Elvis wrote:If you listened to the Play callers (and read a bunch of stuff before then), the conventional wisdom seems to be Fangio figured out McVay in 2018, it really manifested in the SB and going forward until McVay/Stafford found an answer in 2021. Whitworth talked about it a lot.
Not saying it's the only thing that happened but i'm inclined to go with it...
Certainly. But it was a lot of things.
They had 4 different starting line combinations and 2 games disrupted by injury (both losses) in the first 10 weeks. Nowhere near as bad as 2022 though.
Despite the OL problems, Goff was asked to throw a league high (and career high) 626 times. If you add in the 22 sacks, more like 648 times. His yards per attempt dropped a whole yard, his TD% 2.2 % and he had a career high 16 picks.
Gurley was a shell of his former self, not just in the run game but significantly as a receiver. He had 1305 & 1251 rushing yards, 64 & 59 receptions for 1368 yds in 2017-18 respectively (3924 total yards) and 40 total TDs. In 2019 he had 857 rushing yards and a lousy 31 receptions for 207 yards, though surprisingly, still 14 TDs. But a guy who put up almost 4,000 yards the previous 2 years had less than 1100.
Cooks had concussion problems and his production dropped almost 52%.
Everett was injured, playing the first 9 weeks (45 snaps per game) then having just 31 snaps the next two weeks, missed 3 games, then had 4 snaps in the last 2.
"Figured out" may have played a big part but there were many, many things wrong in 2019.