Sean McVay’s Rapid Rise With Rams Offers NFL Coaching Search Lessons

With firing and hiring season drawing near, revisiting how Los Angeles found its coach and the steps other teams should follow to find similar success

The moment Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff and general manager Les Snead knew they had the right guy to be the team’s next head coach came when Sean McVay started talking about staffing, and Wade Phillips’ name first came up.

McVay planned to bring the ex-Broncos, Bills and Cowboys head coach to run his defense, but it wasn’t just the stacking of the staff that got the Los Angeles brass excited about the idea. It was deeper than that, going back to the research they’d done after firing Jeff Fisher a month earlier.

They were told, first and foremost, to focus on the person. And McVay’s tentative inclusion of Phillips told the interviewers two things about the interviewee. It spoke to McVay’s reputation, that a respected coach with Phillips’ credentials, and options, would choose to go with the young Redskins offensive coordinator. But even more, it struck the Rams’ guys that McVay, then 30, didn’t feel threatened by Phillips.

“His true confidence in his expertise actually allows him to be extremely, extremely humble,” Snead said Wednesday night, between draft meetings. “That gives you the element where he’s not threatened. It’s just, ‘Hey, we’re two people who, let’s call it what it is, are good at what we do and we respect each other. And that respect will make us great teammates.’”

On Sunday, the Rams will be in Arizona. With a win there, they’ll lock up their first winning season in 14 years, and they’ll do it with a quarter of the schedule left. Suffice it to say, they feel pretty good that they got the right coach, and person.

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In this week’s Game Plan, we’ll delve into the idea of Peyton Manning running a team, and check on what his little brother Eli has left as a player. We’ll also check out the Steelers offense, the Chargers’ ethos, and the schism that’s grown between factions of players connected to the social justice movement of the last year-plus.

We’re starting with the Rams, and for a very specific reason—it’s about to be coaching search season, and a lot of teams screw it up. Just look at the numbers, and the turnover, and you’ll see how many get it wrong. Over the past seven offseasons, there have been 51 coaching changes. Seven teams haven’t made changes, meaning the other 25 are averaging two changes during that stretch.

The Rams certainly hadn’t been above the fray either. Scott Linehan and Steve Spagnuolo lasted three seasons apiece, and Fisher hung on for five, with the three of those guys combining for zero trips to the playoffs.

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• Define what you want. The Rams fired Fisher with three weeks left in the season, which allowed them to start the process early, and it kicked off with some research. More specifically, the team started panning people inside the building (players, trainers, scouts, equipment people) about what was lacking. Then the Rams started to kick the tires on the methods of some other teams, like the Steelers.

The biggest thing to come from that work: Xs-and-0s were a small piece of what the team should seek, which was part of why the Rams inquired about position coaches like Steve Wilks and Mike Vrabel. And yes, McVay has that part of it, but it was more important, based on their own self-study, for the Rams to emphasize accountability, communication and energy. McVay quickly made it clear he had those things, too.

“You’re hiring the person,” Snead says. “Going with that, you quickly realize the head coach is directly managing some of the most important people in the building, and that’s the 53 players on the roster, and the 15-20 coaches.”

• Identify and assess the coach’s weaknesses. This one was easy for the Rams to find; McVay hadn’t yet turned 31 when he was interviewed. Over time, though, it became clear that age was really the only roadblock standing in the brass’ way.

Within the first 20 minutes of McVay’s interview, Snead made a note to himself: “Age doesn’t matter. It’ll be if we want to hire him or not.” And the research backed that up. For every Lane Kiffin washing out, you had a Mike Tomlin thriving. For the Josh McDanielses and Raheem Morrises, you have your Jon Grudens.

“Thirty doesn’t matter, it might actually be a positive here,” Snead said. “Those most important people in your building? Hey, most of them are in their early 20s.”

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• Vet the candidate. The Rams actually reached out to the agents of players who played for the team, but not unit, of each candidate. So in McVay’s case, that meant Snead and Demoff gathering testimonials from Redskins’ defensive players, all of whom helped the push the process along.

“It was unanimous,” Snead said. “I can remember showing Sean the texts, and it was relayed through their agents, what players he’d touched, coached, mentored along the way had said about him. It was one of the more touching moments for Sean to see it. And again, it was unanimous: ‘home run,’ ‘no-brainer,’ ‘hire him tomorrow,’ ‘best teacher I’ve had,’ ‘best motivator,’ ‘best coach to put us in position succeed as a unit, as well as individuals.’ A potpourri of compliments from a lot of different personalities on that team.”

• Project him. This is where the Xs-and-Os come in, via board work.

“There were moments in there where I felt like I could run his offense,” Snead says. “I wasn’t gifted with genetic capabilities of some of these QBs, their minds to take in info and process it so quickly. But there were moments where it was like, ‘I certainly couldn’t throw it like they do, but I may be able to play QB for this guy.’ He was so clear and concise and such a good teacher. … You could see the chess being played but it was in a manner where you felt like you were playing checkers.”

So the Rams got him with Goff in a similar setting, and Goff told Demoff and Snead afterwards: “I hope we’re hiring that guy, because after spending two hours with him, I don’t want to play for anyone else.”

• Have the timing line up: This wound up working out for the Rams. The Redskins’ ouster on Week 17 allowed them to get to McVay quicker than they thought they’d be able. That means by the time a second team, the Niners, decided to bring him in, McVay had already built a relationship with the Rams. Demoff called McVay before the San Francisco interview and told him, “Do well, but not too well.”

The Niners interview went well. But by then, the Rams were moving to make him their coach. And this advanced a train of thought they’d come to adopt in coming to a comfort level with his age.

“Get him now, don’t let somebody else get him,” Snead said. “Don’t come out of this saying he’s a year away, and then in a year, somebody else gets him, because that somebody else is gonna beat you with him.”

It’s an understatement to say this all worked out. The Rams are in first in the NFC West, second in the NFL in point differential, and second in points scored, a year after being as listless as they come offensively. Jared Goff’s broken through, Todd Gurley’s revitalized, the offensive line’s stabilized and Phillips is doing what McVay figured he would with the defense.

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Is there another McVay out there for someone in 2018? It’s hard to say now. But above all else, the process we just outlined should give teams a decent idea of who they’re hiring. It did for the Rams, who, by the way, aren’t as stunned as you might think about their new coach’s swift assimilation to the role.

“It’s the easy thing to say. But I’d probably be lying [to say I’m surprised],” Snead says. “He hasn’t exceeded expectations because you just had gut intuition that he was going to be special. Did I think we’d go from 32nd to 2nd in points per game? Maybe not. Did I think we’d have eight wins? I’m never thinking how many wins you’ll have after 11 games. So I don’t think he’s exceeded our expectations. But …”

Whatever McVay’s doing sure is working.