The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - The Playcallers Ep. 3: You are not me

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

How far can Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay go to evolve their own offenses? Each coach hires a defensive coordinator who is their perfect schematic opposite. In San Francisco, Shanahan and Robert Saleh's epic practice battles shape what are now the NFL's best defenses. In Los Angeles, McVay's and Brandon Staley's schemes clash as McVay becomes wholly obsessed with finding out how his offense can be solved. Host Jourdan Rodrigue studies the collision of apex systems and how the ripple effects start to shape each team - and the entire NFL.Voices in the episode include McVay, Shanahan, Saleh, Staley, Thomas Brown, Andrew Whitworth, Mina Kimes, and Steve Wyche.Playcallers is presented by Miller Lite. To get Miller Lite delivered right to your door, visit millerlite.com/playcallers.Celebrate Responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, WI. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when APEC systems and the people who bring them to life crash against each other? It's a phenomenon that has literally been unfolding since the dawn of time. Football biology transformations occur when heat and stress is applied to an organism. I'm Jordan Rodriguez. This is the play callers. Okay, I should set the scene first. The football landscape into 2020 was marked by the gradual waning of one dominant defensive philosophy, shaped in the 2010s by Pete Carroll, his assistants Gus Bradley, Dan Quinn, and Chris Richard. The Seattle Seahawks and their famed Legion of Boom.

You know, I mentioned at the top I'm a Seahawks fan. A warm welcome back to senior ESPN analyst Mina Kimes. It was actually the 2017 near the end of the year. They came up to Seattle, the Rams. The Sears just couldn't stop them. They could not stop Todd Gurley, who rushed for what felt like 600 yards. Third and 20 now, that is right to Gurley. He's got a monster hole.

Todd Gurley, he's got the first and more. On third and 20. And everything that flowed from that, you know, the zone run game, they just couldn't stop. And I think in that moment, I remember thinking, oh, that this is over. Now, some of that has to do with loss of personnel, but it felt like the rise of something offensively and the decline of something defensively. So it felt like a turning point in the NFL. That Seattle defensive system and others across the league featured a lot of cover three.

The way Sean McVeigh and Kyle Shanahan and eventually others from their coaching tree use play action, motions, horizontal movement in the run-and-pass game, bootlegs, and their distribution of their route combinations manipulated the spacing of that type of coverage philosophy. They were more regulated. That's the easiest way I can put it. What Sean McVeigh is saying here is that the language of more defenses at that time was either or, not this and that, like we see today. You know, there was less moving parts. You just got some more regulated looks. but it was regulated, but it was also one of the structures and systems that, you know, that was in circulation was what Seattle had been doing at a really high level. And they still were

operating at a high level. But the most simple answer that I can give you is there was more regulated looks that gave you a better idea of what you were attacking. So if you're keeping track of the tree rings here, Dan Quinn coached in Seattle in the early 2010, before becoming Atlanta's head coach, where he hired Kyle Shanahan to coordinate his offense. It wasn't until DQ went to Atlanta and hired Kyle. And Kyle, for forever, always thought we were running a form of quarters. And after the first week, he was like, wait a minute, there's no quarters. It's just three deep.

And it was like, pretty much. That's Robert Salah, the current head coach of the Jets. He was also on Pete Carroll's Seattle staff in the early 2010. tens and was an assistant at various points to Dan Quinn and Gus Bradley. I was the original no, take care. A piss point Seattle. All right. The piss boys.

Anyway, back to Dan Quinn and Kyle Shanahan in Atlanta. Well, just like he did at every other stop, Kyle Shanahan was lurking in the defensive meetings. It was at that point where Kyle started drawing up all the plays accordingly, and I give Kyle credit for kind of breaking the code because he finally got in a building where it was. He was just able to throw haymakers at it. As Robert Sala went on to Jacksonville when Gus Bradley was hired as head coach there, that Seattle-inspired defense was spreading across the league. But so was Kyle Shanahan's intel on it, which he used against that scheme over and over. I call them haymakers, and they were hard.

There were hard concepts to defend. And once 32 offensive coordinators versus one defensive coordinator, everyone just puts on those reels and everyone has access to that information. you've got to try to defend it. And teams started getting more creative, taking variations of what Kyle did and expanding upon it and expanding, expanding, expanding, and turning it into

and it just accelerated so fast. It almost became impossible just to do what we did in Seattle. When Kyle Shanahan assembled his coaching staff as the 49ers first year head coach in 2017, he hired Robert Sala as his defensive coordinator. The initial install was just that 3D. And we went into it,

We played three deep. And we were okay. We improved from 32nd to I think like 23rd or something like that. Not astronomical numbers. But the next year is where we kind of dabbled a little bit more in some stuff. And our pressure package is what kind of started first on third down, developed a really cool pressure package. Sala remembers the 49ers climbing to about middle of the NFL on defense the next year. They were number 24 in defensive DVOA.

