Sean McVay has broken his silence on the Los Angeles Rams’ curious decision to kick a garbage time field goal against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.
The Rams were trailing 30-20 with just four seconds remaining in their Week 2 home contest at SoFi Stadium. Curiously, McVay called for the field goal team on the game’s final play, with Brett Maher making a 38-yard attempt.
This result affected countless sports bets across the nation, because the field goal allowed the Rams to cover the 7.5-point spread. So of course, some fans and pundits couldn’t help but wonder if the point spread cover was McVay’s motive behind the field goal decision.
Per Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, McVay explained his decision to send out the field goal team, noting that the covering-of-the-spread wasn’t at all on his mind:
“What we were trying to do is we were trying to be able to get a completion to where we kicked the field goal beforehand with the opportunity to be able to…if we had hit that deep in-breaking route, it really would’ve worked out the way that we wanted to. We were going to try to kick a field goal once we got into field goal position to then be able to kick an onside and try to give ourselves the real opportunity to win the game.
By the time it got down to it, [I] didn’t anticipate that in-cut that we hit Puka [Nacua] running that long and just said, ‘Alright, go ahead and kick the field goal.’ [I] felt like it was an opportunity to be able to not leave Matthew [Stafford] susceptible to an unnecessary heave to the end zone and get an opportunity for our field goal operation.
The initial goal was to try to get a two-for-one to where you end up getting into field goal range a little bit earlier with some of the play selections that we had and then ultimately be able to try to have an onside kick to then be able to go try to compete to tie or win the game. Apparently, [Rams V.P. of communications] Artis [Twyman] told me there’s a lot of people in Vegas pissed off about that decision. I clearly was not aware of that stuff.”
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Some heads-up folks also noted that McVay’s decision to go for the field goal was smart because of the “net points” tiebreaker scenario. In that sense, taking the near-guaranteed three is a much safer play than attempting a low-percentage throw against the league’s best defense.
Sunday marked the Rams’ ninth straight regular season loss against the 49ers, who have won every meeting since 2019. The Rams, of course, got the one win against their state rivals when it mattered in the 2021 NFC Championship Game two seasons ago.
