print journalists on hiring McVay

Tweets on McVay from DC ESPN Writer Jason Reid@JReidESPN

Jason Reid@JReidESPN

Sean McVay is extremely smart and capable. He’s a hard worker and a good man. He gets it on every level. He also has a huge challenge ahead.

For Gruden’s sake, it’s imperative he hires an OC who was as organized as McVay. To quote a Redskins official, “Trust me, Jay needs Sean.”

The thing about McVay is that he’s fiercely loyal to the people for whom he works. He learned that from his grandfather.

When McVay was tight ends coach, lobbied hard for Reed. Used to go over plays with him at team hotel night before games.

Would actually set up chairs in conference room at hotel and go through route tree, what defenses might do, how Jordan should counter, etc.

Adam Schefter @AdamSchefter
Wade Phillips has agreed to terms to become Rams defensive coordinator, per source

McVay already showing he gets it as a head coach. Forget hiring your buddy. Hire the right guy.

McVay knew he needs an old hand. Say what you want to about Wade, but he can coach him some defense.

Believe it or not, Jay isn’t the most, well, detailed guy on some things, people in the building say. McVay is. I’ll leave it at that.

I don’t know if McVay will succeed in LA. That’s a tough gig. But he’s smart. And he understands people/players. Half battle.

Sean is a huge loss. Anyone who argues otherwise is either lying or has no clue of dynamics in building/on staff

Rams’ Sean McVay: Portrait of an up-and-coming coach

http://www.latimes.com/sports/rams/la-sp-rams-coach-mcvay-20170112-story.html

New Rams Coach Sean McVay played college football at Miami (Ohio), which is so prolific at developing coaches — Bo Schembechler, Ara Parseghian and John Harbaugh among others — it is known as the ‘’Cradle of Coaches.”

McVay, 30, might be mistaken for a coach coming straight out of the bassinet.

But McVay, who became the youngest head coach in NFL history when he was hired Thursday, has earned a reputation for detail, presence, organization and quarterback whispering while zooming through pro football’s coaching ranks.

Now, after three seasons as the Washington Redskins’ offensive coordinator, he takes over a Rams team that produced the NFL’s worst offense two years in a row.

The Rams believe McVay can lift quarterback Jared Goff, the No. 1 pick in the 2016 draft, as he did Kirk Cousins, Washington’s fourth-round draft pick in 2012 who has developed into one of the NFL’s top passers.

Cousins also is a believer in McVay.

“Really happy for Sean McVay!” Cousins tweeted after the Rams announced the hire.

In Washington, McVay also got “buy-in” and production from receiver DeSean Jackson, who will be a free agent.

“Like I told you last time I saw You before Exit Meetings You the Man Now !! Congrats To a young Talented Coach Sean McVay,” Jackson wrote on Instagram.

Alan Chadwick, McVay’s high school coach, said talent, competitiveness and football intellect were “probably something he inherited in his DNA.”

McVay’s grandfather, John, also played at Miami and played and coached in the NFL before becoming a San Francisco 49ers executive who helped put together five Super Bowl winners. His uncle, John McVay Jr., also played at Miami, and his father, Tim, played at Indiana.

McVay’s knack for nurturing quarterbacks is easy to trace: He starred at the position in high school in Georgia before switching to receiver in college.

At Marist High, McVay ran the triple option and helped lead his team to a state title.

“He was such a gifted athlete from an explosion, quickness and speed factor,” said Chadwick, who has coached at Marist for 41 years, the last 32 as head coach. “He was constantly making big plays, extending plays and making a lot of things out of things that just fell apart.”

McVay rushed for more than 1,000 yards and passed for more than 1,000 in each of his last two seasons.

Chadwick said McVay’s NFL pedigree showed up even then: He took his offensive linemen out to a nice dinner before a playoff game.

“‘You don’t do that kind of thing unless you’ve been there and been around programs that do that,” Chadwick said.

On one occasion, Chadwick said he went out of his way to let McVay know he was paying attention after the quarterback made a rare mistake.

