 39, and Adam Gase, who took Miami to the playoffs as a 38-year-old rookie head coach in 2016. Others are in waiting.
Not only are six coordinators 40 or younger (LaFleur, Minnesota’s John DeFilippo, Jacksonville’s Nathaniel Hackett, Indianapolis’s Nick Sirianni, Detroit’s Jim Bob Cooter and Miami’s Dowell Loggains), but 15 quarterbacks coaches are 40 or younger.
That’s what’s happening around the rest of the league. Inside the NFC West, the stage is set for the two offensive innovators to clash for years to come. McVay’s quarterback is 23 years old; Shanahan’s is 26, with very little wear-and-tear. L.A.’s roster is loaded; San Fran’s is solid and improving. The Rams will move into a new world-class stadium in 2020; the Niners have been in theirs since 2014.
The rivalry will be fun … even if neither coach wants to stoke it publicly. Both say all the right things about the other, and behind the scenes their mutual respect might be even more intense. But every now and then you see competitive juices leaking out. A good-natured potshot about that guy stealing my idea. An unnecessary mention about how he’s in our division.
Memories of interviewing for the same coaching jobs. (McVay met with the 49ers in 2017, Shanahan was scheduled to meet with the Rams that year until a snowstorm before a Falcons playoff game derailed it.)
A sly smile when talking about last year’s Week 3 Thursday night shootout, when Shanahan’s offense put up 39 and McVay’s scored 41, but with the help of an early Nickell Robey-Coleman interception return that gave L.A. the ball at the three-yard-line. (Gurley scored a touchdown one snap later.) These are the two biggest offensive trend-setters in the NFL right now. It’d be naïve to think they don’t want to beat each other.
Sean McVay vs. Kyle Shanahan: The NFL’s Best New Coaching Rivalry
The league’s most-admired offensive trend-setters are set up to face each other for years as NFC West counterparts. Both came up under Jon Gruden in Tampa, honed their styles and strategy with the Redskins, and went west last year to inject new life into storied franchises. McVay’s Rams and Shanahan’s 49ers will be compelling theater in 2018, and likely for a long time
By ANDY BENOIT
Getty Images
Every year at the combine I meet with dozens of NFL head coaches, coordinators and assistants. It’s unfiltered, off-the-record football talk, and the question I always pose before departing is, From a schematic standpoint, which offenses impressed you most last year? Who are you studying this offseason?
This year, for the first time, every coach cited the same two teams: the Rams and 49ers. More telling, these were the only teams cited. No one mentioned the Patriots, Saints, Falcons or Chiefs. The Eagles came up, but only when we were talking run-pass options. The NFL is a copycat league, and the entire league spent this offseason trying to copy the leading contenders from the NFC West.
This is the story about the two coaches behind these envied offenses, where they learned their schemes, how those schemes work, what it means for the rest of the league—and why it’s about to give us the NFL’s greatest coaching rivalry.
Kyle Shanahan first met Sean McVay in 2010. Shanahan, now 38, was the offensive coordinator for his father, Mike Shanahan, with the Redskins. McVay, now 32, was hired by Washington as an offensive quality control coach. “I was basically Kyle’s assistant,” says McVay, who would become the tight ends coach in the second of his four years under Shanahan.
“I could tell within about five minutes that he was going to be a very good coach,” says Kyle Shanahan. “He was exactly what I wanted.” Both young coaches entered the league as quality control guys under Jon Gruden with the Buccaneers—Shanahan in 2004-05, McVay in 2008. Quality control is the grunt work of coaching.
You gather and organize the scouting data on other teams. You break down the same on your own team. You draw the plays the head coach or coordinator will install. Anything that makes the jobs of other coaches more efficient, you do.
“Having had that experience, we were able to speak the same language,” says McVay. “That West Coast offense verbiage.” A quality control job under Gruden may be overwhelming in the short-term, but it’s big boon to a coach’s development long-term.
Gruden is known to liberally add plays to his system. If he sees something another team runs well, he’ll install it. His quality control coaches are left to track seemingly endless concepts around the league. They learn a lot very quickly.
Shanahan, as Falcons coordinator, with McVay, then the Redskins’ coordinator, and Washington coach Jay Gruden in 2015./ Getty Images
McVay to this day still has many of Gruden’s mannerisms. This was even more pronounced early in his career—something Shanahan and others would tease him about. The two young Redskins coaches admired one another, but their lives were not aligned for a close out-of-office friendship. McVay was a bachelor; Shanahan had a wife and young kids. They also have different personalities.