He knew they could keep evolving, keep pushing. Schematically, we had to change, but philosophically, I did not want to change. There's a philosophy, how do you push the envelope to make it hard for the offense, but we still make sure our players can play as fast as they're capable of. It wasn't about, okay, let's just start running a bunch of stuff, because then you're going to break the core philosophy of what you believe in. When I say this next part, I need you to understand. fighting is not always a bad thing in the NFL.

In fact, sometimes it's a great thing, even ultimately an important thing. So Kyle Shanahan and Robert Sala start fighting. Kyle is an alpha. I say this right, he's unbelievable to work with. He truly is because he's going to challenge you and he's going to push you to think outside the envelope or outside the box. And he's going to want you to push the envelope of what's capable. But at the same time, he's respectful in the sense that he knows he doesn't know every snake in the grass. So he's very, very careful not to demand something that he doesn't know the negatives that can come from it.

But he's going to challenge you to at least look, study it and figure it out. And to be honest, there were days where he and I wouldn't talk to each other for like a week. You know, and then we go talk and then be over. But here's the thing. They could also battle each other in practice. and challenge each other in meetings. And so in 2019, out of all of those conversations, and also the arc of the league,

here comes the wide nine. Here come more coverages that limit explosive pass plays, including quarters. Here comes the 49ers defense for your lunch money. Third down and four, look at us, bull rush, including Fred Warner, Robert Sala, the defensive coordinator, is pumped up. Lay action off of this on second and seven.

And they get to him. The ball comes out. And picking it up is Buckner. And we've got a San Francisco touchdown. Wilson, pressure off the edge, releases it. And it is intercepted by Greenlaw. Dre Greenlaw. Now on the return, this.

That was part of the blessing for me being with Kyle. Just like Kyle was with DQ, felt like we were able to, by practicing against Kyle, we could figure something out and figuring. And sitting in his teammates, Kyle's brilliant. You know, and just watching him, just talk football. and just absorbing and being able to sit and just listen and learn and ask questions. And for them, it's about moving people and understanding who they're trying to move.

And then as a defense, well, they just moved you. How are you going to replace that void without over-complicating things? And so just trying to understand what the offenses were trying to do and just learning in regard to their chasing space. You can't defend all the space in the world, but you can keep moving space on them. So for us on defense, what we evolved to was how can we keep moving the space and the stress. In simple terms, the quarter's concepts helped to minimize the explosive passing plays that were the bread and butter of this system. The wide nine didn't just exist to rush the passer.

It also helped minimize explosive run plays created by outside zone. As far as the wide nine goes, running outside zone and you've got two wide nines collapsing the edges, and you've got penetrating three interior de-linmen. It's very hard to consistently create explosive plays in the run game. No way did it stop there, because the daily battles didn't stop. Kyle Shanahan and Mike McDaniel, alongside famed veteran running backs coach Bobby Turner, started switching up their run game after going against Salas' defense and practice. Kyle and Mike McDaniel and those guys, they figured out a way to create explosives by going the gap scheme.

They create a lot of space in the run game and just watching how they create that space in the run game and how they put you in run-pass conflicts all over the place. It is difficult. And so the wide nine for us was to keep them in the box so we could kind of minimize the run-pass conflicts that are underneath defenders were put in off of their scheme. But it's a chess match

because then you start in line games, you're starting to do all kinds of stuff. It was a really cool learning experience because they threw the hardest, possible thing that you could throw at our defense in 2019 every single day and tested us because we were making a change. And for that, it made us a heck of a lot better. Don't forget, they were also facing a familiar face twice a year, and vice versa.

Sean McVeigh, I give him credit for reinventing our boot rules. In 2019, I think he ran, I think they called 28 boots and ran 21 of them. They had 21 boots against us, which is unheard of in one game. I mean, you didn't even run them that many in a year. And I'll never forget, Kyle screaming on the sideline, do something. And I'm like, they're like, I'm not just going to play unsound defense. And so we're going, and at halftime, we go in and create this kind of half-ass boot rules. And it worked.

We settled the boots down. And then we went to the lab the very next day and Tuesday and created a really, really sound boot system that, took care of the boop, but still kept us strong in the run game. In Los Angeles in 2017, first year Rams coach Sean McVeigh hired Wade Phillips, one of the most respected defensive minds in NFL history, and a man 39 years, his senior. You know, Wade was already so established, and, you know, really his modeling the way is what set the tone that, you know, when we got here, I thought it was really important to not manipulate it, but to establish a confidence in what we wanted to try to do offensively.

