New England Patriots admit Rams did nothing different in Super Bowl

The New England Patriots stunned the football world when they held the #2 offense in the NFL to just three points in the Super Bowl.

The thing is, only part of that success was due to the defense playing so well. Bill Belichick and his coaching staff had a great game plan like usual. The players were executing it well. However, it’s not like the Los Angeles Rams were trying to make things difficult for them. In fact, linebacker Kyle Van Noy revealed recently that their opponent failed to throw anything unique or different at them most of the game. It was all the same stuff they’d run all year.

This is rather shocking. Sean McVay has widely been hailed as one of the best offensive minds in the NFL for two years now. It’s not hard to see why. His team ranked #1 in 2017 and #2 this past season, piling up yards and points all days long. Yet both times they’ve run into well-coached defenses, New England and Chicago, they’ve been utterly stymied and shown an inability to adjust. Van Noy admitted he was shocked.

"“I couldn’t believe that either,” Van Noy told the Pardon My Take podcast. “They really didn’t do not one wrinkle. I was like, ‘What the hell?’ They’ve got so many good players, they’ve got so many things they’ve done all year, and the one play they gave us which was a wrinkle was the [Brandin] Cooks screen that hit for a little bit. And that was it.“Or maybe too, we were playing so good they were like, ‘S—, we don’t know what to do.'”"

This calls into question whether Rams are driven more by talent than coaching

It must’ve felt like Christmas all over again for the Patriots. The year before, Doug Pederson and the Philadelphia Eagles threw so many different kinds of wrinkles at them in the Super Bowl including the infamous “Philly Special.” It resulted in 41 points. Kansas City just two weeks prior int he AFC championship had a few surprises for them and it resulted in 31 points. So it’s not like the Patriots suddenly morphed into the ’85 Bears.

This failure must be dropped at the feet of McVay and his staff. Not having much creativity on offense for the Super Bowl knowing your opponent has a full season of tape to find your tendencies is a bad oversight. Or perhaps McVay started to believe his own hype enough to where he didn’t think New England had the personnel needed to stop the Rams. If for no other reason than almost nobody else had for two years.

Either way, this may end up being an oversight the Rams may never get over.