How the legacy of Sean McVay changed the NFL

Sean McVay has five full seasons as head coach in the NFL and already has a legacy that will echo for decades. At 36, McVay is younger than many of 0ur YebScore readers – he became the youngest head coach in league history when he took over the Los Angeles Rams in 2017 and has led the team to positive records every year since.

Now a Super Bowl champion and with a far-above-average win percentage, McVay could retire tomorrow and his fingerprints would be in the league for a long time to come – especially with previous offseason rumors that he could be heading towards a career as a commentator to spend more time with the family, even though he’s staying for now. He has already reached the ultimate goal and has nothing to prove.

If you haven’t followed the NFL in a long time, it might seem a little hard to believe, but the Rams of the early 1900s were a disappointing team (to say the least), particularly on the offensive side of the ball. Even before McVay’s arrival, the team’s last positive season was in 2003 – and in 2016, with rookie Jared Goff, the team had the worst offense in the NFL, with Jeff Fisher as head coach.

McVay led a sudden and impressive change: from the worst offense in the league to the best. His offensive system was simple and had the same principles for practically the entire Goff era: use of play-action, attacking midfield, excessive use of 11 personnel (3 WRs, 1 TE and 1 RB) and lots of under-center snaps.

It worked for quite some time. The Rams made the playoffs in three of the Goff-McVay duo’s four seasons, reached Super Bowl LIII, and despite failing to win the ring back then, it was clear that McVay’s age was not an issue. He connected well with his players, who loved and valued playing for him; he had an effective and well-designed offensive system.

But the last step had to be taken.

In 2020, it became clear that Jared Goff’s limitations as a quarterback kept the Rams from going further. Los Angeles risked it all: trading several first-round picks for Matthew Stafford hoping he would be the piece that took McVay’s attack further, even if the offensive principles needed to be changed. And that’s what McVay did: more shotgun, more vertical passes, less play-action.

The main virtue of a coach will always be to give his players the best possible condition for success. And that the coach has done very well since the beginning of his career. The youngest coach in history is now the youngest coach to win the Super Bowl, and deservedly so.

If the Rams’ coach decides in one, two, or three years that it’s time to quit coaching and spend more time with his family, nothing will erase his short and incredible story. The NFL, a traditionally inflexible and very traditionalist league, now welcomes the hiring of younger, offensive-minded coaches.

Just look at the coaching tree that McVay created during that time. Matt LaFleur, current head coach of the Green Bay Packers, has won at least 13 games in all of his seasons leading the team; Zac Taylor, the head coach McVay defeated in the Super Bowl back in February, was his assistant for the Rams’ first two years; Brandon Staley, head coach for the Los Angeles Chargers, was McVay’s defensive coordinator for 2020, and lastly, Kevin O’Connell was the Rams’ offensive coordinator for the past two years before taking over the Minnesota Vikings for the past two weeks.

The league has seen a greater emphasis on 11 personnel since the beginning of the last decade, but few offensive minds have done as good a job of building on that alignment as McVay. A young coach who knows very well how to give his team the best chance of winning.

Despite speculation and rumors, McVay decided to run it back – alongside Aaron Donald – for the 2022 season. He’s a coach who made history in the NFL and nothing’s going to erase that.