Dan Orlovsky signed with the Rams on July 20, right before the start of training camp. The Rams needed a third arm, and they wanted the 12-year veteran to help mentor Jared Goff, the No. 1 overall pick in 2016 who struggled in his rookie season.
Orlovsky, who played for five other NFL teams and seven other head coaches in his career, was immediately blown away when he met the Rams’ new head coach, 31-year-old Sean McVay.
“In the first offensive meeting I sat down, and within — I don’t want to exaggerate — less than three minutes, I turned to Jared Goff and I said, ‘You have no idea how lucky you are,’ ” Orlovsky, who was released at the end of camp, said by telephone last week. “And Jared knew it, too. He giggled and he said, ‘I know.’ ”
Well, the secret is out. The Rams and their wunderkind coach are the biggest story of the NFL season (sorry, Jacksonville). They’re 10-4 entering Sunday’s game at Tennessee, on the verge of clinching their first NFC West title (and playoff appearance) since 2004, and with Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz going down, the Rams have as good a chance as any NFC team of reaching the Super Bowl.
And the Rams aren’t just winning games, they’re dominating. Look at these scores: 46-9 over the Colts; 33-0 over the Cardinals; 51-17 over the Giants; 42-7 at Seattle. They also beat the Saints and won at Dallas and at Jacksonville.
The Rams are a fascinating, textbook example portraying the value of good coaching in the NFL. The Rams were dead last in the NFL in scoring offense last season under Jeff Fisher (14.0 points per game). This year, they’re tied with the Eagles at No. 1 in the league (31.3 points per game). No team in NFL history has ever gone from worst to first.
And the Rams are doing it with a second-year quarterback whom many had written off as a bust last year, and a first-time head coach who also calls his own plays. In a season with several impressive candidates, McVay still seems like the obvious choice for Coach of the Year.
“I didn’t think they’d be scoring-35-a-game good, but I thought they would be much, much better,” Orlovsky said. “I would always get texts in camp, ‘Hey, does Goff have any chance?’ And my response every time was, ‘I honestly think he’s going to be a good player.’ Nine out of 10 times the response back was, ‘Well, you’re the only one who thinks that way.’ ”
The Rams already had a stout defense leftover from the Fisher era, led by Defensive Player of the Year candidate Aaron Donald. They also quietly had a solid offseason under general manager Les Snead. They added veteran receivers Sammy Watkins and Robert Woods, and found a gem in third-round pick Cooper Kupp (team-leading 804 receiving yards). Most importantly, they fortified the offensive line with center John Sullivan and left tackle Andrew Whitworth.
McVay runs a West Coast system similar to the offenses run by Mike Shanahan and Gary Kubiak, heavy on zone stretch runs and play-action. It has created a star out of third-year running back Todd Gurley, who also was headed toward bust territory until McVay arrived. Now Gurley is an MVP candidate with 1,817 yards from scrimmage and 17 total touchdowns.
But most impressively, McVay has made a star out of Goff. He gets plenty of help from offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur and veteran quarterbacks coach Greg Olsen, but McVay was hired to be a quarterback whisperer, and he is very involved with coaching the position.
Goff enters Sunday’s game with 3,503 yards, 24 touchdowns, and just 7 interceptions for a 98.9 passer rating. That he ranks among the top 10 quarterbacks in touchdowns, yards, passer rating, yards per attempts (7.98), and completions over 25 yards (30) is a shocking turnaround from last year, when Goff went 0-7 as a starter and ranked among the worst in every passing statistic.
“What Sean has done an unbelievable job with, he understands that if you’ve got a good run game and a good play-action game on first and second down, and you can keep a defense off balance, you’re going to have success,” Shanahan, who hired McVay as an assistant tight ends coach in Washington in 2010, said by telephone last week. “He’s doing things that the quarterback can read very quickly. He understands that the development of a young quarterback is try not to put him in too many third-and-long situations.”
The Rams utilize play-action early and often, and Goff has sold it well, with 1,031 yards, 5 touchdowns, and 1 interception out of play-action. His 103 play-action pass attempts are third most in the NFL (behind Minnesota’s Case Keenum and Seattle’s Russell Wilson), his 10.01 yards per attempt are fourth, and he has a 103.7 passer rating (statistics courtesy of ESPN’s “NFL Matchup”).
