How tied will Kevin O'Connell be to the Rams' scheme?

We look back to see how closely recent hires have stuck to their former team's plan

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By Sam Ekstrom

The Vikings are soon to announce a head coaching hire in Kevin O’Connell that has fans excited for a new-look offense; one that is expected to advance the Vikings offense forward into the cutting edge of a constantly-evolving NFL.

While O’Connell’s influence will undoubtedly push Minnesota in that direction, it’s important to remember, too, that scheme and personnel have to cooperate at least to some extent. Rarely are coaches able to produce a carbon copy of their old team’s scheme since they are inheriting new players with different strengths.

Rocco Baldelli, to use a baseball analogy, wouldn’t have been able to inherit Ron Gardenhire’s old Twins teams and turn them into the Bomba Squad.

Plus, many first-time head coaches have the freedom to blend together ideas from their previous stops instead of simply reproducing their most recent system. O’Connell spent several years under Jay Gruden and Matt Cavanaugh in Washington, and hey, maybe he learned a thing or two from John DeFilippo in Cleveland as well.

Certainly, though, when you consider the way the Rams’ reached the Super Bowl this season — with a quarterback who’d never won a playoff game, no less — it would be hard to see O’Connell straying too far from the playbook that he and Sean McVay have established.

By all accounts, O’Connell has been tied at the hip to McVay for the last two seasons, helping orchestrate an offense that surged into seventh place in the NFL with Matthew Stafford at the controls and McVay calling the plays.

If O’Connell could wave his magic wand and institute the 2021 Rams scheme on the Vikings, these would probably be the maxims that define it:

• Play-action emphasis. Stafford was actually just 14th in play-action dropbacks (Kirk Cousins was 15th), but he ranked sixth in yards per attempt and eighth in passer rating. The Rams used play-action far more with Jared Goff the year prior (second-most in the league), seemingly trying to pull as many strings as they could to make Goff more productive.

• Motion-heavy. The Rams were a top-five motion team both in 2020 and 2021, utilizing a heavy dose of at-the-snap motion that was an early staple of McVay’s Rams. Renowned motion tracker Seth Walder noted that motion led to higher EPA per play on both pass plays and run plays during the 2021 season, yet there are still many teams that use it sparingly.

• “11”-centric. The Rams leaned hard into the run game in 2020 when Goff was struggling but still had an edge when they put more wide receivers on the field. Los Angeles was just 15th in “11” personnel usage in 2020 but their success rate was tied for third best in the league at 53 percent. With Stafford joining in 2021, the Rams went all-in on “11” personnel, running it 85 percent of the time, almost 10 percent more than the second-place team this season. Their success rate jumped to 55 percent, second in the league behind Tampa Bay. While you can point to their excellent receiving corps as evidence why, it’s notable that L.A.’s run game was also excellent from “11,” finishing tied for fourth in run success rate out of “11.” Benefits all around.

• Downfield throws. At various points this season, the Rams had Cooper Kupp, Odell Beckham Jr., Robert Woods, Desean Jackson and Van Jefferson available as targets for Stafford. That’s how you surround your quarterback with weapons. Stafford led the league in yards via the deep ball and also paced the NFL with over 19 yards per attempt on throws downfield. His average completed air yards (6.7) was third in the league.

So that’s the Rams in a nutshell, but will it suddenly become the 2022 Vikings?