WCF Film Room: The Rams are the most dangerous and unpredictable team in the NFC right now
And that's not a good thing for opposing teams and fans.
The Los Angeles Rams might have the NFL’s most potent offense so far through three weeks of the NFL season.
They’re ranked the number one offense in Football Outsiders DVOA (fourth in the pass, second in the run), a measure of team’s efficiency per play, which means they are having a higher amount of success per play in gaining the the required yards to stay ahead of schedule. In “drive success rate,” which measures a percentage of down series that results in a touchdown or first down, they’re currently ranked fourth. The film backs this up, where it seems drive after drive results in first down every couple of plays.
2018 struggles bleed into 2019
For now it seems perhaps the Rams have remedied their previous struggles that started late in the 2018 season in their run to a Super Bowl appearance, where the Patriots seized on a specific blueprint for stopping the Rams mid zone run. During that season, late in the year against the Bears, defensive coordinator Vic Fangio utilized a 6-1 front against the Rams condensed 11 personnel formations.
The 6-1 front prevents zone running teams from using combo and double team blocks to open running lanes for the running back because it forces each blocker along the line of scrimmage into 1-on-1 blocks that they have to sustain rather than being able to execute combo blocks/scoop blocks up to the next level.
The Patriots 6-1 was effective at both limiting the Rams mid zone runs and any type of play action off the mid zone.
Against the run, the Patriots are able to account for every gap and let linebacker Dont’a Hightower roam free and help rally to the ball since there is no threat of a cutback into the weak side B-gap. Against the pass, the 6-1 let the flat defenders back side stay home and not chase the fly, enabling them to collision the receiver in the flat and letting the secondary react to cover the intermediate crosser and deep routes.
In 2019, the Rams were unable to adjust successfully and saw an uptick in the amount of 6-1 fronts they faced throughout the season, combined with key injuries along the offensive line and an inconsistent crop of running backs when Todd Gurley missed time due to injury.
And they still finished 9-7.
How have the Rams adjusted in 2020?
The core of the Rams offense under McVay is generally and loosely based around the outside zone running scheme in the Mike Shanahan/Gary Kubiak lineage of coaches. McVay, afterall, spent a chunk of his early coaching career working with Mike and Kyle Shanahan when they coached in Washington.
However, when McVay took over the Rams, he departed in two major ways from the Shanahan tree. Number one, he moved to a more 11 personnel based offense (1 running back, 1 tight end, 3 wide receivers). And second, he shifted gears to a mid zone based running attack.
The outside zone and the mid zone differ in one key way: on the outside zone, the play side tackle tries to reach the edge defender, making this defender the running back’s first read in deciding where he’s going to run. In contrast, the play side tackle on the mid zone is responsible for kicking out the edge defender nearest to him. This shifts the running back lanes one defender over.
On the outside zone, the running back reads the end man on the line of scrimmage to one defender inside of him and bases his path on how they are blocked. On the mid zone, the first read defender is the first defensive lineman, usually a defensive tackle, inside that kick out block to the second defensive lineman inside of that, almost always a back side defensive tackle. This puts the running backs path more north and south than the outside zone, where the goal is to get the edge of the defense.
In 2020, the Rams are building a potent offense off of this one run design than they ever have under McVay, and so far, they are reaping the rewards.
Mid zone fly
In previous seasons, the Rams added fly motion to their mid zone, always running fly motion away from the run call, never toward.
Based on the diagram alone, you can see how the defense funnels to account for the fly and how it makes the blocks in the second level either much easier or non-existent due to defenders being immediately washed out of the play.
The diagram above goes with this clip above. You can see the defense’s reaction to the fly, how it removes a defender out of the box, how all those other defenders bump a gap over in their run fits.
One of the new adjustments the Rams have made to the mid zone is to run the fly motion toward the play side.
This season, McVay is calling more fly motions toward the play call. The intent is still the same, to bump the run fits/gap assignments over one gap but the play now hits differently with more of a cutback lane opening up on the back side. The fly creates easier blocking angles for the offensive line as they are able to get inside leverage and use the momentum of the run direction to run them toward the sideline.
In the cut-up above, you can see where the cutback lane opens up, behind the back side defensive tackle. It’s a smart, simple adjustment by McVay this offseason since it doesn’t let defenses easily diagnose where the run will hit if they now have to account for the fly motion to the strong or weak side.
Don’t respect the fly? No problem
Eventually a given defense will not respect a given motion or route or run that a team will throw at them if they repeat it often enough over the course of a drive.
In the Rams case, they had already run fly motion twice on their opening drive of their week one game versus the Cowboys so that by the third play in a row with some kind of fly motion, the Cowboys weren’t really honoring it chose to stay home in the middle to back side of the formation to play the run action.
The Rams took advantage of this by running a slip screen to receiver Robert Woods (No. 17) running the fly motion across the formation for a gain of 20 yards.
Quarterback Jared Goff boots out to his right with the intent of making the play look like a naked bootleg pass. The flow gets the defense moving toward the naked bootleg, leaving back side defenders in bad position to take on multiple blockers releasing out the opposite way to block for the screen. With a convoy in front of him Woods sprints for a 20 yard gain.
