Greg Olsen to Rich Eisen: Tight end is a premier position (3:22)Greg Olsen joins Rich Eisen and breaks down the growing importance of tight ends in NFL offenses. (3:22)
play0:39What Kenyon Sadiq brings to the JetsWhat Kenyon Sadiq brings to the Jets
Why did it work for the Rams — and can it still work for other teams?
What McVay did was almost entirely out of character for his offenses, going back to his first year with the Rams in 2017. McVay’s response to the Nacua injury was to go from 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end, three wide receivers) to 13 personnel (one running back, three tight ends, one wide receiver). While that seems logical enough, it undersells just how stunning of a change that is for McVay.
It worked. The Rams blew out the Jaguars. And while Nacua came back the following week, McVay didn’t stop. The Rams transformed their offense in the middle of the season, won Matthew Stafford an MVP, dominated opposing teams on the ground and came within a stop of making it to the Super Bowl.
And now, after a tight end-intensive Day 2 of the NFL draft, it’s becoming clear that other teams intend to follow in his footsteps. They’ll just need to master one problem: McVay’s offense is the only one that succeeded by going jumbo last season.
How did he change the league? Why did it work for the Rams? And can anyone else find success emulating McVay in 2026?
Go back to that legendary 54-51 win over the Chiefs in 2018. Outside of the two kneel-downs that ended the game, McVay’s Rams were in 11 personnel for every offensive snap. In fact, they were in 11 personnel on just under 91% of their offensive snaps that entire season, the highest rate in the NFL by more than 15 percentage points. Like every team, Los Angeles would occasionally shift into larger groupings near the goal line, but it was essentially living in 11 personnel.
Since McVay took over in 2017, six of the 10 highest single-season 11 personnel usage rates are from his Rams — including 2024, when the Rams were second in the NFL at 82.4%. The only team ahead of them that season was the Falcons, whose offensive coordinator was Zac Robinson, McVay’s former assistant in Los Angeles. The other teams in the top 10? The 2022 Bengals and 2023 Panthers, whose offenses were built by Zac Taylor and Thomas Brown. You can guess which coaching tree they came from.
The idea of using three tight ends? It simply wasn’t on McVay’s radar. When the Rams used 13 personnel in the early days of the McVay era, it was almost entirely as their formation for kneel-downs. The Rams used 13 personnel for a total of two snaps in 2021, zero snaps in 2022, one snap in 2023 and three snaps in 2024. That’s six snaps over the previous four seasons. And with Nacua on the field for the first five and a half games of 2025, the Rams didn’t run 13 personnel once.
Against the Jaguars in Week 7, though, McVay threw the changeup. He ran 13 personnel on nearly 39% of Los Angeles’ offensive snaps. The Rams won comfortably 35-7. While the headlines from the day revolved around Travis Hunter’s biggest game to date as a receiver and Adams’ three short-yardage touchdown catches, the real story was looming underneath.
While Stafford deservedly earned plaudits for a career year, the Rams were quietly a historically efficient rushing attack. McVay’s run game posted a 51.6% success rate, a figure which trailed only his own 2018 offense and the 2022 Eagles for the best marks of the past decade. The Rams averaged nearly 5.0 yards per carry out of 13 personnel and more than 8.0 yards per dropback when Stafford attempted to pass.
The Rams weren’t the first team to replace their smaller personnel with larger, tight end-intensive offensive groupings, of course. More teams look to McVay for inspiration and innovation than anybody else in the league bar perhaps Kyle Shanahan, but the Rams aren’t alone on this island. The league shifted toward smaller, wider groupings over the previous decade, and this return to bigger personnel started before the Rams adopted it in full force.
There were exceptions, of course. The Patriots got ahead of the curve by drafting Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez and leaning into 12 personnel (one running back, two tight ends). In San Francisco, Shanahan built his offense around many of the same principles as McVay, but he preferred playing with a fullback in Kyle Juszczyk out of 21 personnel (two backs, one tight end).
What has also happened over the past few years is teams diving even further into those bigger personnel groupings. The Browns leaned heavily into 13 personnel in the 2020 and 2021 seasons before trading for Deshaun Watson. One of Kevin Stefanski’s assistants there was Drew Petzing, who became the Cardinals’ offensive coordinator in 2023. His Arizona teams continued to push the envelope on 13 personnel usage, running it a league-high 15.6% of the time in 2024.