As defensive coordinator, Phillips allowed McVeigh the ability to trial certain situations and offensive experiments outside of the usual structure of a practice, setting up the defense to react in certain ways that could better help predict outcomes the offense would have against opponents. Players had to see how layers unfolded and how space was manipulated. McVeigh credits Phillips for truly helping him get his offense off the ground in 20, Heade had the humility, but also the appreciation for what a great coach he had been to know that, like, he had already asserted himself. And part of it was getting the guys to buy into what we were trying to do offensively.

Well, what's the best way to be able to get him to buy in is by having confidence that it's not manipulated, but, you know, you're trying to help show why things are the way that they are. And I'll never forget that. And I thought that was key and critical for a lot of the good things that went on offensively, but you set the foundation the right way. Really, not much was necessarily wrong with the Rams defense in general. They ranked in the top 10 in the NFL in defensive DVOA in 2017 and 2019. Even in that fateful Super Bowl loss,

a down year overall at number 16 in defensive DVOA, Wade Phillips and the Rams defense held Tom Brady to 13 points. But remember, the defenses that shut Sean McVeigh's seemingly unstoppable, offense down in 2018, all borrowed similar characteristics. And while he didn't invent defense's proverbial wheel, many of those characteristics in their modern form in the NFL were credited to one godfather. Vic Fangio. Going back to 2018, you actually get Fangio, who sets up with the bears, kind of this 6-1 defense

that used quarter coverages, used what I call reductions. so line movements to get one of the edge players to get back into coverage. That allows you to play 7-man coverage, which allows you to play your two-high show. This is Cody Alexander, a former college and high school coach and the creator of the match quarters franchise. He explains defense really, really well. What you're seeing is basically the true definition of the NFL being a copycat league. And so everybody was like, well, hell, if it's, I mean, if Fangio did it with the Bears,

you saw Patricia do it with the Lions. and then now we just saw Bill Belichick. And then you go, that's the last thing that we see. When some of those borrowed concepts shut Sean McVeigh down in the Super Bowl, everybody saw it. And everybody wanted a piece of it when they played the Rams in 2019. So everybody all off season is like, how can we put that in our system?

And then he basically got spammed with it for the first part of the year. And what a lot of people don't understand, each game plan is very curated to what you feel like you're going to get. Now, the offense is dictating a lot of what's going on, but they're guessing at what personnel package you're going to come out in. So if you're going up against Ron Rivera, it's week one, he's going to run a four three, cover three, cover one defense. And you're like, oh, we got this in the bag. And then they come out in a six one. You don't have any plays that you rep that will go against that. especially through the first month or two of the season,

the Rams kept seeing these concepts pop up. They eventually found some ways to problem solve. Ironically, even going back to McVeigh's original Bread and Butter 12 personnel, they still missed the playoffs that year. Meanwhile, the entire language of modern defense was changing. Let's hear from our friend, NFL Network's senior analyst, Steve Weish. I mean, first of all, I mean, think about it,

what, 16, 17? I mean, you just think about the first of the first of the first. vernacular then. You had defensive ends in a four or three. You had outside linebackers in a 34. You know, you had nickel coverage, but was it a big nickel with a safety? Or was it your typical nickel with a corner? Now, there's no such thing as a defensive end and outside backer. It is an edge rusher. Right? It is a star DB. Kind of the Derwin James, Jalen Ramsey, hybrid dude can go from slot to corner to play outside linebacker principles like Charles Woodson. The language of a defense, the idea of being able to play multiple positions at multiple

spots on the field to find players capable of showing the same looks pre-snap but something totally different post-snap. It was getting very offense-like. When we talk about position flex or positionless players, that's what's going on around the league. And that is all space. It's geometry and angles. Shotgun, three by one, lot of motion. Let's get the ball to the playmakers in space and see if somebody can tackle our guy in the open field. That is how teams are drafting and building now.

We've got to get someone who can tackle in the open field. I don't care if this dude was a great in-the-box linebacker. This guy is not going to fit our scheme because we ask our safeties to play two yards deeper and tackle guys before they get seven yards upfield. So it is all space now. Robert Sala illustrated the language changing through the safety position. He worked with some legendary Seattle players at that position,

Cam Chancellor and Earl Thomas. When we first had the Seattle system, Camp Chancellor was always down. Earl was always back, especially if you're playing a quarter system where you want them planted, and sometimes they've got to go back. Sometimes they've got to come forward. Down and back, or free and strong,

safety started just getting called safety. in certain systems. These offenses are too good. They're just going to look at you and they're going to, you want to stay away from their uppercut. You know, I'll take their jabs all day. But as soon as they start throwing up those old school Mike Tyson, get in close and throw their haymakers at you, it's over.