Bootleg wrinkles
McVay has also used late down flat tags in his bootleg passes as a change up to the regular bootleg keepers that takes advantage of the defense vacating the middle of the field as they chase the receivers across.
First, in week one against the Cowboys, the Rams used fly motion to get a receiver out to the flat very quickly, giving Goff an easy read. If the defensive end pursues the quarterback out on the bootleg, Goff could just dump it off to the open flat receiver. If you’ll recall from the clip above in the 2018 Super Bowl, the Rams ran this play with the flat receiver on a sift from the backside rather than getting him motion. The result was that the flat was blown up and Goff was flushed from the pocket.
Here against the Cowboys, the fly motion gives the quarterback an easier, defined read and prevents the flat receiver from being eliminated by the flat defender because the flat defender has to make a choice between the quarterback or flat receiver. The read for Goff is easy, as soon as he identifies the defender vacating the flat, he dumps it off his receiver.
In Week two, McVay tagged the play play with the down flat delay likely because he knew the Eagles would prepare for the play above from the Cowboys game as it is potentially an explosive play the Eagles wanted to limit.
The route combinations are the same from the week 1 clip above, a fly motion to the flat, and intermediate crossing route, and a deeper alert corner route. The down flat comes from Cooper Kupp in a tight split who leaks up field shallow to depth of about five yards.
The Eagles adjustment to the Rams running this was to cover the flat and send a linebacker after Goff and they actually do a pretty good job of covering the routes. Since Kupp initially stays in to block and delays his release, the defender devoted to Kupp rushes Goff and removes himself from the middle of the field so that when Kupp leaks out over the hash, there is no one responsible for him. Kupp races to a 19 yard gain.
They ran the same play again against Buffalo in week three after they had previously run their traditional bootleg pass.
The previous two times the Rams ran their regular boot, the Bills shut it down. This time they did the same exact thing they did against the Eagles and leaked tight end Gerald Everett (No. 81) shallow this time instead of Kupp.
A nice change-up to the regular boot play action is to run “Leak.” Later in the game against the Eagles, off their regular boot action, they tagged it with Y Leak as an alert backside.
Goff found tight end Tyler Higbee (No. 89) for his third touchdown in this game when he found Higbee wide open down the numbers away from the boot rollout.
Higbee’s defender (Nate Gerry) gets caught looking in the backfield at the run fake as Higbee runs by him on a shallow across the formation before turning up field at the numbers. That’s all the space he needs to be wide open as Goff looks his way and hits him in the end zone for six.
Play action wrinkles
As with everything the Rams do, they have built in plays that they’ll run off their core concepts too.
Against the Bills, McVay called a sift zone windback run that looks like a counter run by the running back. His counter step footwork is designed to get the defense to step in that direction with him since they’re reading their run cues first and looking to mirror the running back path.
Another element of the play is the sift block to the play side that acts as a lead blocker to kick out the first force defender on the edge. The offensive line blocks to their left and Goff opens to his left as well to simulate a run in that direction. At this point, Kupp is sprinting across the formation to lead block for Darrell Henderson.
Later in the game, McVay called a play action pass off this run design that got Kupp wide open for a touchdown pass.
Built on the same sift zone windback motion as the previous play above, the Rams ran deep crossers off the run action that took advantage of the Bills aggressiveness in pursuing the run at the fake. Instead of Kupp running the simulated sift/lead block to the perimeter for Henderson, Woods ran the sift and leaked to the flat.
Kupp simulated a block on the line of scrimmage that put cornerback Tre’Davious White in a bind as he had Kupp man-to-man. As soon as Kupp goes to block, White’s eyes get caught in the back field looking for the run in his direction. As this happens, Kupp is already crossing the field before White realized it and White never recovers in coverage as Kupp jogs into the end zone.
How are the Rams dealing with loaded boxes?
None of this matters if the Rams aren’t able to run the ball effectively and for the most part, they have. But they don’t run unnecessarily into pressure looks as McVay gives Goff the ability to “can” the primary play call into a pass play that’s usually more favorable. Sometimes they shift to a different formation, sometimes they “can” to a play run from the same formation.
The tell tale sign of the quarterback changing the play at the line of scrimmage is when he taps the side of his helmet with both hands and yelling “CAN CAN.” At this point the offense will either shift to a different formation or stay in the same formation and run a pass play. This is a departure from the past when the Rams typically just ran the play called because they did not have an adjustment.
Final thoughts
So far the Rams are firing on all cylinders just after adding some new wrinkles to core concepts. The core of the offense remains the same: run mid zone, run designed play action off mid zone, and run a quick passing game built around option routes to beat the league’s elite pass rushers and help the quarterback diagnose coverages through the use of motions/flies/and other shifts.
The most dangerous thing about the Rams right now is how wildly unpredictable their game plan’s are week to week. They’re running their core concepts but at the same time, using a ton of eye candy and dressing them up to look like other plays. Eventually teams will adjust as they hit the stretch later in the season but McVay is operating like a mad scientist right now and there’s no telling what sorts of other tricks he has brewing in the lab up in the hills above Thousand Oaks, California.