West Coast Read: Can Sean McVay Turn Rams’ Nightmare Into Expected Dream Team?

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay flubbed the travel plans to Australia. Yes, we understand McVay did something similar with success last year, when the Rams easily handled the Jacksonville Jaguars after traveling the day before to London. However, the Rams stayed the week in Baltimore and flew out of there instead of Los Angeles — a seven-hour flight. This time, the Rams endured a 16-hour flight from L.A. to Melbourne, Australia, arriving 28 hours before their game against the San Francisco 49ers. 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, meanwhile, wisely had his team arrive a week early. The arrangement was a bold strategy by McVay that failed miserably, with the Rams losing by 20 points. Adding insult to injury (or injury to insult), the Rams also lost their best defensive player for the foreseeable future. Myles Garrett was placed on injured reserve with a left knee injury that had plagued him since the start of training camp. Garrett had arthroscopic surgery to address the issue and is out at least four weeks. The disturbing Week 1 stat line that forced McVay to shut down Garrett? No tackles, no sacks and one pressure for the reigning Defensive Player of the Year. Garrett played 40 of the 65 snaps (62%) and six special teams snaps. Fellow pass rusher Josaiah Stewart, who will replace an injured Garrett in the starting lineup, posted five combined tackles and a quarterback hit in 28 defensive snaps. Garrett barely practiced in training camp due to the knee injury that McVay characterized as more of a maintenance issue — perhaps a warning that Garrett wasn’t fully healthy heading into this game. Certainly, Shanahan showed why he’s considered one of the best playcallers in the league. He’s had similar success in game planning for Aaron Donald by taking him out of the game in previous matchups. He did the same thing to Garrett, running the opposite direction of the two-time Defensive Player of the Year and continually letting him get up the field and running screens behind him. Speaking of Donald, McVay said he still does not know whether his other future Hall of Famer will play in Week 2 against the New York Giants on Monday Night Football. L.A.’s revamped defense was supposed to be the best in the NFL but couldn’t stop the aging playmakers on San Francisco. Even worse, the Rams’ potent offense — which topped the league in scoring in 2025 and is still led by reigning MVP Matthew Stafford — managed just seven points. Since being anointed a super team this offseason, McVay has done his best to guard against complacency, tamping down talks of the Rams engineering a perfect season and hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in February for the second time in his head coaching career in the team’s home stadium. The Rams’ media onslaught crescendoed with an appearance on “60 Minutes” over the weekend. But after laying an egg on national television in the league’s first international game Down Under, McVay just wants to get things back to normal and win a game. “These are the opportunities to really separate yourself with how you handle them,” McVay told reporters this week, when asked about the adversity to start the year. “And what we’re not going to do is change. It’s easy to be positive, say all these things before you have it, but now here you go. You get tested. … We’re committed to our process. Then ultimately, when we get our next opportunity to swing, let’s go be courageous enough to go do that. I’m excited about putting everything I got into that with this group.” An aging roster led by 38-year-old Matthew Stafford (the Rams have the fourth-oldest roster in the NFL) and playing the fifth-hardest schedule in the league are two reasons why I predicted the Rams would miss the playoffs this year. I later amended my prediction after the addition of Garrett and Donald, believing the Rams have too much horsepower to miss the playoffs. And even after losing the season opener and heading into Week 2 as the only team in the NFC West without a win (L.A. teams are surprisingly 0-2 to start the year while New York teams are 2-0), it’s an overreaction to state that this talented roster will miss the postseason. McVay remains one of the best coaches in the league and has 11 days to prepare for a bounce-back performance against the Giants at SoFi Stadium. Expect the Rams to show up and show out against John Harbaugh’s Giants. Minutes after the Seattle Seahawks’ inspired comeback win over the New England Patriots last week, Kupp told me he was all in with backup quarterback Drew Lock taking over for an injured Sam Darnold for as long as he needed to lead the offense. The reason? Kupp regularly spends time in the Seahawks quarterback room and told me that Lock is prepared to meet the moment, as the Seahawks head to the desert to face the Arizona Cardinals this week. “He’s played a lot of football,” Kupp told me. “It’s not easy to do what he did today, where he had no reps with anyone all week. No reps with any of the guys he was in the huddle with. And to be able to come in, command the huddle and get us in and out of plays. And to be able to move the ball and be efficient as a quarterback, that’s a special thing that he did.” Because of Lock’s proficiency to run the offense, Kupp and the Seahawks are comfortable with him at the controls. “Certainly, we’re going to miss Sam,” Kupp told me. “But you’ve got no other option. Drew’s going to be that guy. He’ll do an unbelievable job. He’s going to prepare, do things right. He’ll find opportunities to be better than we were today and give us more opportunities.” Kupp, who was the Super Bowl MVP when the Rams won it all five seasons ago, also went through that team’s Super Bowl hangover the following season, as they finished 5-12 that year. That injury-plagued year in Los