And so you just want to make sure that you keep them guessing, keep them pure in their play calling, where they're staying away from their, again, like I call those haymakers. Because you're going to get about five or six of them a game where they throw those haymakers at you. And if you can keep them to a minimum, you got a really, really good chance to keep the points down. And so it's just one of those deals where you know, you want players to be able to do a lot of things

so you can hold the guys a little bit better and you can do multiple things out of it. So if we take Sean McVeigh as one example, remember, he's running 11, 12, 21 personnel out of the same 11 personnel pre-snap book every time. Because the same offensive players can do more every snap, he can manipulate different staff. space in different ways with unlimited combinations. It is, of course, not just Sean McVeigh. This system is expanding, and there's more tape on it out every year. And other offensive coaches, such as Andy Reid, were forcing rapid change too between their schemes and their quarterbacks. The hole's a lot of time. Now over the middle, he's got his man. Kelsey, at the 15, gets a bluff, inside the five, and he's in. Touchdown, Kansas City. But

defenses always react to offenses. And over time, the multiplicity of a growing number of defensive players who had to cover the multiplicity of a growing number of offensive players using more field space than ever, evolved into the deployment of more fluid, non-static, non-regulated defenses. This and that defenses, defenses whose language started feeling very offense-like. Cody Alexander sums it up well. I think everything is fluid. And I call it like fluid fronts, meaning that we're not really a three, four,

but we can jump into a four down front, but then the very next snap, we can get into a three-man front. And in order to do that, you have to have hybrid players, players that can play in different positions. You know, at the college game, that's been around really since probably around 2013,

2014 is this what is called a positionless D.E. defense, right? Like we're essentially just playing players and we're using techniques and scenarios and we're moving them around. Listen to new defensive coaches in their press conferences these days when they're asked whether they'll run a 4-3 or a 3-4. You know, I think a lot, probably too much gets made about 2-3-4-4-4-3. They'll almost grit their teeth and say something like, well, we'll be multiple. Being adaptable, being able to utilize. our guy's skill sets that puts them in the best position to win games. Nobody really stays in base defense anymore.

There's 53 and a third yards of space of width on a football field. Offenses are going to create space. That's where we are, right? I call it spatial Darwinism. You either know how to create it or know how to constrain it. And if you don't, you're probably going to die out. You're a dinosaur, right? Because the offense's whole role is to create space.

the defense is to constrain it. If you don't understand that, then you're probably going to be out of the game pretty quickly nowadays. We'll get back to this episode of The Play Callers after a word from our sponsors. Before you dive back into the Play Callers, we want to let you know you can unlock this entire series ad-free with a subscription to the Athletic Audio Plus. Unlock that now for just 99 cents a month by clicking subscribe at the top of the Athletic Football Show's show page on Apple Podcasts.

Thanks for listening and enjoy the rest of the episode. Okay, so it was both the admiration for Vic Fangio's defensive system and the fear of not being at the front of the next schematic shift, of again getting surprised by something new at the worst time that led to Sean McVeigh hiring Brandon Staley in 2020. I had tremendous respect for Vic Fangio. And that 18 night was one of those nights where you're watching and you're saying against the bears I'm talking about. You're saying this is some really good stuff.

And I want to know what the heck's going on. The fact that Brandon Staley had worked under Vic Fangio in Chicago as his outside linebacker's coach may have gotten his name on Sean McFay's desk. But once he met Staley, a former quarterback who would basically run coverage concept experiments with his D3 college defense while coaching at John Carroll in Ohio, McVeigh realized there was going to be more to his system than wholly borrowing it from somebody else. And then it just so happens that when you get a chance to spend some time, the guy was really impressive and had a vision and had a capacity for what it wanted to look like and how he wanted to teach it. And he had done it at a really high level and had gone against a lot of different conflicts and systems at the collegiate level.

Staley's defense, in simple terms, is predicated on limiting explosive. pass plays. This defense, at least when Staley ran it with the Rams, limits explosives by playing a lot of quarters coverages and match zone principles out of a pre-snap too high shell. So both safeties forming the top of an arc in the secondary instead of a single safety up high. Often, those safeties rotate post-snap, along with the cornerbacks, to change the defensive look, which forces the quarterback to make a faster decision with less information. They could look up and it might not be what they saw pre-snap, especially if you hide the alignments of your corners and your nickel and stuff like that. Here, Brandon Staley is going to help me explain it.

