SoFi Stadium Stafford will drop bombs for LA Rams

Bombs away! Okay, don’t mind me. I’m just practicing for the 2021 NFL season. And I want to be sure to get it right.

How much faith do you place in raw objective data? That matters for this article, because so far we have been hinting and suggesting that the LA Rams offense will be good in 2021.  Much better than 2020, and comparable to some of the best offenses fielded by the Rams under head coach Sean McVay. Until now, all we have done is given testimony to that outcome. It’s about time for us to back it up with some data.

So far, we’ve been encouraged at the chance for improving the offense in 2021. We have insisted that the Rams do in fact have a plan to do so.  We have even the template to inspect how Sean McVay dramatically improved the Washington Football Team offense in 2015 to learn the likely route to be taken in 2021.  Of course, Washington chose quarterback Kirk Cousins over teammate Robert Griffin III. Washington was able to make a choice between two quarterbacks because they played on the same team at the same time.

The challenge of comparing incoming quarterback Matthew Stafford to outgoing quarterback Jared Goff is the lack of common ground. Neither quarterback played in the same offense, nor did they throw to similar receivers.  So how can the two be compared to sort through whether or not the LA Rams can expect any improvement on the offense? If so, how much?

Well to get the answers to that, we turn to Zebra Technologies, the same folks that drive the NFL’s Next-Gen Stats.   And with the help of the same group that is working with the LA Rams to assist in tracking and data generation at practices,  we are eager to jump into real information. So what have we got?

For starters, let’s just toss a couple of stats out there. For starters, how different are the offenses when Stafford is throwing versus when Goff is throwing.  Well, we have some evidence of that. From data provided to me from Christian Blatner, Zebra Technologies’ Next Gen Stats, we have the following: