Where was McVay's team of coordinators, assistant coaches, analysts, and advisors, to help him break free from his deer in the headlights reaction to the Patriots' game plan? Seems like a failure of leadership on McVay's part. The Rams D was actually doing excellent overall. But with McVay having been annointed, and foolishly accepting this annointment, as an "offensive genius", he had nobody there and ready to help him break free from the mental meltdown he was having and make adjustments on offense, to analyze and adjust to what NE was doing. No hurry-up??!! Next to no screens??!! 10 carries for Todd Gurley??!! I guess it never crossed McVay's mind that NE could come up with a game plan that stuffed his offense and that he might have to adjust.
To be fair, God knows I've had moments or games like that in my sports coaching career, but in most cases it was more a matter of facing an opponent with superior athletes or talent, and not having an entire team of coordinators, assistants, scouts, to help me make on-the-fly adjustments. As if there were any adjustments that could have totally turned things around at halftime, against superior opponents. Not to mention somewhat lower stakes. One of my best adjustments was, when down 6-2 at halftime of a soccer game, simply staying calm and getting my triple-teamed star player to calm down, stop going 1-on-3 all the time, and use her teammates more. We came back to "win" 9-8 on goals by the "lesser stars" of the team, with assists from the star. The difference was I could see what was going on, what the other team's game plan was, while McVay couldn't seem to recognize or make sense out of what the Patriots were doing, to have any concept for what adjustments to make. In my case, the opponents had come up with a plan to take our star out of the game by triple-teaming her, to force our other players to have to be the ones to make plays.
The Rams were certainly NOT overwhelmed by the "superior talent" of the Patriots. You could make an argument for Brady over Goff, but Brady sucked for most of the game. Holding a Tom Brady Patriots team to 13 points is a WIN for the Rams defense, or ANY defense To McVay's credit, he took ownership and responsibility for the failure. Darrell Bevell, are you listening somewhere, and learning from McVay's example, and taking responsibility for your own shitty plan, and lack of situational awareness, rather than blaming a 4th-string Wide Receiver for your own multiple failures? Probably not.
Wade Phillips seemed to handle the Patriots offense well for most of the game, adjusting and holding them to a FG through 3 quarters. The adjustment failures were nearly all on the Rams offensive side. I get the feeling McVay will learn from this and adjust. He actually took responsibility and accountability for the failure, unlike Darrell Bevell. Sometimes you only get one chance on the big stage like that, but McVay is young enough and capable enough that he might well get more chances, and if he does, I think he'll be much better prepared with a support team and a plan B, plan C, and plan D the second time.