If you can hide that too, then, hey, you've made it tougher on that guy post-snap. And that's certainly what we're trying to do. Philosophically, is forced that guy to have to operate post-snap, both him and the receivers, you know, who will make adjustments based off the coverage rotation. So we're forcing those guys to have to think on the fly, too. We feel like that's an advantage. That creates a lot of defensive looks. Remember? This and that.

What we do that's different than a lot of people in the league is we just play a lot of hybrid personnel groupings. Some people play five defensive backs, but we play a lot of different versions of five defensive backs where our star can be kind of a traditional nickel. It can also be more of a safety like a Derwin James, a guy who's kind of an enforcer, a bigger guy. It can also be, you know, a premium corner like a Jalen Ramsey, a guy that has a lot of just DB characteristics where he's kind of a safety corner, you know, inside defender hybrid player. So I think that that's probably where we're different is we have a lot of these hybrid groupings and we play six defensive backs a lot.

We have those five DBs plus one, which is like our dime money comes in who's more of a safety who can cover but also has some linebacker characteristics. Stay with me. Picture, if you will, an open umbrella over the top of the offense, shaped by the secondary players pre-snap. They study closely how an offense structures its route concepts. They study the offense's very language. And so they are able to rotate down out of their vanilla pre-snap look to match over the tops of those routes, making a zone almost morph into like a man-inspired coverage. We also want to be able to match up week to week because there's so many different styles of play nowadays. And so you don't just want to have one system with a few things and that's what you do for better for worse. You know, we don't really believe that. We believe in being really specific each week and matching up with that style, you know, that personnel.

And at the same time, you know, having enough in our arsenal, depending on our situation, too, the type of players we have. The secondary defenders are rarely backpedaling. The umbrella snaps shut over the unfolding routes, expressing into its real coverage as it does out of that simple pre-snap look with its two high safeties. What we kind of feel like is, you know, in order to collect those routes, doing it from depth is easier than doing it from low. If I'm lined up five to seven yards and then I have to get back 18 to 20 yards, that's a long way to go. Where if I'm lined up 14 yards at the snap, it's easy for me to collect a route that's coming 18 to 20 because I'm lined up 18 to 20. is coming right to me. I think the alignment of being aligned in a split safety look, regardless of if we play single safety or split safety, being aligned in a split safety look,

we feel like it's an advantage, and then being able to rotate post-snap to either 3-D, cover one, some version of split safety, whether that's quarter or a half, half-quarter a quarter, or just playing quarters, we feel like that's tougher on people. Staley also played with lighter fronts in order to facilitate coverages that required extra defensive backs, using dynamic, often rotating defensive linemen who could play more than single-gap assignments, and rangy edge players who could help defend perimeter runs long enough for overhang defensive backs, the curved edges of the umbrella, such as outside corners, to get to a pass play in the flat or an outside zone run.

You know, we really value versatility in the front where guys can play at a lot of different places, and that gives you more fronts that you can play against people. That's something that's important to us is multiplying the amount of looks that an offense would have to block, both in the run game and from a past protection standpoint. Okay, so I've already hammered home the importance of becoming more multiple, more fluid, more hybrid to counter modern offenses into 2020. But why the focus on explosive plays? Explosive pass plays or plays of 20 plus yards triple the likelihood that an offense scores points on a drive. We started with the premise that it takes a lot of four and five-yard runs to equal 40-yard pass. And the quickest way to lose in the NFL is to give up an explosion.

And most of the explosions in the NFL happen in the deeper part of the field or on the perimeter in the run game. And so, you know, we're trying to protect those areas as best we can. Remember, this all started changing faster than ever when a few teams stopped the most explosive offense in the league in stunning fashion. Sean McVeigh's 2017 and 2018 Rams. Cat and mouse, chess, actions and reactions and physics, or just plain old biology. Rams GM Les Sneed had seen the league shift before. There's so much probably, let's call it, tactical and then psychological warfare that has gone on,

but it's the yen and the yang of game theory for sure. When one side gets an edge, the other sides can certainly try to dole that edge. And then when they dole that edge, the other side's going to try to resharpen the edge. I guess that's what it sounds. So we watch this stuff. But this particular philosophy came with a mental twist.

Hypothetically speaking, limiting explosives using shifting fronts and coverages that give quarterbacks more to think about as the defense closes over the top of the offense means the quarterback must often settle for checkdowns or smaller games. It's interesting these offensive got so explosive that, oh, defense it says, let's eliminate the explosive element of it, or let's at least make that really, really, really hard to explode consistently. And oh, by the way, let's call it in psychological battles. Oh, let's frustrate these guys because now they got to play a little old school football. Oh, you're not scoring in six plays. Now you've got to do it in 12. there's an ego death that comes into play.