Right behind the Cardinals were Arthur Smith’s Steelers, who had a quasi-offensive lineman in their 13 groupings with 6-foot-7 tight end Darnell Washington. The Bills went in a different direction, using a sixth offensive lineman on more than 14% of their snaps in 2024, most often tackle Alec Anderson. Offenses are accustomed to using extra linemen in short yardage, but the Bills were using a sixth lineman up and down the field and nearly twice as often as anyone else in the league.
1. They force defenses to make personnel decisions they don’t love. As offenses shifted toward 11 personnel and getting more wide receivers on the field, defenses responded by using their nickel and dime sub packages more often. McVay and Shanahan wanted to relentlessly attack linebackers with their passing game to create explosive plays, and one of the ways to prevent that from happening was to flood the field with defensive backs.
2. They shrink the defensive playbook by presenting something defenses don’t see very often. So many of the league’s great defensive coaches have exotic pressures lined up for particular opponents. Coaches such as Todd Bowles and Steve Spagnuolo have dialed up key pressures at the right moment on the biggest stage in years past, while one unexpected blitz pattern from Mike Macdonald helped the Seahawks blow out the Patriots in last season’s Super Bowl.
Defensive coaches naturally build most of their game plans and schemes to account for the things they’re likely to see most often out of offenses. As you give defenses things they see less often via your offensive personnel or pre-snap alignment, their checks and reactions to those looks are more predictable and consistent from week to week.
One way the Rams get there is by using a nub tight end, when the only eligible receiver on one side is an inline tight end, with the other receivers lined up to the other side of the field. The Rams lined up with a nub tight end a league-high 33% of the time. They lined up in trips out of 13 personnel 51% of the time, which ranked among the league’s highest rates.
Of course, defenses are trying to do the same thing. The weakest and most predictable link in the offensive chain at the moment is pass protection rules and how teams will try to block up certain pre-snap presentations by the defense. Mike Macdonald’s blitz philosophy is built around identifying those consistent rules and then taking advantage of where the line is heading to generate free rushers and mismatches for his defenders.
McVay already has arguably the league’s best blocking wideout in Nacua, and he will leverage Nacua’s ability by working play-action off it through the middle of the offensive line. Nacua will release next to a guard before running his route away from a suddenly-terrified linebacker. When McVay can make his pre-snap and even post-snap run motion look identical to the play-action game, it puts opposing defenders in impossible binds.
5. It creates a universe where teams are building cheaper offenses. While I’m not sure this applies to the Rams, leaning into tight end-heavy builds is a way for front offices to save money at receiver, especially in spots where the marginal returns might not be very significant. Everybody wants a Nacua, Chase or Justin Jefferson, of course, and they’re happy to pay the market rate for that privilege. As you start getting into second or third wideouts, though, the prices become less palatable.
While wide receiver compensation has skyrocketed, the tight end market has slowly chugged uphill. No tight end has managed to make $20 million per year on a contract, but 23 different wideouts are making that or more per year on their existing deals. The best wide receivers are making double what the likes of top tight ends Kittle and Trey McBride are earning.
In the middle class of receivers, there’s a disconnect. Would you rather have Wan’Dale Robinson and Rashid Shaheed, each of whom signed for $17 million per year this offseason, or Kittle and McBride, who are at $19 million per year? Starting tight ends such as Cade Otton ($10 million) and Isaiah Likely ($13 million) signed for what third or fourth wide receivers such as Dontayvion Wicks ($12.5 million) and Jalen Nailor ($11.7 million) agreed to on their own offseason pacts.
There will always be a market for superstars, and the Rams were reportedly interested in A.J. Brown this offseason. But once you get past the true target vacuums and matchup destroyers at wide receivers, general managers might find it more cost-effective to build their secondary and tertiary options in the passing game around a tight end because they’re likely to be much cheaper to sign to extensions after their rookie deals expire.
And that leads us to Day 2 of last month’s draft. After Kenyon Sadiq came off the board to the Jets in Round 1, eight tight ends came off the board in Rounds 2-3. Since 1970, there have been only two years when as many as nine tight ends came off the board by the end of Round 3 or eight tight ends were selected between Rounds 2 and 3. It happened in 2023, when the likes of Sam LaPorta, Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft were drafted on Day 2, and then again two weeks ago in Pittsburgh.