Sean McVay is a unique coach in a lot of ways. Not only was he hired by the Rams as the youngest head coach in NFL history (and is still the youngest in the league right now), but his offensive philosophy is also groundbreaking, relying so heavily on 11 personnel with pre-snap motion and deception.

Additionally, McVay is also blazing his own trail when it comes to pre-season preparation. Last year, he caught everyone off guard when he sat all of his starters for the entire preseason. There was skepticism, praise and utter surprise from those watching his plan unfold. Many wondered if it would cause the Rams to come out of the gate sluggish and rusty against the Raiders in Week 1.

Sure, they may not have been all that sharp in the first half, but there were no ill-effects from starters sitting out the preseason. The Rams didn’t score fewer than 33 points in a game until Week 6, finished the regular season 13-3 and made it all the way to the Super Bowl.

After having so much success in 2018, McVay is expected to hold his starters out of the preseason once again. And with it being a copy-cat league, at least a few teams will likely follow the 33-year-old coach’s lead.

Instead of putting his top players in harm’s way during the preseason where so many stars get injured, he’s using joint practices with the Raiders and Chargers as substitutes for the four exhibition games.

“In a lot of ways I think you can expect us to approach the preseason similar with the players that have played a lot of snaps, that we know are proven players in this league. Unless we feel necessary, they’re probably not going to participate in the preseason,” McVay said on the Doug Gottlieb Show. “So that’s why there’s a premium on some of these practices where we’re going to get a chance to compete against the Chargers twice while we’re out here and then the Raiders twice when we go up to Napa. If we feel like we’ve gotten the work necessary, then that can rally almost serve as the preseason work in a little bit more of a controlled setting.”

This may not seem like a revolutionary idea, but McVay is one of the first coaches – if not the absolute first – to reserve the preseason for young players and prioritize joint practices for veterans. All of the Rams’ top players participated in Thursday’s joint practice with the Chargers, including Todd Gurley, Cooper Kupp, Andrew Whitworth and Eric Weddle.

It was a clean practice with no extra-curricular activity, which was the goal. McVay wanted a controlled setting with drills both coaches wanted to run, which isn’t the case in the preseason.

“When we go out to Dallas, that’ll be a great chance in our second preseason game for some of our younger players to play against a division winner, a playoff team and a team we saw last year,” McVay said of the Rams’ preseason game in Hawaii.

McVay’s approach goes beyond the preseason, too. Last season, the Rams had fewer “full-go” practices than just about any other team. Veterans got Wednesdays off and McVay would often replace normal practices with walk-throughs, especially late in the season.

As a result, the Rams were one of the healthiest teams in the NFL, and have been exactly that for a few years now. That’s a testament to their strength and conditioning staff, but also McVay’s out-of-the-box thinking.

There’s no reason to believe McVay will stray from what worked so well last season, either. The Rams have a walk-through on Friday and another on Sunday, giving players small breaks after joint practices with the Chargers.

Walk-throughs still serve a purpose mentally for players, putting an emphasis on the pre-snap aspect of plays and then the first few seconds after the snap.

“I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned, one of the things being a head coach is how the sports science plays into how we really want to train and practice,” McVay said. “It’s not exclusive to veteran players. Eric’s moving around really well and he’s got a lot of explosiveness and juice in those legs. But I think whether it’s Eric, Andrew Whitworth or even some of our players – the Brandin Cooks, Robert Woods, Todd Gurley – we want to make sure they’re as fresh as possible. So there’s a big emphasis on the above-the-neck, the walk-throughs where it’s not as physically tolling, but it is above-the-neck information that they can process – the post-snap things that occur. But so much of what occurs in this game is the pre-snap and then the first few steps as far as our techniques, our fundamentals, our communication that’s entailed. Those are the things we place a premium on. And then when we do go, we go full-speed but in a little bit fewer reps than typically what I had been accustomed to before I had been here.”

That last sentence is important to note. The Rams use shorter and lighter practices often, which is atypical of what McVay experienced as an assistant before coming to L.A. After winning 24 regular-season games and making the playoffs twice, his plan has clearly proven effective.

Clay Matthews has shown an appreciation for McVay’s approach, saying “they do a fantastic job of taking care of some of the vets.”

“To have a day off like this, I didn’t get many days off in Green Bay,” Matthews said this week.

The players appreciate McVay not pushing them to their limits every week in practice, and if it helps them stay healthy for all 16 games, that’s a huge plus. As long as the Rams keep winning and remaining durable, expect McVay’s approach to not only continue in Los Angeles, but spread throughout the NFL to other teams.