TGS Chapter 107 Off the Script (Patreon)

The second quarter began with the scoreboard reading 7-3, and the commentators already had enough accumulated material to say what they had gone a while without saying directly.

"What we have seen from the Rams in this first part of the game," said the first, "is a game built from the certainty of not losing rather than from the ambition to win. Every call from Fisher aims to eliminate risk before aiming to gain yards, and that produces what it produces, which is a team that advances, but advances in a way that doesn't ask the quarterback to do almost anything that any quarterback of an acceptable level in this league couldn't do."

The second nodded before responding.

"And that contrasts with what Sterling showed in the only half he played against Dallas two weeks ago," he said. "Against the Cowboys, the ball moved fast toward medium and deep zones, the receivers had routes that required real separation from the coverage, and Sterling made decisions with release times that a quarterback with fear doesn't make. None of that have we seen tonight."

"None," said the first. "And the question I ask myself is not whether Fisher's game plan is correct or incorrect in technical terms, but what kind of quarterback you can evaluate when the game plan doesn't ask him to do the things that define whether a quarterback is good or not."

Los Angeles

In the living room of a house near downtown, the television was on with the game, and on the sofa were two people wearing Rams colors, with the volume high enough so that what the commentators said arrived effortlessly.

"We've gone through almost an entire quarter," said the one on the left, "and the kid hasn't thrown a single pass that I couldn't throw myself from my backyard."

"Fisher is like that," said the other without taking his eyes off the screen.

"Fisher is an old-school coach who believes football is won with the ground game, and I understand that, but you hired the number one pick in the draft and you have him throwing five-yard passes to the flat."

"We won the first quarter."

"7-3," said the first. "With 6 minutes of possession and without a single play worth saving. That's not winning a quarter; that's surviving a quarter. And regular season games aren't survived, they're won."

The television showed Wyatt in the huddle with a tense face, and the one on the right pointed to the screen.

"Look at that face," he said. "That kid knows perfectly well what's happening."

"They always know," said the one on the left. "The ones who are good always know. It's just that some know it and say it, and others know it and keep it in. And the ones who keep it in are generally the ones who stay in the system longer."

The two looked at the television in silence for a moment.

"Let's hope he keeps keeping it in," said the one on the right. "Because if he says what he thinks tonight, Fisher takes him off the field, and we don't see him again until the middle of the season, if we see him at all."

On Twitter, the situation was no better than that of the two people discussing the game from the sofa in their house.

@rams.Fan The Rams spent the first pick in the draft on a glorified ball carrier, apparently.

@E.Anderson Fisher playing like it's 1987. Someone tell him the forward pass exists.

@NFL.Insider Wyatt Sterling is 18 minutes into the game and the only interesting moment was when he ran on the third play of the first possession. The rest was Gurley, Gurley, flat, Gurley.

@footballfan To those saying Sterling was a bust, be patient. This isn't a bust; this is a coach who is afraid to use what he has.

@RossT I'm not defending Fisher, but I don't blame only the game plan either. Sterling had moments where he could have thrown deep and didn't. Did someone tell him not to?

@JamesD Exactly, and that's worse than a bust because it means the problem isn't the player.

On the field, the ball reached Wyatt's hands with the snap from the center, and the protection pocket that formed behind him didn't last long enough.

The Minnesota tackles broke through the protection from the right side with coordinated pressure that the Rams' offensive line didn't fully absorb, and Wyatt felt the pressure before seeing it, which is the way quarterbacks feel pressure when they have spent enough time on the field for the body to register the movement of approaching bodies without their eyes having to confirm it.

He ran to the left.

It wasn't an elaborate decision, but the movement the body executes when the space it had closes, and the only available space is to the left. Wyatt went toward that space as fast as he could, with the ball in his right hand and the two Minnesota tackles redirecting to reach him, and the field open to his left closing as the linebacker from the second level read the movement and moved in the same direction.

There was something about that type of pressure that was different from what practices simulated, because practices simulated pressure with teammates who knew how much they could push and how much they had to yield so that practice wouldn't end with the quarterback on the ground and the offensive line in the locker room with the line coordinator telling them they did it wrong. But the Minnesota tackles had no such consideration, and that difference in the quality of danger communicated by approaching bodies was what Wyatt felt as he ran, and it was what kept him making decisions instead of stopping to evaluate.

Wyatt ran laterally along the line of scrimmage.

Eight yards to the left, with the pressure still behind and the field ahead without an available receiver in the zones the game plan had designed—because the game plan had been designed for a quarterback in the pocket, not for a quarterback running laterally eight yards outside of it.

And then he saw McRoberts.

He was in the far left outside zone, with the cornerback covering him having moved toward Wyatt upon seeing the pressure, leaving McRoberts with two meters of separation from the nearest coverage. Wyatt, in that second with the pressure still four steps away, the ball in hand, and the receiver with two free meters, threw the ball without even thinking about it a second longer.

The ball left his hand while in motion, which changes the throwing mechanics, because a body moving laterally transmits part of that movement to the ball. Compensating for that transmission so the ball arrives where it needs to go is something quarterbacks either learn or don't learn, and Wyatt had learned it in enough practice hours for the compensation to occur without him having to think about it while the ball was in the air.

