By the time Sean McVay walked into the Los Angeles Rams building in 2017, he felt less like a football coach and more like a disruption. A 30-year-old wunderkind with a memory that bordered on myth and a playbook that felt like a manifesto, little did he know, he would rewire the franchise’s DNA and rewrite history in the process.
The baby-faced McVay was the youngest head coach in NFL history.
Initially, the hire felt radical, borderline reckless. Players raved about his energy. His staff felt it. Executives felt it. The league felt it too.
The Rams went from stale to seismic overnight. The entire culture flipped. A team that had been wandering through irrelevance suddenly looked like a thesis statement on modern football. And the scoreboard told the truth: the highest-scoring offense in football, an instant contender, a team reborn. McVay wasn’t just calling plays — he was reprogramming the Rams’ identity.
And the accolades piled up fast. Almost too fast.
Youngest to reach a Super Bowl. Youngest to win one. A Lombardi Trophy in hand at 36.
McVay’s early Rams years were defined by velocity and victories. He was the embodiment of modern football’s obsession with youth, innovation, and cognitive horsepower, and anyone within McVay’s orbit reaped the benefits.
But success can trick you into believing the mountain is conquered forever. So following the Super Bowl victory in 2022, the next season came like a reckoning.
The title defense collapsed before it ever took shape. Injuries gutted the roster. Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp, Aaron Donald — all gone in waves. The team limped to a 5-12 record, the worst title defense in modern NFL history.
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McVay had never lost like that.
He questioned everything. His communication, his leadership, his energy, his humanity, all needed to change. Even McVay admitted he wasn’t always the coach, or person, he wanted to be.
Suddenly, the golden boy wasn’t untouchable anymore, and for the first time, McVay considered walking away.
“We were supportive of whatever decisions he wanted to make,” said Rams’ president Kevin Demoff at the time. “We gave him the space to make the decision that he was truly at peace with.”
Even though he had just signed an extension, people still speculated he would retire and become a broadcaster.
Instead of running, he owned the struggles.
He admitted the failures. The communication gaps. The accountability breakdowns. He admitted he wasn’t the coach — or the man — he wanted to be. That the pressure warped his presence. That the energy he brought into rooms wasn’t always healthy. That the joy had started leaking out of the work.
And that’s why he chose to stay.
The same coach who once sprinted through decisions started sleeping on them. The leader who once believed intensity was everything started to understand that presence mattered more.
Inside the building, people noticed it first.
Demoff talked about a different McVay — one who slowed down.
“He gives off a ton of energy in the building, and he’s the heartbeat of the way the organization goes, but he also benefits greatly from the energy that people put into him,” said Demoff. “I think that’s probably the one place where you see a little bit of a difference.”
“We had to go through this,” added Rams’ general manager Les Snead, the man responsible for hiring McVay.
Schematically, he changed too. The wide-zone foundation that once torched defenses became predictable. So he pivoted. More downhill power from the run game. More physical fronts. More 12 and 13 personnel. More roster maximization.
Earlier this week, I reminded McVay about a quote from the late, great Kobe Bryant, who tragically passed away six years ago this Monday. The idea that the journey is the dream. Not the destination, not the parade at the end of it all, but the 5 AM alarms, late-night film sessions, and ups and downs along the way.
“I think the most important thing is when you’re on those journeys with people that you don’t want to let down, I think that takes the pressure off,” McVay said. “It allows you to enjoy those journeys…I’ve had a lot of growing up to do…Trophies are fleeting. Those other things last a lot longer and I think it keeps your cup full when that’s really where your intrinsic motivation comes from.”
Still under 40, McVay learned to stop chasing moments and start building meaning.
And Stafford, McVay’s quarterback, and projected NFL MVP this season, sees it daily.
“I think the coolest thing is just the honesty that we have with each other,” said Stafford. “Whether things go the way we want them to or not, it’s, ‘how can we fix them?’”
McVay admits he lost perspective in the early years, lost joy in the grind. Success made him urgent; failure made him reflective, and reflection changed him.
“I think what you try to do a much better job of is enjoying the journey,” said McVay. “I don’t know that I always did that. Sometimes you look back and you’re like, I really wish I would’ve taken that in and understood what a blessing it is to even be in these opportunities.”
He’s no longer the kid sprinting through the hallway with a laminated play sheet and caffeine in his bloodstream. He’s the man walking slower, seeing more, feeling more, leading with scars instead of slogans. He didn’t just grow as a coach — he survived himself.
McVay is no longer just chasing rings. He’s chasing meaning. And ironically, that might be what leads him back to the Super Bowl — again.
