McDaniels hired!

[PeoriaRam]

I enjoy the opportunity to field an offense with the ambition of traveling further than 10 yards at a time.

[berg8309]

At least no one can say Spags refused to take a risk, and I do believe hiring McD is a risk. I think he was the best choice, but with his issues in Denver (Ego issues) and his new system combined with our 2nd year QB, Spags was definitely stepping out of his comfort zone to take a chance.

Childress would have been the comfort zone, and Spags went outside that here. Hopefully some of Spags "too safe" critics will lighten up on him a bit after this hire.

[sosa39rams]

Here we are boys. Next year the schedule gets a lot tougher, and we get a lot better (hopefully). Are we ready for the playoffs? Im so ready to see Bradford go all out.

[fliptalianstallion]

Here we are boys. Next year the schedule gets a lot tougher, and we get a lot better (hopefully). Are we ready for the playoffs? Im so ready to see Bradford go all out.

If all of our receivers turn out amazing and everyone on the offensive side of the ball quickly understands the playbook. Then I can see Bradford breaking Dan Marino's 5000 yard passing season.

[sjacksonrules]

This is going to be pretty freaking awesome having the two coordinators that have been on a superbowl winning team. Can you guys imagine next year we are going to be all out on offense and all out on defense. next year will be total mayhem and I love it.

[DeaconJ]

Bradford played in a spread O in college, so he should be able to step back into that.....no problem. A new O is, however, going to put Mardy G into a tailspin!

[BM_Face]

I am pleased that we got this settled early. Looking forward to seeing how our players respond to the new schemes.

[RealRam]

Again, so glad it was McD over Childress! Just have a better 'feel' with this young buck / ram and I trust it will be a good Spags & McDaniels duo, working to expand and unfold that offense.

Must take and materialize the Bradford Boys' potential to next level in 2011.

[39WillRunYaOva]

Im so excited,to me this was the clear cut choice as soon as Shurmur left but i wasnt sure if Spags would take the risk.Clearly spags sees what kind of potential and skill Sam has and he knows he wont be able to get the most out of him in a conservative offense.Josh will bring us out our shell and now we can go into the draft/FA looking to add weapons for Sam and mcdaniels.This is going to be the start of something special i can see it now.

[MACD]

I may have to make a trip to training camp this year!

[LaRamsFanLongTime]

Oh yeah! The fire Pat Shumur campaign was a success! Bring on McDaniels!

Really? I thought Shumur got promoted to head coach of another team???

Anyways moving on I dont like McDaniels and think is ego is outta control just like his former mentor. I really hope he shuts his mouth runs the offense and listens to his boss. If he does those things he can be unstoppable.

[swatter555]

Some of you are getting ahead of yourselves. We need to remember that Bradford is still green around the edges and I am not sure if he will be ready to take the step that most of us want him to next season. McDaniels will still need to design an offense that takes that into consideration. I hope Bradford has a breakout year, but more likely than not it will still be a transition year for us. We may go 8-8 or 9-7, but the Rams still need a couple of years.

I hope I am wrong and Bradford makes it to the probowl.

[THOLTFAN81]

For those wondering Per ESPN article

The Rams scheduled news conferences Wednesday for Spagnuolo and McDaniels, the latter by telephone.

I personally can't wait to hear what he has to say. Extremely excited about this news conference!

[Keen Eye]

As a longtime Broncos fan and watching every game for the past 5 years, I have followed McDaniels to the Rams. I am still a Broncos fan, but I will following the Rams just as much.

First off I want to say, don't take negativity in Denver very seriously. They have one of the worse PR in the entire league, and the whole organization is/was in shambles before he got there. But I'm not here to talk about him as an HC... as an OC/QB coach... he is the elite.

Josh McDaniels is one of the brightest young head coaches in the league. It tells you something when out of all the coaches that had left NE for a new job, McDaniels was the only one to get a 8 page essay on how to be an NFL coach from Bill Belichick... the DAY after the Patriots season ended.

Coming out of college, Bradford is the protypical QB in McDaniels' system. After this past season in the NFL, what I've seen from Bradford tells me that Bradford will have a successful season if there is a 2011 season. If he can build an offense for Kyle Orton, then he'll build an offense for Bradford. McDaniels offense is unique and he plays it to his personel.

McDaniels will bring a great level of intensity and enthusiasm to the offense.

The one thing about his offense is that QB's usually take off in year 2 and year 3+ in the system because it is a bit complex. 1st year is always the most difficult transition period... so hopefully for Bradford and the Ram's sake he'll be here for at least 3 years. But like others have said, he'd be a hot hire for a HC if he could get the Rams moving in the playoffs quicker than that.

And as far as the ego thing... all coaches have egos. Orton said the biggest thing he'll miss about McDaniels is having him his ear... meaning McDaniels as a play caller. Orton completely fell off after McDaniels left, throwing 3 ints, half of what he had thrown all year. McDaniels developed some great game plans but the execution was not always there... the Broncos OL was really poor to start off the season and Orton can't dodge a rolling brick.

I actually have downloads to the old New England playbooks (official ones the players got) that show the type of offense and system they run. In comparison, there is also downloads to other teams' playbooks (like the Broncos). You can see the complexity different fairly quickly.

In a nut shell:
He runs a variation of the spread offense. (BTW spread offense is a philosophy of numbers, doesn't necessarily mean you line up 5 WR's all the time, you can be a running team and run the spread). He runs single back/3-WR sets as his base formation. He doesn't use a full back in his system, rather if he wants to line someone there he'll use a TE instead.

For simplicity:
The X WR will be the deep route WR (Lloyd, Moss)
The Y WR will be the slot and he will need to have horizontal route running ability to get open and primarily running short routes (Welker)
The Z WR will be for intermediate routes and needs to be able to run solid routes, and have reliable hands (Gaffney)

The position names of the WR's get a bit unconventional at times for certain formations, but thats generally what you need to know. He runs a power blocking scheme...

The offense is heavily based on making pre-snap reads, and it is vital that the OC/QB gets the plays in quickly so the QB has time at the line to make adjustments, help call out protection schemes, and read the defense. This past season, as some might know, he really took the PA game to another level. Broncos were the #1 play action passing team in the NFL while being the worst rushing team in the NFL. He did this by creating protection schemes that looked exactly like a running play but use it for play action... then he'd use the same protection scheme for run plays and vice versa. It helps keep the defense off balance and the defenders thinking.

McDaniels likes to keep the other team thinking, and he believes that if he can get his opponents thinking/guessing, they will play slower and be less effective.

The system is a QB friendly system, as you can see what it has done for Cassel, Brady, Orton, and what it was doing for Tebow in the pre-season...

Coming out of the bye week, he started scripting plays and it worked TREMENDOUSLY for him. Just go check out the first drives of some of those games... such as the Chargers game or the Chiefs game.

He scripted the 1st down and 2nd down... 3rd down is not scripted.

I don't think it's unrealistic for Bradford to go over 4000+ yards this season... as a matter of fact it is what I will be expecting.

I am excited as you guys are... McDaniels/Spags (as play callers) will be dangerous for the NFL let alone the NFC West.

[fliptalianstallion]

Nice to hear a classy Broncos fan come over and provide good insight. I always had that feeling that there was something within your organization rather than McD that was the cause of their dysfunction but I wish the best of luck for your recovery. As for us, yeah Bradford needs time to learn McD's system but I think he'll catch on quicker seeing that he played in the spread back in his days in OU. The WRs and O-line men will be a huge concern to adapting his new system implemented.