During a Thursday appearance on PFT Live, Rams head coach Sean McVay joked that he’s gone from “boy wonder” to “boy blunder” as a result of the team’s 13-3 loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl LIII and said there are a lot of things that he’d like to do over about that game in Atlanta.
One of the chief things he talked about during the show was having a “better contingency plan” in place. As has been well discussed, the Patriots defensive threw different looks at the Rams than most were expecting and McVay lamented his inability to prepare the team’s players for such a turn of events.
McVay cited the fifth play of the game as a prime example. It was a passing play against quarters coverage that saw Brandin Cooks “leaning out” into an area vacated by the safety in similar fashion to his near-touchdown in the second half. Jason McCourty broke up a pass that was a touch late on the later play, but McVay said he thought the first one might have been a better look.
McVay castigated himself for not preparing Jared Goff, who threw an incompletion, for that look and said that he thinks the play could have sent the game in a different direction.
“If you’re able to hit that and make them pay, then I think it forces them to make some adjustments,” McVay said. “We never really made them pay, so they were able to play that consistent front structure, coverage structure on the normal down and distances and then they were really able to dictate it as opposed to what we wanted to do offensively.”
McVay said he felt he fell short of his goal of putting players in position to “take ownership” of their jobs against the Patriots and he’ll be working on doing a better job of that once the team gets back on the field to defend their NFC title.