The quarterback, by nature, wants to throw it downfield. The play caller, by nature, wants to score quickly. This defense aims to get in their heads to force them out of the thing they want to do. That's something that's a big goal of ours going into the game against some of these premium players. It's just force them to beat you. Don't give anything away. Don't go down the way that they want to play. This philosophy of defense brought Sean McVeigh to his lowest moment.

to that point, which made him want it for himself even more. McVeigh wanted to deploy it against others, sure, but it was also a natural foil for the modern offensive movement he had helped to create. I do think our systems mirror one another. I would say very progressive, but it's just the amount of looks that you can give somebody and then you can make things look the same, but they're expressed very differently. There's a lot of hybrid groupings. There's a lot, I think, deeper chapters of the evolution of the same.

scheme. Sean McVeigh also wanted the ability to problem solve against it every day, in a safe environment where nobody could technically win or lose, and where nobody else could see what his team was working on. There was so much game tape on his offense that was widely circulating by this time. If McVeigh could learn it well enough to find its flaws, would he not be out in front once again. After the Super Bowl, I knew how obsessed he was really with the concept, you know, because that year prior, you know, on the Super Bowl run, you go back to Philly and some of the things they did and obviously the Bears and, and you realize like he got up, he became

obsessed with like, all right, what is it that I do and don't like about the system? How do I beat it? How do I find a way to overcome it? When Rams veteran left tackle, Andrew Whitworth, took the field with his teammates for the first day of training camp in 2020. It was after months of COVID-19 lockdown and Zoom video football theory, not actual practice. Sad news for football fans, the preseason is officially canceled. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said adaptability and flexibility will be key during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Rams practice facilities up in Thousand Oaks had become overrun with wildlife by the time. time players were let back into the building. Ground squirrels scampered across the emerald green

fields into the burrows that pockmarked the dry brown hills around them. Birds of prey hunted them, unafraid of the humans that had re-entered the space. You know, it was such a unique year because the springtime was unlike anything we'd ever seen with COVID, and then we had no training camp. You know, it was an untraditional training camp because you weren't practicing against anybody else. You weren't having a preseason game. So it was, it was like college. It was. It was just offense-versed defense. Just like Wade Phillips did for him, Sean McVeigh planned out live periods where the two sides could really just play against one another. And a defense that was trying to get off the ground didn't have to hold anything back for the sake of an offense and stalling plays.

At least that's how it started. I was just trying to survive against Sean McVeigh in practice, man. I was just trying to make sure that we're not giving up layups and dunks, you know, and getting laughed off the field. And I think that's what brought it. I think that's the purest thing is when you got to show up to practice every day ready to compete. It didn't take too long that you had to say, all right, now let's, the guys believe they know they're balling, they're doing their thing, and now let's go compete and let's push each other. And there were some fun days and not so fun days, but it was awesome. As Hawks circled overhead in the dry, hot air, the Rams defense started to become something new.

Cut loose and told to make plays, they did that and more. The system they ran was alive. Players became it. It became them. It was a breathing thing, fluid, constantly moving, attacking, not reacting. The defensive backs made play after play, and the more plays they made, the louder they got. The players delight over being outside and together again in the open air after months of anxiety, mixed with the adrenaline of a good old-fashioned ass kicking.

It was electric. It meant something. Later, I would feel like I walked into practice that day in one era of football and walked out in another. We were able to stand up, you know, to a group that had been one of the top offenses in the NFL. And I think that created a lot of confidence in our defense that, hey, you know, we're here. And that we feel like we're one of the, we'll be one of the top groups in the NFL. And then we already know that they've got a premium offense. Well, hey, if we become a premium defense, like, well, what's that going to look like?

And I think that's what happened during training camp was all that healthy competition. And there were so many great players on that field each and every day. And I look back on it, I marble. Remember, this is also a defense that had star cornerback Jalen Ramsey, rising edge rusher Leonard Floyd, standout safety John Johnson, who was calling the signals. In future Hall of Fame defensive tackle, Aaron Donald, hitting his prime years. There's also this guy that by the name of Aaron Donald that makes stuff really hard. for everybody, you know. I remember I was a coordinator for the Miami Hurricanes, right?

So for three years. Thomas Brown coached for the Rams from 2020 to 2022 and is now the offensive coordinator for the Carolina Panthers. They will actually speak about or give advice to our future pro guys on what to prepare, how to prepare, what to expect at the next level. You know, so they go on and on about Aaron Dono and, you know, his process and it's being relentless and how great he is. And in my mind, I'm like, man, I've been around first round,

you know, first round draft D-D-Line before. I mean, he's good, but I mean, he can't be that good. Like, I've played with Gino Ackin. You mentioned Charles before. I mean, I play with some big-time dudes. I play with David Pollock. Like, I've seen elite players before. So I get there in 2020 first offseason.

So I'm sending our stab means where we're kind of instill on the offense. And Sean keeps going on about AD. And I'm like, man, it seems like crazy. Everybody just keeps talking about this dude. Like he's unstoppable. And so I'm still, I'm a doubter. I'm not going to lie. I was a doubter.

So as you mentioned, some of these battles, because I obviously, Brandon and I came together in 2020 doing training camp. And I've been heard about how good the officer line was and how the success we had. And every day in practice, this dude is unblockable. He's making every play. And so I go back to shot, I'm like, listen, y'all undersold his cat. He's better what everybody said he was. There was a joke that wasn't really a joke that Aaron Donald got veteran rest days

so that the offensive lineman could have a real practice. But the stress didn't go away. Yeah, I would say at the beginning, it was very frustrating because you want to come in and be able to have success, as you mentioned before, almost in some ways a defensive or offensive brand of football where they were making things complex on defense. They weren't just lining up in single high structures playing cover three, where you could recognize and know it's cover three. We have a number of different ways to try to get manned zone indicators, which they would

just zone align to so you couldn't tell if it was manned our zone because they do make it more confusing. Being to play everything from a shell, from an umbrella cover standpoint, rotating down and also from a corner standpoint, those guys having to tackle as well, which is it makes everything a lot more stressful for you offensively. I think the beauty of it is them evolving, as you mentioned before, a lot similar to some things offensively, how the system's going to come to life. is how they display become a lot more complex, and that makes a lot harder, particularly on the most stressful position, which is a quarterback position.

In many of those practices, and especially when the offense flailed, McVeigh absolutely seethe. Nobody was safe from his ire, least of all quarterback Jared Goff. Those practices became, in some ways, I actually think offensively, it hurt us a little bit because it became like, how do we create the hardest possible scenario for us offensively all the time? And it kind of took away a little bit of our conflicts because it's like, all right, we're constantly in practice every day, getting the worst case scenarios or toughest look you could get. Think about it this way. Jared Goff was still very much a young developing quarterback, despite having been to a Super Bowl

in just his third NFL season. He was now facing an absolute nightmare every day. in practice. Not just because it was uncomfortable playing against this defense, but also because by design, it did things that used previous advantages against him. Take play action under center, for example. Remember how I said this was important? Jared Goff ran more play action from under center than almost anybody else in the NFL. It helped the Rams create explosive plays. Goff steps up, feels the rush. Unloads. That breaks away. Against this type of defense, which often rotates its coverages post-snap,

it meant the entire picture changed as Goff turned his back on the defense during the play action. When he flipped around, nothing was where it was before. He had to make faster decisions, and without any sort of safety net, in one of the most high-pressure practice environments in the NFL. You're supposed to mess up in practice. but only to a point, especially when your head coach has made it clear he will do anything to get his team back to a Super Bowl. You lose that Super Bowl, you know, everybody says, oh, you'll be right back or you'll get there. And then I think the lies that I told myself for, you won't be happy until you won a Super Bowl.

Stress and pressure compound, especially in an NFL building, especially when the defense is now, the clear star of the show. And the offense starts the season well, but begins to collapse. Goff hit losing the football, scooped up by Van Nuoy. The fourth Rams turnover inside the 10, still going Van Nuys mark down at the one-yard line. Over the course of that 2020 season, Jared Goff's regression and the decline of he and Sean McVeigh's professional relationship were on a collision course. Just a year after, after McFay enthusiastically endorsed Goff's then massive contract extension. In the intoxicating whirlwind of football's most exciting ideas,

there is all too often a human cost. It's kind of one of those things where you lose a little confidence and you almost like gain one step forward but take three steps back because you're not as efficient and as confident as you were because I think that's one of the things when you look back at the beginning, 17 and 18, I don't think anybody on offense ever even considered anyone could stop us and anyone could even figure out a way to slow us down. That's why I think the Super Bowl was such a punch in the gut.

I don't think we ever even fathom that was like a possible thing for us to like not be able to operate how we wanted to when we wanted to. But because Sean McVeigh believed that's where he needed to go to find out what came next, his team came with him. Everyone who's looking for that kind of stuff and like it's just into growing and overcoming your demons and all that. Like, you know, you have to be able to get in those dark places

to find what it is that gets you through them. I mean, you know, when people talk about your career, even for myself, like, I go back to like, it's like, what do you remember your info? Like, I don't really remember a lot about the good times. I remember like the really dark times. And because those are like, the ones where you found a new little part of yourself.

