LOS ANGELES — It was a typical Rams practice. Stretching had just ended, and players had split up into position groups to do drills and warm up before the 11-on-11 portion began. Typically, this is when media is allowed to film practice. Not much can be learned from quarterbacks throwing the ball to pass catchers, lined up to go one at a time instead of in formation.
But this particular Thursday, quarterback Matthew Stafford and the Rams tight ends were set up along the goal line. Three of them lined up in a bunch, one at the line of scrimmage and two a foot or two off. The group was ready to rehearse a play, but offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur and passing game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase turned and waved at the cameras, asking them to turn their lenses away from what they were about to practice.
It was an installation moment for a new 13-personnel play the Rams were adding to that week’s game plan. The personnel grouping – three tight ends, one receiver and one running back – had never been used much by the Rams under head coach Sean McVay. But this season, circumstances related to health and roster construction had pushed the team into areas previously unexplored.
At the snap, the three tight ends – Tyler Higbee, Colby Parkinson and Davis Allen – mimed a run block, just for a beat. Then they spread out in the end zone, floating into different quadrants as Stafford and assistant coaches lofted passes to them.
“We are all getting a lot more reps than normal,” Parkinson said with a wide smile.
Three days later, the Rams put the play into action against the Saints. Most weeks, media would never have seen an installation like that during their 15-minute viewing period. But with the midseason decision to lean into the grouping, the Rams had to make due with the practice time they had available to them.
Under McVay, the Rams have been associated with 11-personnel – three receivers, one tight end, one running back – or as McVay has called it, the “bread and butter” of their offense. But this year, the Rams have utilized 13-personnel at the highest rate in the NFL.
The result has been the league’s highest-scoring offense, and a 12-5 record that has the fifth-seeded Rams preparing to face the fourth-seeded Carolina Panthers in Saturday’s wild-card round of the playoffs. But if not for an in-practice injury in Week 6, it might never have been part of the 2025 Rams’ story.
“I think it’s helped to give us an identity,” McVay said. “It’s an organic evolution based on some things that ended up happening and where we just really started sprinkling in and against Baltimore in little bite-size increments.”
Out of necessity
Back in early October, receiver Tutu Atwell pulled his hamstring in practice.
It was that small event from which all of this sprung forth. Short-handed at receiver, the Rams needed to find new ways to get their best pass catchers onto the field. The idea for that week’s game plan against the Ravens was simple enough: Utilize 13-personnel for the first time that season in the red zone as a stop gap until the Rams got healthy at receiver.
But then Puka Nacua rolled his ankle against the Ravens, and the Rams were short-handed again going into the next game against the Jaguars in London. So 13-personnel got another opportunity.
It was at Wembley Stadium that the Rams truly saw the benefits of the grouping, particularly on the goal line. With Higbee, Parkinson and Allen stationed tight up against the offensive line, the Jaguars overcommitted to stop a handoff to Kyren Williams. This opened up one-on-one opportunities for receiver Davante Adams to score two of his three touchdowns in a 35-7 Rams victory.
“So partially, initially out of necessity,” Scheelhaase said. “Obviously going onto the field and then activating it, what you realize is, No. 1, the versatility of those guys in that room. … Then you saw that those guys could bring things to the table in their variety of what they could do that was going to be beneficial to us as an offense.”
Back in training camp, the tight end room – including rookie Terrance Ferguson, the team’s top pick in the 2025 draft – discussed the possibility of getting into two-tight end sets in 12-personnel or even 13. The optimism, despite the franchise’s history, lay in the depth of the room, which Higbee said at the time was the deepest in his 10 years in L.A.
But the Jaguars game was a breakthrough for what the room thought was possible for its role in the offense.
“I think after that we kind of realized that the better we play in 13, the more likely we are to get more of it up week in and week out,” Parkinson said. “We never feel like we’ve arrived, we got to keep earning it each and every week.”
Study time
Like the tight ends, the Rams’ coaching staff had its own realization after the Jacksonville game. And with the Rams entering the bye week, it presented an opportunity for the coaches to dive into 13-personnel tape for the first time.
“We have access to all these cut ups, all this film, so you just kind of are going through stuff and you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s kind of cool. That could maybe fit us if it presents itself,’” tight ends coach Scott Huff said. “So it just started slowly but surely, we can do this, we can do that. And it just kind of morphed into what it is right now.”
And what it is now is a total outlier compared to the rest of the NFL. The Rams ran 13-personnel 331 times this season, 191 more than the next closest team (Pittsburgh). But that 30.48% rate is actually much lower than what the reality has been since the personnel package was first introduced in Week 6. In their final 12 games, the Rams ran 13-personnel 43.78% of the time.
During the bye week review, the coaching staff went through what the Rams had done previously with the grouping, most notably in last year’s playoff win over the Minnesota Vikings. They also looked at what other offenses were doing in the personnel package and, more importantly, how defenses changed their base looks to counter the heavy groupings.
