Sean McVay made the aggressive call. The Rams were at the 1-yard line, staring at fourth-and-goal, and he kept the offense on the field. But the specific choice that followed - Matthew Stafford taking a quarterback sneak - was the wrong tool for the job.
Stafford hit the line and got nothing. What had been a strong 12-play, 72-yard march ended just shy of the end zone, and the Rams never seemed to recover from it.
Afterward, McVay pointed to that missed chance as the turning point.
“We go right down the field and then we don’t get in on the QB sneak, and things got out of hand from there,” McVay said.
The bigger issue is that the play put Stafford in a spot he’s rarely suited to handle. He’s 38 years old, not Jalen Hurts or Josh Allen, and last season he ran two quarterback sneaks and failed on both. In 17 regular-season games, he didn’t pick up even one rushing first down.
Stafford said the call came from the sideline, not from him improvising at the line.
“I’ve just got to find a way to get in,” Stafford said.
If McVay wanted to keep the ball inches from the goal line, there were safer ways to do it. Plenty of teams with older or less mobile quarterbacks hand that job to a tight end or running back.
McVay also could have chosen a different short-yardage play altogether. Going for it on fourth-and-goal made sense.
The quarterback sneak did not.
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For a defense that has long leaned on Donald as its centerpiece, the wait is the reality fans were hoping to avoid, even if it was always part of the plan. Donald last played in the NFL in 2023, and the earliest expectation for his return is Week 2, leaving the Rams to navigate the opener without one of the most important players in franchise history. [Read more 🡒]