Quick: Name an NFL head coach who is most known for not playing his starters in the preseason? Correct, 100% of you answered “Sean McVay”. In fact, since his second year as the L.A. Rams head coach in 2018, when he decided to protect starters in a preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens (a game in which backup corner Kevin Peterson tore his ACL), McVay has felt like the exhibition contests are not worth the risk for any players he feels could help the team in the regular season.
Here’s another pop quiz: Name a player from the last six years who is most known for getting into joint practice fights during the preseason? Correct, 101% of you answered “Aaron Donald”. The last time that McVay did play starters in the preseason, 2017, Aaron Donald was engaged in a holdout with the team. There is no record of Donald playing in the preseason for McVay.
Okay, final question, hot shot: How many times did McVay punish Donald by making him play in a preseason game after he got into a training camp fight? Correct. 0% of the time.
So I found it pretty strange that we all aced this quiz with flying colors, that McVay doesn’t play starters in the preseason, that Donald got into maybe the most training camp fights in the NFL in the last five years, and that Donald was never punished by playing in a preseason game, yet SI’s Albert Breer tweeted on Tuesday that McVay invented a rule to punish starters who fight by making them play in the preseason.
No, Sean McVay did not do that.
In fact, I can prove it.
(I can’t prove he didn’t invent it.)
But I can come close to proving that this weird story about punishing starters who fight that started on Tuesday with Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo then was transferred to McVay by Breer is probably not attributable to either of them. It might just be that Mayo, like me, also listens to The O-Line Committee podcast.
And I can guarantee you that he didn’t make Aaron Donald start a preseason game in 2022 after he fought the Bengals, Al.
Or in 2020. Or in 2021. Or in 2023. (He fights a lot. It made him good, probably.)
On Sunday, The O-Line Comittee tweeted this snippet from their show, a moment in which former NFL offensive lineman Jeremiah Sirles talks about how a former coach of his came up with a rule that was more effective at stopping practice fights than fines would be:
(I feel compelled to add that O-Line Committee’s tweet has been viewed 2,000 times, and Breer’s post has been viewed over 90,000 times.)
“I remember we had a joint practice before the third preseason game, the coaches handled this in the absolute perfect way. They had a team meeting before the joint practice, he goes “Men, if you fight and you’re a starter, you will have to play in this preseason game. If you fight and you’re a backup trying to fight for a role, you will not play.””
For the record, Sirles never played for McVay or Mayo. Sirles was on the 2014 Chargers, the 2015-2017 Vikings, the 2018 Panthers, and the 2018 Bills. He mentions in the actual episode of the podcast that it was probably the 3rd or 4th preseason game in 2017. (The Vikings didn’t play the Rams in the 2017 preseason, in case you were wondering.)
It’s just so interesting how The O-Line Committee podcast tells a story last week, puts it on Twitter on Sunday, then Mayo almost repeats it verbatim on Tuesday, and then Albert Breer takes it up on himself to attribute it to a coach who would be basically the polar opposite, most easily-ruled out example that anyone could POSSIBLY think of in the NFL.
Sean McVay doesn’t play any starters in the preseason and because of that he needs all of his fringe roster players to play most of the preseason games. It doesn’t make any sense that the rule would be attributed to McVay, but then again does anything about football make sense at this time of year?