McRoberts caught it.

He caught it with his hands first and then secured it against his body as he turned to run, and when he turned to run, what he had in front of him wasn't the compact coverage Minnesota had shown in previous plays, but the space left by a defense when all its components have moved in the same direction toward the quarterback and the ball has gone in the other. McRoberts covered that space with the speed he had, which was enough for what the space offered.

13 yards.

The Minnesota safety reached him on the 51-yard line with a clean tackle that brought him to the ground without additional violence, and the referee marked the spot. The chains moved, and the stadium responded with the sound it makes when something happens that wasn't expected to happen—a sound different from the sound of the predictable, containing surprise in addition to volume.

1st and 10.

In the booth, the two commentators responded at the same time, and then the first yielded his turn to the second with the gesture of someone who knows that what the other is going to say is what is appropriate to say at that moment.

"That," said the second, "is what I've been waiting an entire quarter to see. Wyatt Sterling outside the pocket, throwing to the receiver the defense left wide open because the entire defense shifted toward him, for a 13-yard pass and a fresh first down. And that play wasn't in Fisher's game plan. That play was Sterling's answer to the pressure."

"And the answer was correct," said the first. "The receiver was wide open because the defense collapsed toward the quarterback, and Sterling saw it and used it. That's real-time field reading under pressure, which is exactly the condition in which field reading is hardest to execute."

"And executing it on a lateral roll," said the second, "with throwing mechanics compromised by body movement, makes what we just saw one of the best plays of this preseason game, regardless of the score."

On the Rams' sideline, Fisher had followed the play with the expression of someone observing something that was not part of what he had planned, but despite that, produced exactly the result the game plan sought to produce. That combination of factors produces a specific expression that is neither satisfaction nor its opposite, but something in between: the recognition that football sometimes does what it wants, regardless of what the coach wrote on the chalkboard.

He said nothing.

Weinke, standing beside him, waited a moment before saying, "It worked."

Fisher looked at the field where the Rams' offense was regrouping for the next play.

"This time," he said.

And he added nothing to that, because there was nothing to add that wasn't obvious, and Fisher didn't use words to say obvious things.

Wyatt reached the huddle with the play still in his body, in the way plays that go well stay in the body—different from the ones that go wrong, which stay in another way. What the play had left him with was not satisfaction exactly, but information that was more useful than satisfaction.

What had happened was this:

When leaving the pocket to the left, the entire Minnesota defense had reorganized itself around his movement, and that reorganization had left the outside receiver with space he didn't have before. That space had existed because everyone who could close it was looking at him and not at the receiver.

What that meant was that if one left the pocket with intention instead of doing so out of pressure, the defense was going to respond in the same way, and that same way was going to produce the same space, and that space was going to be available for the receiver who was in the right position at the right time.

It wasn't a new idea in general terms.

It was an idea mobile quarterbacks had used for decades to destabilize defenses built to contain pocket passers. But tonight, with Fisher's game plan and the four weeks of preseason preceding this moment, it was an idea Wyatt felt in his body in a way he hadn't felt before that play.

The difference between understanding something in the film room and feeling it on the field was a difference Wyatt had heard coaches and veteran players describe during his college years and in the preparation months leading up to the draft. He had always nodded like someone who understands what he is being told, but who hasn't yet had the specific experience that turns understanding from something intellectual into something the body knows firsthand. What that play had left him with was precisely that difference converted into the kind of knowledge that isn't forgotten, even if years pass.

The earpiece brought Fisher's voice.

Wyatt listened to the call.

He processed it.

And he brought to the huddle what Fisher had called, with the face of someone who already has something additional in his head beyond what he is going to say, but who knows that the time and place to say it is not the huddle in the second quarter of a preseason game, but the conversation that comes after the game ends, the roster closes, and there is room to talk about systems rather than individual plays.

What followed in that second quarter had the same rhythm as the first quarter.

Fisher's calls continued to be ground-game calls, and Wyatt executed them with the same precision with which he had executed the previous ones. The drive advanced with the methodical accumulation of small yards, until those accumulated yards put the team in the area where decisions change in nature, because the end zone is close and the margins shrink.

3 plays from the 11-yard line.

The first was a run by Gurley that gained two.

The second was a pass to the flat that gained four, leaving third down with a yard and change to go.

And on the third, Wyatt received the snap, saw the coverage, and saw the hole in the middle. Before the linebacker could close it, the ball was already in the air, and the receiver running into that gap caught it cleanly, crossing the end zone with his body leaning forward as the referee raised his arms.

2nd touchdown.

The score moved to 14-3, and the Rams on the bench responded with the restraint of a second touchdown—restraint greater than the first, because repetition confirms what the first only announced.

Wyatt took off his helmet as he walked toward the bench.

The stadium had the noise it had, and the game still had time left. What remained in his head wasn't the touchdown, but the play before the touchdown—the play that wasn't in the plan, and for that exact reason was the play that interested him most out of everything he had done that night. Because plays that are in the plan say what they say, and plays that aren't in the plan say something different.

Something Wyatt wanted to be able to use more often.

Provided Fisher agreed with it.

And that conversation had not happened yet.