Sean McVay announced some big news after practice on Tuesday, revealing that he did indeed sign a contract extension with the Rams this offseason – something the team hasn’t yet announced because Les Snead’s deal is still being worked on.
On a less exciting note, he also told reporters that he’s not at all happy with where the offense is at with training camp winding down. McVay didn’t completely rip his offensive players, and he certainly didn’t call out anyone individually, but there seems to be a legitimate gap between the state of the offense and defense.
“I think we’re in the process of building,” he said. “When you look at today, I thought it was outstanding by the defense. A lot of turnovers. On the flip side, which is some of the things you deal with, not nearly good enough offensively. But I thought there were some positive strides in the run game. I thought we leveled off runs, I thought we fit some combinations up.”
McVay indicated earlier this week that the team wasn’t where he wanted it to be, but he focused more on the offense Tuesday. He wants to see a higher sense of urgency on that side of the ball, something they’ll keep working on with Week 1 less than a month away.
“We have a long, long way to go,” McVay said. “We’re not anywhere close to where we need to be. Nobody needs to press the panic button, but we gotta start having a little bit more sense of urgency overall, particularly on the offensive side of the ball. And that’s what we’re gonna continue to focus on.”
Some of the things that bothered McVay was the lack of ball security. Jalen Ramsey had two picks, David Long Jr. had a pick-six and Russ Yeast also pulled down an interception. Sometimes, the defense just makes more plays than the offense, but the operation on offense has to be better.
Pre-snap penalties, particularly those in the red zone, don’t help either.
“We gotta take better care of the football,” McVay continued. “We’ve got to be able to do things that are in alignment with what good teams do. Even some of the procedural issues, pre-snap penalties. We’re in a situation where we’re playing for a touchdown, you’re on the 7 (-yard line), you jump offsides, moves it back to the 12. Your chances of being able to punch it in significantly decrease. You can’t have those kind of things from players that have played a lot of football. That’s why you do practice.”
McVay praised the defense once again, especially after a practice where the entire unit – sans Leonard Floyd – was on the field together. Ramsey, Aaron Donald and Bobby Wagner were running in team drills for the first time, giving everyone a glimpse at the potential of this defense.
“The defense has done some really good things. I was very pleased with them,” McVay said. “They’re really playing as one. You could see our full arsenal was out there today with Jalen getting as many snaps, Aaron coming off an off-day, Bobby continuing to lead the way. … I really like where we’re at defensively and want to start to see some increased urgency offensively.”
Wednesday will be the Rams’ final practice of training camp before heading back to Cal Lutheran where they’ll prepare for three preseason games and eventually the start of the regular season.
