FORWARD THINKER
Rams coach employed a bold approach this season to reduce injury exposure to his players
ATLANTA —Super Bowl teams only get here after surviving four pre-season games, 16 regular-season games, and either two or three conference playoff games.
But this year’s NFC champion Los Angeles Rams took a bold shortcut.
Head coach Sean McVay decided not to play a single established offensive starter in any of the NFL club’s four pre-season games in August. That’s unprecedented.
Namely: Quarterback Jared Goff; running back Todd Gurley; receivers Brandin Cooks, Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp; tight ends Tyler Higbee and Gerald Everett; and fourfifths of the first-string offensive line in LT Andrew Whitworth, LG Rodger Saffold, C John Sullivan and RT Rob Havenstein.
What’s more, McVay sat out most of his defensive starters in August games, except for only a smattering of pre-season snaps in the third pre-season game — including the entire firststring secondary and most impact linemen and linebackers.
It’s something worth considering when you watch Sunday’s Super Bowl LIII between the McVay’s Rams and head coach Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots (6:30 p.m. EST, CTV/CTV2/ TSN via CBS).
Look, resting starters — especially prized starters — for most of the first and second pre-season games, and for all of the last one, is nothing new in the NFL. Alas, it’s no longer a surprise to see superstar players such as veteran quarterbacks on some teams take only 10 or so snaps across all preseason games — a handful of token appearances at best.
No one will ever know which Rams starters might have been spared minor or even catastrophic injuries as a result of McVay’s decision to sit them out for most or all of such meaningless August action. Or whether that August rest factored into the Rams going 13-3 and winning their second consecutive NFC West title. Or whether the Rams, as a result, finished the season as one of the healthiest clubs in the league, if not on NFL record.
One thing’s for sure. They’re not apologizing for it.
“I think the business plan is trying to help our team win games,” Kevin Demoff, the Rams COO and executive VP of football operations, said this week. “So if that helped us win more games this year, great. But I think had we gone 4-12 people would have said we’re morons. This is one where we looked at it as process over results.”
That process of player preservation, if you will, started with McVay. And in multiple ways too, Demoff said, not just holding them out of preseason games.
“Sean is a young coach and very much understands rest,” Demoff said. “We really don’t practise on Wednesdays anymore; we do walkthroughs. We basically made that change in, like, Week 3 or Week 4.
“And I think one of the great things about Sean was last year, after our Thursday night game when we didn’t practise and I think we scored 41 or 42 points, he goes, ‘If we can score 40 points without practising in a short week, maybe we can reevaluate how we look at a longer week.’ I think it’s been great. And we have some older players — the Andrew Whitworths, the John Sullivans of the world … but it’s really a collective effort that starts with Sean being willing to listen to a fantastic medical staff.
“This year we were among the healthiest teams. The last two years we’ve led the league in fewest missed games.”
There are negatives to this approach in the pre-season. If only from one group’s perspective — the fans who attend those pre-season games.
For examples, the Rams got blown out 33-7 by Baltimore in the first pre-season games, and 28-0 by the Saints in New Orleans in the fourth one. Think the thousands of fans who bought full-price tickets to those games cared? You know they did.
Demoff said McVay’s decision was well thought-out and, perhaps, hides the fact that all Rams starters took part in some intense practice sessions during the summer.
“Sean practises our guys hard in training camp. I think anybody that comes to our training camp practices would see it,” Demoff said. “He’s very methodical. We can control it. Maybe we rested some guys more (than other teams) in the pre-season. But I know the Patriots didn’t, right?”
Right. Belichick is at the other end of the spectrum on the issue of player preservation.
But as Demoff pointed out, just because McVay and Belichick think substantially differently on the topic doesn’t mean either is wrong.
“And we’re both sitting here in the same spot, at the Super Bowl, and the four teams last week all took a different approach, too,”
Demoff said. “I think you have to do what’s best for you. And we had two very physical days of practice (in August) with the Baltimore Ravens, so I think to each their own is how it goes.”
Might McVay’s August approach spark a trend, especially if his Rams win Sunday’s Super Bowl? So that some day soon, perhaps even this coming August, we’ll see no team play a single starter in preseason games?
“I could joke that if Sean McVay said we shouldn’t hold training camp at all, we might cancel training camp these days,” Demoff said. “I think every team needs to approach their off-season, their training camp, the way they practise, as what’s best for their team. And nobody knows that better than the head coach and the medical staff of each team.
“And so for us, I think if you look at it from Sean’s perspective, on offence we had 10 of 11 returning starters; Brandin Cooks was the only new one. We weren’t putting in a new offence, so you could dial back some of those reps. And we got great work in against Baltimore.
“But on the defensive side, maybe we started slow because of that … But if we win this game and we’re fortunate enough to be hosting a huge Thursday night or Sunday night game in the (2019 NFL) opener, that might change Sean’s approach next year. I think every year you have to look at it for what it is, rather than saying, ‘Organizationally, this is our philosophy.’ I don’t think blanket statements like that really help you, long term.”
But short term? McVay’s novel approach in August sure didn’t seem to hurt his team this season, now did it.