SoFi Stadium Stafford will drop bombs for LA Rams

Play action passing

The use of play-action passing depends upon three basic concepts. The offense must establish an effective running game. That same offense must be able to give the look of a running play to fool the defense. And finally, the offense then uses that deception to create separation for the receivers, and perhaps even have defenders wind up out of place.

The LA Rams have used the play-action pass to created separation for their receivers. But how effective were those plays for the Rams? And then, what of Stafford’s passing game? How much better could we transpose Stafford into a similar style play-action offense?

On play-action, Matthew Stafford threw at a 66.7 percent completion rate. He completed 70 of 105 passes for 959 yards, three touchdowns, and one interception. For Jared Goff, he was more accurate at a 69.2 percent completion rate, completing 119 of 172 passes for 1,384 yards, seven touchdowns, and four interceptions. So even with play-action, the TD to INT ratio was not as great as hoped.

Now, what about the standard pass play?  On those plays, Stafford rose to the challenge. He completed 63.6 percent of those passes, 269 out of 423 attempts, for 3,125 yards, 23 touchdowns, and nine interceptions.  On the other hand, Jared Goff was still more accurate, completing 66.1 percent of his non-play action passes. But he was 251 of 380 passes for just 2,568 yards, 13 touchdowns, and nine interceptions. Stafford threw only 18 more completions but managed 557 more yards and 10 more touchdowns.

I am not only warming up to the idea of Matthew Stafford in the LA Rams offense, but I am even starting to believe that the fit will be better than originally anticipated.