You know, I can remember at LSU, like having a bad game, you know, junior, senior year and like walking home from the stadium by myself in the middle of the night. Like, and I can remember that walk across the quad and do, you know, all that type stuff, like just in the dark thinking to myself, like, how do you become better, you know, and how do you find a way to never let this happen again? And those kind of like dark moments throughout my career is what really stick out. And I think for him, it's the same. thing. Like, he wanted to see how far he could push it and still come back and find, like,

all right, this is how I beat it. The ripple effect of top offensive systems clashing against defenses, not just in games, but in daily practices, was significant across the league. After their season ended with a divisional round loss to Matt LaFleur, Aaron Rogers, and the Green Bay Packers, Staley became the head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers, and McVeigh reunited with Rahim Morris as his new defensive coordinator. You know, you kind of formulate things that you do around your players. Staley did a great job of doing really things that his really good players could do. There would be a lot of things that would be similar.

Because the Rams had the number one defense in 2020, other teams started sniffing around anybody who had run that scheme, including linebackers coach Joe Barry, who LaFleur hired as his new defensive. coordinator that spring. And Adjero Evereaux, who became the Denver Broncos D.C. in 2022 before joining Carolina in the same role. You know, I've been very fortunate to be around a lot of great coordinators, a lot of great head coaches, you know, going to Vic Fangio in San Francisco, Wade Phillips, Rahim Moore's, Brandon Staley. In 2023, Mike McDaniel hired Vic Fangio himself as his

defensive coordinator in Miami. There's a few things that I came up with that I'm anxious to try. But what's going to be most important is tailoring what we do to our players. Further, the deployment of quarters coverages rose significantly from 2018 to 2022. So coaches who had direct experience with these concepts would start to spread across the league, as McVeigh had predicted, but with very mixed results. Meanwhile, D'Amico Ryans, who worked under Robert Sala in San Francisco and eventually became the 49ers defensive coordinator, was hired this offseason as the new head coach of the Houston Texans. I can't wait to get started with you guys, man.

I'm fired up, right? This is a young team, right? We're on the cuss. Ryan's then hired Bobby Sloick, a Kyle Shanahan assistant in San Francisco, as his OC. Once again, System will clash with System at practice. The biggest ripple effect for the first. Rams and Sean McVeigh came in January of 2021.

McVeigh pushed hard to trade Jared Goff and a couple of first-round draft picks to Detroit in exchange for veteran quarterback Matthew Stafford. Monster News, a blockbuster trade in the NFL. Detroit is dealing Matthew Stafford to the L.A. Rams in exchange for two future first-round picks, a third-round pick, and Jared Goff. It's like he got a new canvas and a new opportunity to paint, and it's like something different, And so I think that, you know, really, if you look at it, I think some of his ideas for, hey, all right, when I went through this Brandon's daily time and what a great coach Brandon was and schemes and how much he learned from him. And I think one of the things that he really said is like, I would want to be able to spread these guys out.

I would be going to throw the ball more. Some believe that poor games in 2020 against Kyle Shanahan's 49ers and the Miami Dolphins Zero Blitz were what made McVeighay officially. break from Goff. I personally have always believed that the beginning of the end of their era happened in those intense, catalytic, creative, destructive moments out on the practice field in the summer. Yes, that him and Jared have their issues and, you know, it was going to be pretty tough for them to continue to work together just because of like how they were wired. Sure, but I think in his mind, it was more about, I need the guy who I can do what it is that I think is the way that we beat these defensive looks and the way that this scheme that's going to overtake

football in his mind. How do I beat it? Like, this is what it's worth. If you really want to win and you want to win now, like, we need this kind of guy, you know. And so I think that that's really where that came from. And then when Stafford got here and you start to have that, it was great. It's no coincidence that when Sean McVeigh and Matthew Stafford installed the new Rams offense, They decided they would spread out the field wide with their pre-snap alignments and make the defense declare itself to them pre-snap by using empty formations. They'd throw the ball a ton and the majority of Stafford's snaps would be as a drop-back passer, so significantly less play action than McVeigh deployed from 2017 to 2020.

They'd see defenses the entire time, even if they rotated after the snap. On the next episode of The Play Callers, The crash, the human toll, and why it is all worth it. I think a lot of times people can become victims of their own ego. I want to be as emotionally invested in it with them as possible, and in a lot of ways, that play calling brings me closer to them. Jordan Rodriguez is the creator, reporter, and host of the playcallers. Kent Garrison is the supervising producer and sound designer,

editorial assistance from Ken Bradley, Matt Havia and Mike Smelts are the executive producers.