“Sean is going to be more rah-rah, positive, high-energy, warm,” says Kirk Cousins, who had Shanahan as a coordinator in 2012-13 and McVay as a coordinator under Jay Gruden in 2014-16. “Kyle’s going to be more direct, tell it like it is. I think that’s the biggest difference.”
New Titans offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur, now 38, was Washington’s QB coach from 2010 to ’13, later worked as Shanahan’s QB coach for two years in Atlanta and was McVay’s offensive coordinator last year in Los Angeles.
“Kyle’s intentions are extremely pure,” LaFleur says. “He wants what’s best—he just has a different belief in how to motivate people. Sean is more positive. They’re both demanding, just very different leadership styles.”
Wide receiver Pierre Garçon played for both Shanahan and McVay in Washington and now is with the former in San Francisco. He describes McVay as “more playful,” but touts Shanahan’s dry humor, which even after six years, can be hard for the veteran to detect.
“He’ll crack a joke when you’re not expecting,” he says. “And now he’s the head coach, so it’s even harder to know if he’s serious or not. When young guys come in, they’re not sure if he’s messing with them or if he’s being serious, because he keeps such a straight face.”
As football guys, both have always been precocious.
“The first time I met Sean, I knew this guy was going to be a future head coach,” says LaFleur. “He’s so damn intelligent. His memory is as good as anybody I’ve ever been around. It’s scary good. He can see one thing from another team five years ago and recall the game and what quarter it was in, what part of the field it was on.
“I think Kyle is a visionary—just look at the different styles of offense he’s been able to work with. Starting with our days with Robert Griffin back in 2012, where he had the foresight to create an offense that was conducive to what Robert did well.”
Cousins paints a similar picture of Shanahan’s adaptability. “When I came to Washington and Kyle installed the offense, he explained that we throw hot [routes], so we don’t need to deal with changing the protections very often, just let the system work for you.
But I heard that when Kyle went to Atlanta, Matt Ryan said, ‘You know, I’d like to have sight adjustments [a sibling of hot routes]. They sort of went back and forth on it, and ultimately Kyle relented. Kyle didn’t want to do [sight adjustments] in the past, but he was willing to adjust because it was something Matt had done before.”
Of course, a scheme can only be as good as the men executing it. As McVay puts it, “The number one thing is, it’s all about the players. All these plays can be cool, but I know this—and I’ve heard Coach [Bill] Belichick say this: Players win games. It’s about putting these guys in the right position.”
In a literal sense, putting players in the right position is the art of scheming. McVay might come from the Gruden tree, but it’s a core Shanahan philosophy that defines his system. “We want to have that marriage of the run and the pass game,” he says. Shanahan describes it as having different plays that start out looking the same.
As Cousins explains, “Sean’s and Kyle’s quarterback can have a lot of success in the play-action game because those passes look like runs. They create a lot of explosive plays off of that. They also create a lot of explosive plays when they can change the tempo and go no-huddle.”
Plays that start out looking the same generally stem from a zone-blocking ground game, where the offensive line moves in unison. Both coaches subscribe to this approach. The passing game is where their styles differ.
In the second half of last season, McVay used three wide receivers and one back nearly 90 percent of the time. He often aligned those receivers tight to the formation, where they were threats to run-block and had enough field around them to go left or right after the snap.
That two-way go, mixed with outside zone runs, make more play-design possibilities available. The Rams capitalized with a precise timing-and-rhythm aerial attack and clever backfield passing game that often leveraged running back Todd Gurley off the wide receivers’ routes.
Shanahan, on the other hand, played with two wide receivers and two backs on around half the snaps once Jimmy Garoppolo stepped in—an exceptionally high rate. Two backs or two tight ends is considered “base personnel,” which, as the conductor of Atlanta’s Super Bowl offense in 2016, Shanahan had employed more than every NFL team except Tennessee.
The second tight end—or often in San Francisco’s case the second back, fullback Kyle Juszczyk—serves as an extra, movable blocker, which adds significantly more variables to a running game. Having to account for those variables makes the defense more predictable in coverage, and Shanahan designs passes specifically exploiting that predictability.
Those pass concepts tend to be simple, but Shanahan gives them the illusion of complexity by sending backs and tight ends in motion before the snap and presenting the same routes from different formations. This not only adds window-dressing—it also often forces the defense to reveal whether it’s in man or zone coverage.
