Over the last eight years, we’ve witnessed the meteoric rise of Sean McVay.
He’s brought 4 NFC West titles, a pair of NFC Championships, and a Lombardi Trophy back to Inglewood so far, and his legacy is still being written today.
McVay’s most recent playoff victory came just this week when his Rams put the backsliding Minnesota Vikings' season to rest.
This particular win, however, looked a little different than what we typically see from McVay.
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The Rams came out of the gate flying on Monday night thanks to a flip of McVay’s pre-determined first drive script.
Many of the Rams’ initial drives this season have featured a run-heavy offense, leaning on Kyren Williams to do most of the heavy lifting.
Sunday’s game opened instead with Matthew Stafford taking multiple deep shots downfield, moving 54 yards in just 5 plays, and putting Kevin O’Connell and company on their heels quickly.
Much of this early-drive success can be attributed to an increase in the usage of tight ends as receiving threats, namely Tyler Higbee, whose final stat line of 5 catches for 58 yards led Los Angeles despite him leaving the game early.
His long of 23, which came on the game’s third play, was a major factor in the success of LA’s opening drive.
Williams secured a five-yard reception over the middle to give the Rams the opening score, and Los Angeles controlled momentum from there.
As the game went final with a score of 27-9, the eyes of Rams Nation turned from their multiple-score rout of one of the league's top defenses to the looming threat of what lies ahead in the Divisional Round.
Enter the Philadelphia Eagles, who have strung together an impressive season of their own under Nick Sirianni.
Questions surrounded Sirianni’s job security following last year’s postseason loss to the Buccaneers, Philly’s sixth loss in their last seven games at the time.
The ship has turned around dramatically since then.
The City of Brotherly Love finished the 2024 regular season with a 14-3 record, in great part thanks to the offseason acquisition of star running back Saquon Barkley and a suffocating secondary bolstered by a talented draft class.
So the question is simple. What is McVay’s plan for surviving this nigh-unbeatable Eagles team?
We can expect McVay’s strategy in the Divisional Round to look vastly different from what we saw in the Wild Card.
This is largely due to the disparities between the way the Eagles play defense compared to the Vikings.
Minnesota led the league with a blitz rate of 38.6%.
The Rams countered this with an aggressive passing attack. Stafford went 14 of 18 for 178 yards and a pair of scores on plays against the blitz Monday night.
The Eagles, however, will not be blitzing at nearly as high of a rate considering they come into this game with the lowest blitz rate of any playoff team (16.2%), ahead of only the Jacksonville Jaguars for the league-low overall.
One would think this wouldn’t be very conducive to putting the heat on opposing quarterbacks, but Philly actually boasts a higher rate of pressure than the Vikings, even without resorting to the blitz.
The Eagles pressured quarterbacks on 36.8% of dropbacks compared to Minnesota’s 35.7% rate despite a 22.4% lower blitz rate, which means this pressure is coming naturally.
The Rams will have to account for this heading into Sunday’s game.
McVay's strategy of beating the pass rush with a high frequency of passing plays could prove risky. The Eagles have allowed the fewest passing yards per game across the entire NFL.
It seems that if McVay hopes to lead his team back to the promised land, he may need to pull a few more rabbits out of his hat on the way there.