Mike LaFleur knows all Rams secrets, but can Sean McVay outsmart former pupil?

The Cardinals don’t have many advantages going up against the Rams on Sunday at SoFi Stadium.Sure, they have Trey McBride, an otherworldly tight end who can catch anything in his orbit, but if there is a distinct advantage for the double-digit underdog Cardinals, it lives somewhere inside the mind of coach Mike LaFleur.Sitting inside LaFleur’s head is a treasure trove of intelligence on the Rams that would make any CIA operative jealous.He has three years of Sean McVay’s offensive playbook.He knows all of Matthew Stafford’s tendencies.

He knows the terminology that the head coach and quarterback like to use at the line of scrimmage.Hand signals, audibles and adjustments that make one of football’s most sophisticated offenses tick.Now, the former Rams offensive coordinator returns to SoFi armed with three seasons of institutional knowledge, but there’s still one rather inconvenient problem:Just because there’s familiarity with your opponent doesn’t mean you have the personnel to stop them.LaFleur’s Cardinals are 1-4 and have surrendered a whopping 142 points over their last four games.

They enter Sunday’s NFC West showdown as 12 ½-point underdogs.For McVay, facing former assistants has become an occupational hazard of building one of the NFL’s most influential coaching trees.At least eight former coordinators have moved into head coaching or prominent coordinator positions around the league.And those reunions haven’t always been pleasant.McVay is 5-8 against his former assistants, including five losses to Packers coach Matt LaFleur, Mike’s older brother.Then there’s Raheem Morris, whose familiarity with the Rams has created headaches in Atlanta and now with the 49ers.The Rams have become football’s version of a prestigious university whose graduates keep returning to embarrass the professor.And Mike LaFleur is the most recent and dangerous graduate yet.He spent 2023 through 2025 alongside Stafford and McVay, studying their habits, d...