Does a 3-4 defense activate more defenders in the box and change their coverages? If it’s a four-down linemen team, how do they account for an extra gap or two along the defensive front? And then how can an offense attack those looks?
“It was almost a foreign language there for a minute that you had to reteach yourself,” LaFleur said. “Over the last couple of years, these defensive coordinators, because it’s turned into an 11-personnel league, have adjusted. They found different ways to have the same personnel and present different fronts and different issues. It’s a little harder to do when you are changing it up on offense to work on all that stuff to stop 11 but then, oh shoot, I have to put in the time to be in base defense and stop some of that.”
What the Rams discovered was that they could keep things simple in the run game. Because of the way the offense already activated receivers in run blocking, they could use those same philosophies, but just incorporate two additional tight ends, while adding gaps along the offensive front that defenses had to account for.
This kept an already-efficient Rams run game plugging along at 0.07 estimated points added (EPA) per attempt. But where the Rams have really put opposing defenses in a bind has been using 13-personnel to open up the passing game.
All the Rams’ tight ends have developed into reliable run blockers. But they all bring different skill sets into the pass game.
Higbee can get open along the boundaries and pick up tough yards after the catch. Parkinson activates the screen game with his bruising style. Allen, who fills a fullback role within the run game with the way he motions behind the line of scrimmage, can win a jump ball when called upon. And Ferguson can line up across the formation and create downfield separation.
As 13-personnel began to be fully incorporated into the offense, Stafford was happy to go to any of the four. In three straight games in the middle of the season, all four caught at least one pass. And all four caught at least one touchdown during that same stretch.
The last of that three-game stretch was a 42-26 victory over the 49ers in which the Rams ran 13-personnel on four of their six touchdowns, a performance that Allen felt set the standard for what the team could do with three tight ends on the field.
“You can kind of pick your poison with how you want to activate those guys and with how Sean and Mike have activated those guys,” Scheelhaase said. “So that’s what’s been cool is it’s kind of looked different each week, what our package is, how we utilize that personnel, even how we utilize each of those guys within it.”
And how the Rams are able to utilize their lone receiver on the field alongside the big men.
With the tight ends’ gravitational pull bringing more defenders into the box to protect against the run, that by necessity meant that defenses left cornerbacks on islands against receivers.
And when that receiver is world-renowned man coverage beater Davante Adams, good things happen. Like a 0.50 EPA per play in passing situations out of 13-personnel – compared to 0.17 EPA per play in 11 – and Adams leading the league in touchdown receptions despite not playing the final three games of the year.
“As challenging as the game plan can be and what we do, there’s some simplicity that is provided by that there’s only so many defenders on the field, there are several gaps that they have to defend,” Scheelhaase explained. “And when you’ve got a guy that you feel like it’s hard to say one person can cover him throughout the course of the game, it definitely gives you some advantages that you’re constantly looking for.”
Put it on the field
The Rams allowed the week-by-week nature of game planning to dictate how they installed 13-personnel after the bye. Each week, the coaches parceled out a few plays based off that week’s matchup, then built on it each week.
It became such a part of the Rams’ offensive identity that when Higbee went on injured reserve with an ankle sprain, the team signed veteran Nick Vannett so that the offense wouldn’t be an injury away from having to abandon the game plan any given Sunday.
“It kept adding up more and more just because we could do so much out of it,” Ferguson said. “Really just the trust that Coach [McVay] has put into the tight ends for being to do all kinds of things, spreading it out, lining up tight and learning those things on the fly was huge.”
Players get their game plans delivered to their tablets the morning of each week’s first practice. The offensive plan is arranged with 11-personnel first, then 12, then 13.
But every week in the tight ends room, the group scrolls right past the first two to get to 13 before Huff begins his presentation.
“Yeah, 11-personnel, we don’t like that,” Allen said. “Instantly, first thing, we call it ‘Man Time.’ When we do our install, we’ll do 11-personnel install, and then on the slide once it’s time for 13-personnel, it’ll be ‘13-P, Man Time.’”
At the end of last season, McVay talked about wanting a more versatile offense. At the time, he discussed this idea in terms of withstanding injuries without a drop-off in production, not in terms of mixing up personnel groupings. Huff said 13-personnel was not part of the discussion when he interviewed for the tight ends coach job last winter.
But what 13 has done is allow McVay to follow the blueprint his defensive coordinator Chris Shula laid out in terms of incorporating every player into a game plan.
“We’re always figuring out ways to try to be able to advance,” McVay said. “I just think the more ball you get exposed to, different groupings, different personnel matches, different ways that you can take advantage of your players, it has been stimulating for our coaching staff.”
Whether or not this grouping carries over to next season – or if the rest of the league tries to follow suit – remains to be seen. But it was right for these Rams, with this group of tight ends.
“You see some of these tight ends around the league, they’re considered the pass catchers, they’re considered the run blockers, the donkeys. We got four or five guys that can do a little bit of both,” Higbee said. “It’s been fun, it’s been great. I love seeing the guys ball and get excited for each other and in each other’s successes.”
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