W
hen he took the reins of the Los Angeles Rams in January 2017, 30-year-old Sean McVay became the youngest head coach in NFL history. In just one year he transformed a last-place, 4-12 team into a blistering, attacking, 11-5 division winner boasting the highest-scoring offense in the league. It was only the second time that an NFL team had accomplished such a dizzying turnaround.
McVay was named NFL Coach of the Year in 2017, yet he insisted on sharing the limelight with his players. “Our guys did such a good job of taking it one day at a time,” he said of the Rams’ first winning season since 2003 and first playoff appearance since 2004. “You can’t look ahead in such a competitive league. We got into an everyday rhythm and for the most part played consistently throughout the season. As the year progressed, the guys started to realize that we were a pretty good football team.”
Coaching supernova. Genius dork. The media found creative names galore for this meteoric rise, but the real question wasn’t how he could so quickly ascend to the top rung of the football ladder so much as how he could possibly fail to. Because, if anyone was born to do something, McVay was born — and bred — to be a football coach.