Shanahan deploys base personnel more than most other coaches, using the fullback as a movable blocker./ Getty Images
While Shanahan blurs a defense’s picture before the snap, McVay is more inclined to blur it immediately after. The Rams make great use of switch and stack releases, with receivers’ routes intersecting off the line, distorting defenders’ coverage assignments. He’s also become aggressive in jet motion and ghost reverse action, with wide receivers speeding across the backfield from one side of the formation to the other.
This isn’t to say Shanahan doesn’t employ switch releases or ghost action, or that McVay doesn’t use motion and formation wrinkles to decode a defense. As different as their schemes are, the coaches’ shared history creates plenty of overlap.
Nowhere is that more evident than in how they use their quarterback in the hurry-up approach mentioned by Cousins. Much was made last season of McVay rushing the Rams to the line and then talking into QB Jared Goff’s headset.
But McVay is far from the first to do that, and it’s a tactic Shanahan has employed. He leaned on it heavily last year when Garoppolo took the field before he could possibly have learned San Francisco’s entire system.
Another approach both coaches take is to emphasize the tailback in the passing game. McVay did this steadily with Chris Thompson in Washington, then got to Los Angeles and found out that Gurley was unstoppable outside in space. Screens and passes to the flat became a Rams staple. Shanahan made great use of star tailbacks Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman through the air in Atlanta.
In hopes of recreating that, the Niners this past offseason spent $30 million over four years for free-agent back Jerick McKinnon, formerly of the Vikings. He’ll pair at times with 2017 fourth-round receiving back Joe Williams and, more often, with Juszczyk, who last December was featured more on passes.
McVay designs plays to get the ball to Gurley in space, where he is devastating./ Getty Images
Ask either McVay or Shanahan about integrating backs into aerial designs, and they’ll launch into elaborate soliloquies about the nuances of that execution.
“Both guys are as detailed as anybody I’ve been around,” says LaFleur. “They do a great job of seeing the game with all 22 players in mind.”
They also see a game with its recent past and immediate future in mind. “They don’t just spin a rolodex and pick out a play and hope it works,” says Cousins. “They have a reason for every play they call. And I think in coaching that isn’t as common as you think. A lot of coaches feel comfortable just pulling plays out of a hat and hoping a few of them work. “
If the Niners and Rams fulfill expectations, plenty of NFL teams will start searching for the next young offensive-minded head coach. LaFleur’s background with both men, especially if it’s coupled with a strong performance from a Titans offense that lacks speed at wide receiver and is partly reworking quarterback Marcus Mariota, would propel him up many lists. (Though brace yourself for a cold dismissal if you bring this up to him. “We’re just trying to get the next practice right,” he says.)
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The trend toward young offensive coaches includes not just McVay and Shanahan, but new Bears head coach Matt Nagy, 39, and Adam Gase, who took Miami to the playoffs as a 38-year-old rookie head coach in 2016. Others are in waiting.
Not only are six coordinators 40 or younger (LaFleur, Minnesota’s John DeFilippo, Jacksonville’s Nathaniel Hackett, Indianapolis’s Nick Sirianni, Detroit’s Jim Bob Cooter and Miami’s Dowell Loggains), but 15 quarterbacks coaches are 40 or younger.
That’s what’s happening around the rest of the league. Inside the NFC West, the stage is set for the two offensive innovators to clash for years to come. McVay’s quarterback is 23 years old; Shanahan’s is 26, with very little wear-and-tear. L.A.’s roster is loaded; San Fran’s is solid and improving. The Rams will move into a new world-class stadium in 2020; the Niners have been in theirs since 2014.
The rivalry will be fun … even if neither coach wants to stoke it publicly. Both say all the right things about the other, and behind the scenes their mutual respect might be even more intense. But every now and then you see competitive juices leaking out. A good-natured potshot about that guy stealing my idea. An unnecessary mention about how he’s in our division.
Memories of interviewing for the same coaching jobs. (McVay met with the 49ers in 2017, Shanahan was scheduled to meet with the Rams that year until a snowstorm before a Falcons playoff game derailed it.)
A sly smile when talking about last year’s Week 3 Thursday night shootout, when Shanahan’s offense put up 39 and McVay’s scored 41, but with the help of an early Nickell Robey-Coleman interception return that gave L.A. the ball at the three-yard-line. (Gurley scored a touchdown one snap later.) These are the two biggest offensive trend-setters in the NFL right now. It’d be naïve to think they don’t want to beat each other.