Kyle Van Noy shocked the Rams didn’t change strategies
Patriots linebacker Kyle Van Noy expressed astonishment that the Los Angeles Rams didn’t vary up their tactics against New England in the Super Bowl.
Sean McVay, head coach of the Los Angeles Rams, is widely seen as an offensive mastermind and even a young “boy genius” amongst his peers. He inherited a mediocre football team from a mediocre head coach in Jeff Fisher, and in less than two years, brought that team ever so close to winning its first Super Bowl championship in nearly two decades.
Kyle Van Noy, middle linebacker for the New England Patriots, might respect McVay and all that he’s done in revolutionizing the Rams, but he’s still genuinely surprised at what he saw on the field in Super Bowl 53.
"“They really didn’t do not (sic) 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,” Van Noy opined during a podcast interview on Pardon My Take. “We pride ourselves on watching hella film, that’s for sure. Coaches set us up for success, and players do as well. We’ve got elite football players. We don’t got any prima donnas, which is nice.”"
Indeed, the Patriots’ defensive performance in Atlanta was particularly impressive when considering its relative lack of star power. Stephon Gilmore at cornerback was the only Pro Bowl-caliber player this season. Safety Devin McCourty and linebacker Dont’a Hightower are certainly both fine players in their own rights, and Van Noy emerged in 2018 as the veritable heart and soul of this Patriots defense.
Still, most objective observers would agree that at least on paper, the Patriots didn’t even have the most talented or dominant defense on the field coming into the Super Bowl. The Rams, led by veteran play-caller and former head coach Wade Phillips, boast a defensive nucleus of household names like Aaron Donald, Ndamukong Suh, Aqib Talib, Marcus Peters, Dante Fowler, etc.
And yet it was the Patriots on Super Bowl Sunday that proved themselves truly super, holding the NFL’s second-ranked offense to just three points on the night. If Van Noy is to be believed, New England deserves as much credit for executing their game plan to perfection as the Rams deserve blame for not altering their plans once it became clear they weren’t working.
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“Maybe… we were playing so good they were like, ‘S—, we don’t know what to do,” Van Noy added as a possible explanation. He has every right to bask in the glow of victory, but Rams fans everywhere must still be wondering why McVay – for all his accolades and achievements – didn’t at least try something new in the second half.