Sean McVay has never been afraid to admit he steals plays from other teams and coaches. Every coach does it anyway because, well, it’s a copycat league. And it’s not just other NFL teams that McVay gets ideas from. He looks at the college ranks when he tries to add wrinkles to the Rams offense, too.
He did exactly that last week when he pulled a play from USC’s playbook, a delayed flea flicker that the Trojans scored a 41-yard touchdown on against Washington a few weeks ago. Only, the Rams’ version didn’t go very well.
In addition to Matthew Stafford throwing a pick, he also got annihilated in the pocket as he threw, taking a huge shot to his midsection by a Seahawks defender. Here’s a look at the two plays, which came with different results.
During his appearance on the “Coach McVay Show” this week, McVay admitted he got the play from USC and joked that it was a “stupid idea” to take it from them.
“It looked a little different than when they ran that against Washington,” McVay said. “Bobby Wagner did a good job of forcing him to not be able to sell that quite as much. Tariq Woolen made a heck of a play. But yes, we had stolen that from those guys and put our own little spin on it. It definitely didn’t work as good as theirs did, so that was a stupid idea by me.”
As is often the case, the play looked “a lot better in practice” than how it turned out in the game on Sunday.
“Oh man, it looked a lot better in practice, guys,” McVay said with a laugh.
