If Sean McVay could go back and do it all over again, he’d prepare less for the New England Patriots ahead of Super Bowl LIII. That sounds ridiculous and illogical, but the coach admitted as much himself.
He said he watched too much film of the Patriots before the big game, rewatching every game New England played that season. It caused him to forget the things that the Patriots were doing more recently, bogging down his memory with less important games earlier in the year.
“You have so much time that you can over-prepare and get away from some of the things that helped you get there,” McVay told Sports Illustrated last year. “I watched every game from New England’s season. You see stuff that worked in, say, Week 3, but you forget about the amount of stuff that’s taken place since Week 3. You can watch so much film that you lose perspective. You have 18 games of film you can pore over. And then I even watched the Philly and Atlanta Super Bowls closely.”
McVay is once again preparing to face the Patriots – the first time since that 13-3 Super Bowl loss – and time won’t be of the essence. With the Rams being on a short week, McVay will only have three-plus days to get ready for Bill Belichick’s squad on Thursday night.
Needless to say, it’ll be hard for him to over-prepare for the Patriots with a week and a half less than he had two years ago before the Super Bowl.
“It’ll be the same things. It’ll just be an accelerated process,” McVay said of the focus during this short week. “The difference between what you can normally do in a typical week, as opposed to a Thursday game is a real big emphasis above-the-neck. Obviously, this is a team that really stresses you and challenges you in all three phases. I have tremendous respect for the ability for them to really play complementary football, shift their identity to mold and to figure out how they want to try to win the football game. You’ve really seen that reflected each of the last couple of weeks with the way they played the Cardinals, with the way that they played the Chargers yesterday. It was a good win by our team yesterday, but it’s about being able to move on and kind of hit the reset button and have a great week of preparation. And a lot of that will be mentally and that’ll be the big thing for us.”
The Rams are coming off an impressive win over the Cardinals, securing their eighth victory on Sunday, 38-28. The Patriots won in even more convincing fashion against the Chargers, blowing out L.A. 45-0 at SoFi Stadium.
McVay has obviously watched what happened in that one, but he’s not poring over the film like he did two years ago – simply because he doesn’t have the time to. He’s making sure to get some sleep to keep his mind fresh, something he’s learned to do over the last couple of years.
“No,” McVay said Monday when asked if he was up all night working after the Rams’ win. “The Sundays wear you out a little bit. I tried to get some rest last night, got up early and got started. But it is a quick turnaround, but no excuses on my end. That would not be smart. I would be brain dead probably right after this call if I didn’t get any sleep. So got some sleep got up early this morning and looking forward to seeing if we can do a good job of starting this game plan off the right way.”
After studying the Patriots extensively before the Super Bowl, McVay struggled to come up with a contingency plan after Belichick surprised the Rams with a more zone-heavy approach – quite the contrary to what New England had been doing all season. This time around, McVay wants his team to be able to adapt accordingly if the Patriots switch things up again.
“Let’s have a great plan. Let’s be ready to adjust and adapt accordingly,” McVay said of what he hopes to accomplish this week. “Because the agility that they demonstrate as a football team is something that I think has been a real strength of theirs. I think that’s something that we’ve gotten better at, but you’ve got to put yourself in a position to have great preparation and make sure that you do a great job of trying to make good decisions that are in alignment with putting the players in good spots.”
The Rams come in as the better team at 8-4, but Belichick’s team isn’t one to overlook. The Patriots have won four of their last five and currently sit at 6-6, fighting for their playoff lives as the season winds to a close.
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