LA Rams offense ‘sloppy’: Matthew Stafford with bad options or bad optics?

Test lab

One of the aspects of Matthew Stafford is his willingness to push all of the buttons in the offense created by head coach Sean McVay. You can almost hear him mumbling “what does this button do?” to himself when he sets up under center, takes the snap, and sets up to pass.

Los Angeles Rams

That was never more apparent than today when he set up to throw against the Raiders defense. As noted earlier, the veteran quarterback seemed to have a bad day today. In the practice, Stafford admitted to working with some newly installed plays and pushing the ball a bit.  Stafford was testing the connections with his receivers and it’s seemed to show that the team has some work to do connecting the quarterback with his receivers.

But that is the key and fun of the joint practices after all isn’t it? The quarterback can hurl an interception, mutter the ‘sonofa…” chant under his breath, and then reset for another go at it. No harm. No worries. Just get it back and do it over again. Of course, these were the first-stringers.

Perhaps another concerning development from the scrimmage today is the fact that the running attack wasn’t working. That is another underperformance by the rushers and truly accentuated the fact that the passing game started out misfiring too. Sean McVay was not concerned about Staffords three interceptions today, as he explained in the video:

"“That’s what I like about Matthew (Stafford). He’s aggressively trying things out so that you can learn how to smartly, be smart with that decision-making process when the games really count.” – Sean McVay per post-practice press conference (see below)"

It’s a new offense. Sounds like Stafford is just putting it through its paces.

Whether it resulted in bad optics or was merely a matter of some bad options on the part of the new veteran quarterback Matthew Stafford is your call. At the podium, Stafford presented the right perspective on the matter. Yes, it needs to be cleaned up. Yes, it was a miscommunication. But it was a controlled practice environment and there are no repercussions that will impact the team as a result. So Stafford became aggressive, pushed the ball into tighter coverages, all under the banner of it’s-just-practice. That is something that is new to the Rams quarterback position under LA Rams Head Coach Sean McVay.