“I was just running him up one side and down the other for about five minutes,” Chadwick said, laughing. “I turned around and walked away and then turned around and did it again. Just one of those things that says you expect him to be better.

“He walks back to where the trainers are and he just turned to the doctors who had been watching and listening. He says, ‘That’s OK, he thinks I’m hard of hearing.’ ”

As a Miami assistant, Shane Montgomery recruited McVay to play receiver. Montgomery, who became head coach near the end of the 2004 season, remembers an easy transition for an intelligent player with quarterback experience.

“They put a lot on him in high school,” said Montgomery, now offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Youngstown State. “He was such a great quarterback, he knew where the receivers should be.”

After redshirting, McVay’s freshman season was cut short because of injury. He caught 38 passes over the next two seasons.

McVay had one more year of eligibility but decided instead to pursue coaching.

“Up until then, he hadn’t said a lot about it,” Montgomery recalled.

McVay joined Jon Gruden’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers staff in 2008 as an offensive assistant.

When Gruden was fired, McVay became the receivers coach for the United Football League’s Florida Tuskers, working under former Rams coach Jim Haslett and with several other experienced coaches.

Receiver Dominique Thompson, who played in college at William & Mary, had NFL stints with the Rams and the Carolina Panthers before joining the Tuskers for training camp.

When he first met McVay, he thought he was a fellow player, not a coach.

“But working with him, you could see he was very high energy and that he definitely knew his stuff,” Thompson said. “He was wise beyond his years.”

McVay returned to the NFL the following year as Washington’s assistant tight ends coach, and then became the tight ends coach for the next three seasons before he was promoted to offensive coordinator.

In 2014, Washington was 13th in the NFL in total offense. After a drop to 17th in 2015, they jumped to third this season.

Now McVay moves from working with the offense to overseeing the entire team.

His former coaches said he would have no problem commanding the room.

“He’s got the total package,” Chadwick said. “Intelligence, knowledge, experience and the personality to work with people.”

Montgomery pointed to the role models McVay has worked with during his coaching career, including Jon and Jay Gruden and Mike Shanahan.

“You can never predict that someone can have a chance to be an NFL head coach at age 30,” Montgomery said. ‘If there’s someone who can do it, it’s a guy like him that’s very well-respected, a good communicator and very sharp.”

URL = http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/12/purdy-millennial-mcvay-should-throw-perf-fleek-into-rams-49ers-rivalry/

Purdy: Millennial McVay should throw perf fleek into Rams-49ers rivalry

The grandson of a beloved Bill Walsh aide will write another chapter in the two teams’ joint NFL history

SEAN McVAY … Interview: Monday … Current job: Washington offensive coordinator … Background: Turns 31 on Jan. 24. Grandson of 49ers Hall of Fame executive John McVay. Served as Washington’s offensive coordinator the past two seasons, ranking 17th and third in total yards. Coached Washington’s tight ends 2010-13. Got NFL break under Jon Gruden as Tampa Bay Buccaneers assistant wide receivers coach in 2008. Spent 2009 with UFL’s Florida Tuskers. Did you know: He would be youngest-ever NFL head coach, and only third hired before age 32 (Harland Svare, 1962 Rams; Lane Kiffin, 2007 Raiders). Others interested: Los Angeles Rams

By Mark Purdy | mpurdy@bayareanewsgroup.com |

PUBLISHED: January 12, 2017 at 5:33 pm | UPDATED: January 13, 2017 at 3:13 am
While the 49ers continue to take a deliberate path on their search for a new head coach — which is tied to their deliberate search for a new general manager and deliberate search for a new Paraag Marathe personal barrista — their rivals in Los Angeles moved more quickly to fill their vacancy.

Thursday morning, the Men Of Horned Helmets announced that their clipboard leader would be Sean McVay, who is 30 years old and touted as the youngest head coaching hire in modern NFL history.

(By the way, was just kidding about the Paraag personal barrista, though it sounds like something that Jed York’s right-hand man would certainly enjoy as he’s doing whatever he’s doing while being criticized rightly or wrongly for stuff I’m not sure he’s doing or not doing but what the heck.)