Orlovsky, a former UConn quarterback, just watches the Rams from afar now, and spends his free time breaking down the coaches’ tape and posting it to Twitter (@danorlovsky7). Several teams run a similar offense, but Orlovsky highlights how McVay adds new wrinkles to create wide-open receivers, and how McVay runs the offense with an impressive feel for pacing and keeping the defense off balance.
“I’ve marveled at it this season, the way they’re changing their tempo,” Orlovsky said. “They have like five tempos. [McVay] is like Greg Maddux, where he doesn’t necessarily overpower you, but you have no idea what’s coming and he’ll make you look silly.”
The Rams were mocked in some circles for hiring a 31-year-old head coach, but it looks like they hit the jackpot in McVay, a former Georgia high school state player of the year and the grandson of former 49ers executive John McVay.
Sean McVay was hired at 24 to coach Washington’s tight ends and quickly rose through the ranks. When Shanahan was fired after 2013, not only did McVay survive the coaching change to Jay Gruden, he was promoted to offensive coordinator, where he spent the next three seasons working with Kirk Cousins in an entirely new offensive system.
“You could tell right away that he was motivated, extremely bright, related to players extremely well,” Shanahan said of hiring McVay in 2010. “And the thing that really caught my eye as he became our tight ends coach is his attention to detail. And right away, he knew the entire running game as well as the passing game, and that’s hard for a young man to come in and pick things up so quickly.
“Over the next three years, I told people, ‘Well, Sean will definitely be a coordinator, he will be a head coach, as well.’ You knew very quickly that he had a lot of confidence knowing the game inside and out. It gave him instant credibility with the players.”
That credibility has helped him overcome any concerns about his age. He’s younger than Sullivan and Whitworth, and also Orlovsky, but McVay has used his youth to his advantage.
“My feeling was that there were 54 guys on the team, and Sean was the 54th,” Orlovsky said. “And it wasn’t that the team didn’t respect him and revere him and look to him as their head coach and leader. He just makes you feel like he’s in it with you. There’s just more of a buy-in feeling.”
STAR QUALITY
Garoppolo looks good with 49ers
49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was the star of the week, thanks to the treasure trove of mic’d-up sound released by NFL Films on its various shows and platforms.
So many thoughts:
■ One watch of the videos is all it takes to realize why Bill Belichick really didn’t want to trade the young man. The poise in key moments, command of the offense, leadership on the sideline and in the huddle, ability to communicate coaching points on the fly, and of course, his execution in the clutch — Garoppolo has superstar written all over him.
The videos alone should earn Garoppolo an extra $5 million on his upcoming contract extension.
■ And to think, the Quarterback Fairy just dropped Garoppolo in the 49ers’ laps. Remember, Belichick didn’t call any other team about trading Garoppolo. When the trade went down, the Browns were upset they didn’t get a call.
49ers GM John Lynch shed some more light on how it all went down last week with Colin Cowherd, calling it a “no-brainer” to make the trade.
“It’s something that we had worked on during the offseason for about 30 seconds when I called Bill, and he quickly shut me down,” Lynch said. “Then all of a sudden, the opportunity became available, and it took us, Kyle [Shanahan] and I, about 10 minutes to decide that this was the thing to do.
“And to do it for the compensation that was presented in the deal, that’s why it was a no-brainer for us. And you know, he’s looking pretty darn good thus far. And it frees you up in the draft to go focus on building your team around him. And that’s something we’re very much looking forward to doing.”
Some teams go decades without finding a franchise quarterback. The 49ers had one gifted to them, for the bargain-basement price of a second-round pick (which is getting worse with each Garoppolo win). The Patriots don’t make many bad trades, but this one could go down as one of the worst in franchise history.
■ Speaking of Garoppolo’s impending free agency, he might want to take a page from Kirk Cousins’s playbook and go year-to-year with franchise tags instead of signing a long-term deal. Cousins has made nearly $44 million the last two years under the tag, and could make $34.5 million on the tag next year.
