PALM BEACH, Fla. – There's nothing extraordinary about a head coach participating in personnel decisions, especially in free agency, for an NFL team.
However, not many go to the lengths of sending own-voice-narrated highlight cut-ups of the player's film like the Rams' Sean McVay did to veteran wide receiver Davante Adams a few weeks ago.
The personalized effort paid off: Adams agreed to terms on a two-year deal with the Rams a couple days later.
"You watch that tape with New York last year, you watch what he's done with the Raiders for the last handful of years, going back to Green Bay, it is some special stuff," McVay said last week during his roundtable session at the NFL Annual Meeting in Palm Beach, Florida. "And so you cut some of those things up, and it was easy to narrate, because it was all a bunch of fun things to be able to watch, and I think he had some fun with it.
"I knew this, when I sent him that video, he's either thinking one of two things: 'Man, I like this guy, or he's freaking whacked.' Probably both. But he decided to come to us, so we'll take it."
Adams estimated it was nearly 10 minutes' worth of video McVay sent him while the All-Pro receiver was in Japan. "That video was so long that he thought his WiFi was messed up because it took forever to load," McVay said.
The communication from McVay was so frequent, "I thought he was out there too, just based off I was talking to him more than I was talking to my wife," Adams said with a laugh.
"He said, 'You sound like Gruden on this thing!'" McVay said. "So it was basically, I have video on the film, and then just kind of voicing over, having some fun, narrating it, if you will. It was funny.
"I had held the video on my phone, and it was like, I got the film right here. I said, 'How about this play?!' And going through it, it was fun."
Aside from the 2023 offseason when several roster departures were required to engineer a healthier cap situation, Los Angeles has otherwise been no stranger to being a big player with big names in free agency.
In McVay's first offseason as head coach, the Rams signed veteran left tackle Andrew Whitworth. The following year, they signed five-time Pro Bowl and three-time First-Team All-Pro defensive Ndomukong Suh to pair with Aaron Donald. Veteran linebacker Clay Matthews and veteran safety Eric Weddle signed a two-year deal in 2019. Veteran wide receiver Allen Robinson signed a three-year deal with the team in 2022.
Asked what it's like working with a head coach as active in recruiting free agents as McVay, general manager Les Snead said "that's perfect."
"Different than recruiting, like, 'Oh, let's go to a fancy dinner and recruit you,'" Snead said last week at the league meetings. "I think in that video, what Sean does is he recruits in a way of, here's what I think your superpowers are as a football player, here's how I think we can use them. This is how people have defended you in the past, this is how I think we can help you avoid that defense, and we're trying to do something special here.
"So point being is, I think if you're a football player who really, really cares about playing good football, and you want to be part of an ecosystem that wins – there will be an element to win as a team, some people some people are going to have to sacrifice at some point during every game, during every season. I always go, oh, it's recruiting, but's really Sean explaining to them, 'Hey, this is our ecosystem, this is how we do things, and if you want to be a part of that, man, we'd really love to have you. And if you don't, we'll always full for you and try to ruin your day if we play you."
