Even in victory, Sean McVay takes the blame for some of his team’s shortcomings.
The Los Angeles Rams did not play a clean game in their 20-17 win over the Chicago Bears on Sunday night. Their 20 points scored were the third-fewest they’ve had all season, and there were only five games in which they had fewer total yards than the 340 they put up at Soldier Field.
The defense was phenomenal despite giving up 417 yards to the Bears, stopping Chicago on fourth down three times and intercepting Caleb Williams three times, as well. But the offense? There’s work to be done before the NFC title game against the Seattle Seahawks.
Sean McVay knows it and he vows to be better for his team after making some questionable play calls and struggling to get the offense into a rhythm.
“I did not do a very good job for our group tonight but I thought our guys were able to overcome it,” he said during his postgame press conference.
He was especially frustrated by one call, in particular. It was on third-and-1 in overtime after the Rams ran the ball successfully on the first two plays of the drive. He wanted to keep the ground game going and on third-and-short, he called a toss to Blake Corum, who was stopped for a 2-yard loss.
“We start off, you feel like you’re getting a little bit of momentum,” he said. “I make a terrible third-down-and-1 call. No excuse for that. Should’ve used the timeout. They did a good job of having a good call on there and we had to punt it out.”
After that drive ended, McVay thought his third-down play call was going to cost the Rams and cause them to lose the game. And it almost did. The Bears took the ball after the punt, ran 10 plays and gained 36 yards, reaching the Rams’ 48-yard line.
Another 10 yards and they would’ve been in reasonable field goal range with a chance to win it.
“I felt like when we had possessed the ball first, I thought that possession was really going to cost us,” he said. “There’s no excuse for that. I have to be better for our group, I will be better for our group.”
Thankfully, Kamren Curl picked off his third pass of the season on an errant throw by Caleb Williams down the field on second down, getting the ball back for the offense. And this time, the Rams would capitalize by walking off with a 42-yard field goal.
Had it not been for Curl’s interception, Davante Adams’ toe-dragging catch along the sideline or Puka Nacua’s 16-yard catch on third-and-6, the Rams might’ve lost the game. But as McVay said, his players overcame some “bad coaching.”
“I did not like the feel for the flow of the game outside of the first series where our guys did a great job,” McVay added. “Defensively, it kept us in it in spite of how poor of a job I did for our group. But like I said, I’m really grateful for this group being able to find a way, stick with it and be able to overcome some bad coaching by me tonight.”
One of the biggest critiques from this game was McVay’s reluctance to run the ball. At one point, they had called 34 pass plays and only 11 runs. Williams had been running the ball well, but for whatever reason, McVay got pass-happy in a game that he admitted was difficult to throw the ball in because of the weather.
The Rams’ three straight incompletions from midfield after Cobie Durant’s interception were especially puzzling, wasting perfect field position and coming away with no points.
McVay has a chance to bounce back against the Seahawks in next Sunday’s NFC Championship Game, a team he and the Rams know all too well. There are no style points in the playoffs and the Rams are just happy to survive and advance – in spite of McVay’s rough game plan.
This article originally appeared on Rams Wire: Rams’ Sean McVay admits he had some ‘bad coaching’ vs. Bears
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