I think the McVay decision is a risky one for the Rams but a very inspired one. It’s risky because of his age and inexperience, of course. But let’s also be fair to the guy. McVay is not going to be a 30-year-old NFL head coach. His birthday is later this month. By the time he performs and real coaching activities, he will be 31.

That still makes him a risk. McVay has been a semi-successful NFL offensive coordinator with Washington. That means he has been in front of the offensive unit to install plays and direct traffic. But it’s a huge jump to suddenly be in charge of the entire team. And while the Rams have a young roster, professional football players are a tough audience to impress, especially if you are (A) no older than them and maybe even not as old as some of them and (B) have never played in the NFL yourself.

McVay falls into both of those categories. He needs to look out for the players in the back of the room who might be snickering and throwing spitballs. Otherwise, his first season is going to be a long one.

At the same time, as I said, the choice is inspired. McVay has a fine football heritage and classic football genes. His grandfather, John McVay, was one of the most respected football men ever. After coaching the New York Giants, he joined Bill Walsh to solidify the 49ers front office during the team’s golden era. I covered the team during those years. Walsh not only used McVay as a sounding board and trusted confidante, he benefited from the sway that McVay held with owner Eddie DeBartolo. More than once when DeBartolo wanted to fire Walsh, McVay calmed the waters and kept the machinery humming. A 49ers Hall of Fame member, he’s now retired and living in the Sacramento area.

Sean McVay did spend some time around the 49ers while growing up, although this tells you how young he is: McVay says it was a thrill when he was “a kid” to be around 49ers players such as Jeff Garcia and Terrell Owens. They played long after the team’s last Super Bowl.

As another interesting side note, Sean McVay is a graduate of Miami (Ohio), which is not only the alma mater of his grandfather but also of John Harbaugh, Bo Schembechler, Ara Parseghian, Paul Brown and many other famous coaches. (It’s also the the alma mater of my wife and my two sisters, who didn’t really care much about football but led me to make many visits to the campus and learn the school’s athletic lore. Coaches are a big deal there.)

Mainly, I am excited about McVay’s hiring because it will inject a little oomph into the 49ers-Rams rivalry which, let’s face it, has seen better days and could use more adrenaline. I’m not sure who the 49ers will hire as head coach but he’s bound to be older than McVay (although not quite as old as the other two division coaches, Pete Carroll and Bruce Arians, who are more than twice as old as the Rams’ new youngster).

Can you imagine the taunts McVay will face when he comes into opposing stadiums? And if he turns out to be a true head coaching genius, think of the conversation and why-didn’t-we-think-of-that second guessing that will provoke among the 49ers and other teams.

I just believe that as the NFL’s first head coaching millennial, McVay will bring some real fleek to the NFC West. (“Fleek” is a millennial slang word that means stylish.) So I declare this to be the perf move by the Rams. (“Perf” is millennial shorthand for “perfect.”)

(Full disclosure: I do not speak millennial dialect myself. So I picked up these words from an online slang dictionary.)

I also know that somewhere in Sacramento, there’s a very, very proud grandfather.

Mark Purdy is a sports columnist for the Bay Area News Group. He joined the organization’s Mercury News in 1984 and has covered 14 Olympic Games, more than 30 Super Bowls and more than 20 World Series. He concentrates mostly on the Bay Area’s professional teams but covers all sports. He was there for the first Sharks’ game at the Cow Palace in 1991 and documented the team’s 2016 Stanley Cup playoff run.

Rams’ Sean McVay’s ‘star’ quality outweighs age concern

http://www.dailynews.com/sports/20170113/rams-sean-mcvays-star-quality-outweighs-age-concern

THOUSAND OAKS >> Over his 31 years as head football coach of Marist School in Atlanta, Alan Chadwick rarely missed an opportunity to poke fun at his players when the situation called for it. If mental mistakes were made, no one was safe from his ribbing — not even a certain smooth-talking, triple-option quarterback from Marist’s 2003 state title team, who quickly became a favorite of coaches, teammates, school administrators, and before long, pretty much every coach in the football world.

“I would joke with him, ‘Well, you’ll never be a football coach,’” Chadwick remembers, laughing at the irony, all these years later.