Per former NFL agent Joel Corry, Garoppolo would make $23.3 million next year under the tag, $27.9 million in 2019, and $40.2 million in 2020. It’s more of a gamble than a long-term contract, since you’re betting on good health and continued good play. But a long-term contract probably won’t pay out more than $91 million in three years, either.
ETC.
Steelers just can’t let it go
Bill Belichick gave his typical answer on Friday when asked about Rob Gronkowski and the potential of the Bills to go after him in retaliation on Sunday.
“I don’t believe, and our team doesn’t believe, in living in the past,” Belichick said.
Which has made it fascinating to observe the Steelers from afar, and how they’re handling the fallout of last week’s loss to the Patriots.
The disappointment and frustration coming out of the Steelers’ locker room on Sunday was understandable. But it didn’t end there.
On Monday and Tuesday, Ben Roethlisberger proceeded to throw his coaches under the bus, absolve himself from the decision-making, and complain about the officiating.
On Tuesday, coach Mike Tomlin was still offering excuses, including the implausible one that the officials told him that Jesse James might be ruled down by contact on his touchdown that was overturned on replay. (One look at the replay made it clear that James was never touched, and “Inside the NFL” showed the side judge informing Steelers coach Joey Porter that the issue at hand was surviving the ground).
And on Wednesday, James was still pouting, telling ESPN that “it sucks.”
If the Steelers don’t get over it soon, they’ve got a tricky game coming up Sunday at Houston that could derail their chances for a first-round bye.
What became clear, after watching the mic’d-up segments on “Inside the NFL,” is that before the sequence began, Tomlin ordered offensive coordinator Todd Haley to run two plays instead of a spike, yet Haley never gave Roethlisberger two plays, or communicated to his quarterback that he wanted him to run a play instead of a spike. That’s mostly on Haley, but also on Tomlin for not having everything buttoned up. Roethlisberger then completed the butcher job by throwing the ball into heavy traffic.
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Richardson making a hasty exit
An NFL spokesman denied that the league put any pressure on Panthers owner Jerry Richardson to sell his team. But the fact is that just days after a bombshell Sports Illustrated report put a spotlight on allegations of sexual and racial abuse against Richardson, he swiftly decided the sell his 48 percent share of the franchise and get out of the NFL altogether. This from a man who for more than 20 years sat on the league’s most important committees, and was so devoted to the NFL that he is the only owner who paints the NFL shield at midfield instead of his team’s logo.
Richardson paid $206 million for the expansion franchise in 1993, and the team now has an estimated worth of $2.3 billion. The last NFL team to sell was the Bills for $1.4 billion in 2014, and though the NFL is dealing with declining TV ratings and bad PR, owning an NFL team is still a rare club, and investors already appear to be lining up to buy the team.
The NFL says the new owner must buy at least 30 percent of the club, can’t have more than $250 million of debt, and must be approved by at least 24 other owners. NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart also said that the NFL wants the Panthers to remain in Charlotte.
But even with Richardson getting out of the game, the NFL will continue its own investigation into the allegations laid out by Sports Illustrated. Interestingly, the league won’t be using Lisa Friel, the former New York City sex crimes prosecutor who was hired by the NFL in 2014 to run its investigative unit, but whose investigations into Josh Brown and Ezekiel Elliott had significant holes.
Extra points
Why it’s important not to burn bridges: The Jets traded Sheldon Richardson to the Seahawks for a second-round pick at the end of training camp, and apparently the sides are interested in reuniting next season, per the New York Daily News. Richardson has only one sack this year, but he’ll be a lot cheaper than Muhammad Wilkerson, who will likely be cut . . . Not only are the Browns 0-14, with a game at Chicago Sunday before playing at Pittsburgh next week — they’re 3-11 against the spread. So, not only are they losing, they’re performing worse than the public’s expectation . . . The two fullbacks voted to the Pro Bowl both come from the Ivy League — the Patriots’ James Develin (Brown) and the 49ers’ Kyle Juszczyk (Harvard) . . . Remember training camp in Foxborough? Jimmy Garoppolo was inconsistent, and the Jaguars looked horrible. The moral, as always: Don’t believe anything you see in the preseason.
