The Los Angeles Rams, coming off a decisive 35-7 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars, have demonstrated a brilliant strategic shift masterminded by Head Coach Sean McVay. This latest move shows McVay evolving past his reputation as a young offensive genius to become an elite coach who can fundamentally alter his offensive identity on a moment’s notice. This trait has been historically attributed to coaching legends like Bill Belichick. This calculated change has transformed the Rams into a highly dangerous contender and continues to accelerate McVay among the ranks of the elite coaches.
For years, the Rams’ offense has been synonymous with “11 personnel,” a formation featuring one running back, one tight end, and three wide receivers. This package, with its reliance on motion and shifts, was McVay’s signature, and it befuddled the NFL for years after he arrived.
However, in the Week 7 game against the Jaguars, McVay unveiled a seismic strategic change that caught Jacksonville off guard, particularly due to the absence of their star wide receiver, Puka Nacua. McVay dramatically shifted the offensive identity, running a staggering 48.4% of their plays in 13 personnel. This single-game usage of the three-tight-end formation, totaling 31 snaps, is more than McVay had run in his entire Rams career prior to this point. This massive, nearly decade-high shift in personnel package served as a novel, yet simple, approach that the Jaguars were not prepared to defend.
The genius of this move lies in the fact that McVay not only embraced a package he had previously shunned but did so without sacrificing offensive performance. Despite missing their top weapon, the Rams posted a great offensive showing, demonstrating McVay’s ability to adapt the Rams’ strategy and scheme to their current situation. This adaptability and willingness to change are what elevates McVay into the highest tier of coaching. The key is that the offensive plays themselves were not overly complex. It is the combination of multiple tight ends and the way McVay uses them, moving them constantly from inline tight end to H-back, slot receiver, or even out wide, that makes the defensive assignment impossible. To the defense, a single 13 personnel package can look like ten different formations, leading to confusion and wide-open receiving targets, as seen on the long touchdown to Ferguson where the safety was visibly unsure how to align.
This pivot by McVay echoes his Super Bowl loss to Bill Belichick after the 2018 season, a defeat that forced him to confront the need for offensive diversity. Belichick beat the young genius by completely disrupting his beloved 11 personnel scheme. McVay, in learning from that crushing loss, has since shown a growing ability to take complex and seismic changes and distill it and make it so simple. McVay has learned that it’s not about having one signature offensive scheme; it’s about having the intelligence to attack defenses on a week-by-week basis and the coaching ability to simplify that strategy so players can execute it flawlessly.
This strategic evolution makes the Rams a serious contender for the NFC West and the entire NFC. Their ability to switch from a light, wide-receiver-heavy offense to a power-run, tight-end-focused attack, often without changing the personnel on the field, is what makes the Rams currently one of the most unpredictable and dangerous teams in the National Football League. Future opponents must now prepare not just for McVay’s past tendencies, but for the entire spectrum of NFL offenses, an impossible task that plays directly into the Rams’ hands.
Disclaimer: The content of this article was originally published as a YouTube video on the Saturday Morning Inspection YouTube channel. With AI assistance, the publisher of the video created this article based on the content of that video.