Angeles provides an important reference point for Kupp and the Seahawks try to repeat as Super Bowl champs this season. “That was such a unique situation, because there were a lot of injuries and things like that,” Kupp told me. “But I think the unique thing is you go through a season when you win a Super Bowl, and you remember all the good stuff. All the triumphs, right? But what you don’t remember as much when you go back and dissect it is all the moments that were really hard. “All the times where things did not look that good, and all the times you were very frustrated because you were not efficient, or there were mistakes or fumbles. There’s losses. You kind of forget about that. You think it was hunky-dory all the way through, but you deal with adversity. It’s just a great reminder that all these great things that are meaningful, have these hard things that you overcame. There’s going to be times where things don’t go well, and you just have to keep coming to the table, keep fighting and putting in the work.” When Kupp isn’t on the field battling, he’s spending time on the coffee business he started with his wife, Anna, called Dodo Coffee. The couple just recently opened a new store in Fayetteville, Arkansas. “We always said if we were going to open a business, we always wanted to do something that we could make for ourselves,” Kupp told me. “We always loved coffee, and my wife’s sister and her husband wanted to open a coffee shop for themselves. So, we were like, ‘Shoot, we’ll get behind that. But we want the best.’ We kind of built it with the thought if you could build a product for yourself, what would you do” “That’s kind of led to where we are at now. And it’s been really exciting to see that take off.” As 10.5-point underdogs against the Los Angeles Chargers, the Arizona Cardinals had the longest odds of any team to win in Week 1. Heading into the regular season, the Cardinals also had the longest odds of any team to win the Super Bowl. However, as I wrote at the start of training camp, the Cardinals believed they could compete in the ultra-competitive NFC West. And under new head coach Mike LaFleur, they showed that with a 26-14 upset win over the Chargers. LaFleur made some history, becoming the first full-time Cardinals coach since Hall of Famer Don Coryell in 1973 to win his debut. “I thought we did a good job as far as when we were in those tough situations, bowing our necks, not blaming or pointing fingers at someone and playing the next down,” Cardinals edge rusher Zaven Collins told me. Collins said he and his teammates grinded during training camp, which included practicing outside in the sweltering Arizona heat at times during the week in the lead-up to the game against the Chargers to build chemistry and toughness. “We’ve been practicing outside and it’s 105 degrees in AZ,” Collins told me. “Like, call it what you want, but I mean, it’s HOT! We do practice inside the bubble for half the week. But the days that allow us, we go outside, and it’s hot out there. And we’ve been grinding out there and going after each other, just getting better, really. That’s what it comes down to. We’ve just been putting in the work.” And Collins said the Cardinals are not paying attention to the naysayers nationally “We just ignore everything, to be honest with you,” Collins said. “Like, just next game mentality. We don’t care what people say about what we are. You see guys getting called out in the media — some guys are bad, some guys are good — and that’s just part of it. We just focus on us and continue to ignore the noise. “Just put the helmet on and go to work every day.” After a disappointing rookie season, Las Vegas Raiders running back Ashton Jeanty finally got a chance to operate in an offensive system led by head coach Klint Kubiak that knows how to feature a talented running back. And the result was a 102-yard rushing performance. Jeanty also got involved in the passing game, with six receptions for 45 yards and two scores. Jeanty’s three explosive runs of 10-plus yards were the second most in his career, according to Next Gen Stats. An NFL senior evaluator I spoke with pointed to the addition of veteran center Tyler Linderbaum as one of the key reasons for Jeanty’s big day in a win over the Miami Dolphins. “I would start with Linderbaum,” the senior exec told me. “Add to that a new scheme, and the confidence of being in his second season.” Jeanty had to deal with a head coach and offensive coordinator who were not aligned last year in Pete Carroll and Chip Kelly, which resulted in the Boise State product being hit at or behind the line of scrimmage 51.4%, according to Next Gen Stats, fifth most in the NFL. But with Kubiak taking over, Jeanty appeared to benefit from wider running lanes, along with opportunities to make more plays in space in the passing game. 5. Arizona Cardinals The defense held the Chargers to 2-of-8 on third down and 0-for-3 on fourth down. 4. Los Angeles Rams Something not discussed as much from the Rams’ loss: Kyren Williams finished with just 41 rushing yards in Week 1. He needs more touches moving forward. 3. Kansas City Chiefs Kenneth Walker’s 173 rushing yards was a strong start for the Chiefs, showing why Kansas City made a strong play to sign him away from the Seahawks this offseason. 2. San Francisco 49ers Veteran receiver Mike Evans is the chain-mover Brock Purdy needed, logging six receptions for 49 yards and a touchdown in his 49ers debut. 1. Seattle Seahawks As evidenced by their season-opening win, Drew Lock doesn’t need to be elite; he just needs to be the competition executioner of the offense for the Hawks to win. “We made some preseason type of mistakes. Now in retrospect, I wish we’d played our guys a little bit more in the preseason and given them those reps.” Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh, lamenting his team’s sloppy play in a season-opening loss to Arizona.