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Does Sean McVay get bored with QBs every 4 years?
Billy Wilder’s 1955 comedy The Seven Year Itch is about a book that claims that men are driven to have affairs in the seventh year of marriage. Could Sean McVay have the same problem, except instead of romantic relationships it’s with his starting quarterback? And instead of seven years, it’s only four?
Rumors of a split between the L.A. Rams and Matthew Stafford aren’t likely to go away any time soon, and the team shouldn’t be in a hurry to extend a 37-year-old quarterback if that’s what’s making the veteran signal caller hesitant to suit up for L.A. next season. Stafford’s age, the rising costs of a quarterback, and the possibility that the Rams wouldn’t win a Super Bowl next season with him could be driving the Rams to consider other options.
But McVay’s been down this road before with a quarterback and that relationship also only last four years despite making a Super Bowl together.
McVay took the Rams job a year after the team traded up to take Goff with the number one pick in the 2016 draft and all parties involved probably envisioned multiple Super Bowl wins together. By year two, McVay and Goff did reach the Super Bowl but they only scored three points and the team “suffered” over the next two seasons:
The Rams went from outscoring opponents by 149 points and 143 points in 2017 and 2018 to outscoring them by just 30 and 76 points in 2019 and 2020.
At the conclusion of the 2020 season, which was only Goff’s “fifth-year option” campaign so not even into the extension he signed in 2019 yet, the Rams traded Goff and upgraded the position with Stafford. Goff spent five years with the Rams total, and four years with McVay.
Could history repeat itself?
Believe it or not, Stafford and McVay haven’t had as dominant of a regular season together as the first two years that the head coach had with Goff. Even winning the Super Bowl, the team went 12-5 and outscored opponents by 88 points in the regular season, a touch worse than L.A.’s 2018 campaign of 13-3 and a +143 point differential.
But they did win the Super Bowl.
And just like before, the Rams also suffered a Super Bowl hangover. Since winning the Super Bowl, the L.A. Rams have similarities to the 2019-2020 team:
McVay got too concerned that he couldn’t win a Super Bowl with Goff after the 2020 season and he traded him. If anything, McVay should be even more worried that the Rams can’t win another Super Bowl with Stafford because he’s much older than Goff and the team really hasn’t been that competitive in the past three years.
McVay’s three worst point...
