When Los Angeles Rams fans discuss the Super Bowl win over the Cincinnati Bengals, you can’t discuss the win without talking about Matthew Stafford’s no-look pass to Cooper Kupp. Our friends from the Irish NFL Show have given us a preview clip of an interview they were able to conduct with Kevin O’Connell, where he talks about the Super Bowl and breaks down Matthew’ Stafford’s no look pass on the final drive.
Here’s what the former Rams offensive coordinator had to say:
Once we lost Odell, every single third down for the rest of that game, there was a legitimate double on Cooper (Kupp). Not a double team where there’s kind of some people floating around, maybe that guy’s helping. There were two human beings covering Cooper wherever he went on third downs – those known passing downs.
What we decided was, we weren’t running the ball real well – not as well as we thought we would coming into the game. The Bengals did a great job limiting us from that standpoint. We really figured out that we had to throw the football on first and second down and really figure out how to activate Cooper when they weren’t playing man coverage on those early downs.
When you go back and look at it, a lot of it was just about trying to find voids and vacancies in their zone coverages that were really built in a lot of ways to stop the run – hence Von Bell was the player that Matthew looked off to be able to throw that ball. He was a safety dropping down into the box to provide some presence to help stop Cooper, but ultimately to be a fit in the run game to help get that eighth defender down there in an unconventional way to make it hard on us running the football.
We had to take that information and apply it to how we were going to throw the football. ‘Hey Matthew, there’s a good chance there’s going to be a defender in that window to throw that ball.’ As only Matthew Stafford can, defenders in a window to throw a football, that is not an obstacle he cannot overcome.
He did that many times last year – maybe in less notoriety than in front of 300 million people in the Super Bowl, but what I can say is, that’s not the first time Matthew did that and it won’t be the last. He has an incredible ability to feel areas, voids, and vacancies to be able to throw to guys like Cooper into those areas.”
You can check out the full conversation here where the former Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator also talks about his new role as the Minnesota Vikings head coach.
It was great to welcome @UKVikings HC Kevin O'Connell to the #IrishNFLShow last night.
Catch-up on the interview ad-free on our YouTube channel: https://t.co/0930UefIR2
— The Irish NFL Show (@IreNFL) July 18, 2022
O’Connell takes over as the Vikings head coach where he’ll look to unlock an offense that features Kirk Cousins, Dalvin Cook, and Justin Jefferson. He is the latest branch of the Sean McVay coaching tree.
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