On Friday, that quarterback, Sean McVay, stood in front of a podium at the Rams practice facility to accept a job that would make him, at 30, the youngest head coach in NFL history. As the rest of the sports world discussed his age, debating whether a coach so young could possibly succeed in the pressure cooker of the NFL, Chadwick beamed with pride, recalling all the signs from over a decade ago that his state title-winning quarterback might one day become the NFL’s most talked-about wunderkind coach.

Over the course of his stunning 14-year rise from high school quarterback to college receiver to NFL assistant to head coach, McVay has earned a reputation for detail, communication skills, energy, and passion. He has worked under the wing of Super Bowl-winning minds such as Jon Gruden, Mike Shanahan, and executive Bruce Allen. A spitting image of Gruden, voice and all, McVay radiates confidence and charisma in a strikingly similar way to the man who would become one of his most valued mentors.

After one interview with the Rams, McVay had already left such an impression. Upon leaving his interview, Rams COO Kevin Demoff remembers a silence settling briefly over the room. Demoff had made calls to Gruden and others who knew McVay. He’d listened to the often-effusive praise that followed him.

“The terms you heard were ‘brilliant,’ ‘star,’ ‘special.’” Demoff said. “When you asked people for the negatives, they just said he’s young.”

Demoff and general manager Les Snead wanted to believe his age wouldn’t matter. And as the Rams executives looked at each other, gauging the room, “we were almost afraid to be the first to say, ‘That’s the guy,’” Demoff said.

As a second interview was scheduled and a dinner at Spago in Beverly Hills, one by one, those who met him within the organization began to feel the same. Jared Goff offered his approval after one meeting. So did Marshall Faulk, who was present at the dinner. Soon, it became stunningly clear to those within the Rams front office how exactly McVay had moved so quickly through the football ranks.

“I’m sure no one, anywhere he’s been, would be surprised at how fast he’s risen,” Chadwick said.

The forging of that reputation began at Marist, where McVay made the unusual transition from defensive back to starting quarterback his junior season. Few could make such a change so seamlessly, Chadwick says, but McVay’s aptitude for football was extraordinary. He picked up Marist’s playbook with ease. Before long, he was making adjustments at the line of scrimmage. As a senior, he won a state player of the year award over Calvin Johnson. “A coach on the field,” McVay calls him.

Most of all, Chadwick found himself impressed with McVay’s leadership. After one season at Marist, McVay took his entire offensive line out to a Brazilian steakhouse for dinner as a thank you. In Marist’s state title victory, McVay played the entire second half with a broken foot, and afterward, according to Marist’s longtime sports information director, McVay urged reporters to “please not give me too much credit.”

“Our players would’ve followed him absolutely anywhere,” Chadwick said. Even Marist’s coaches had an “unbelievable reverence” for him.

Shane Montgomery could see that before he’d even met McVay. Then the offensive coordinator at Miami (Ohio), Montgomery visited Marist to see McVay in 2003, but found it difficult just to get past the school office. When the secretaries in the front office heard he was there to recruit McVay, they talked over each other, in order to pile on as much praise as possible.

“He just had a way of attracting people to him,” said Montgomery, who, during McVay’s sophomore year, became the head coach at Miami (Ohio).

McVay’s grandfather, John, was a Super Bowl-winning executive for the San Francisco 49ers, and so from childhood, McVay was indoctrinated with football. He broke down film. He read football books. During one recruiting visit with Montgomery, the coach remembers thinking, as they broke down film that McVay’s football intellect was “at a totally different level from other guys around him.”

It was of little surprise then, after his senior year in 2007, that McVay told Montgomery he planned to forgo a fifth-year to start his career in coaching. He’d already set up an interview at the NFL Scouting Combine with Gruden, who was a family friend. Montgomery told him he could be a “great one” someday.

”Just remember,” he joked, “someday you’re going to have to hire me.”

Weeks later, in Indianapolis, he and Gruden watched film together in Gruden’s hotel room. It was the only interview McVay would need.

It was as a 22-year-old coach’s assistant in Tampa Bay that he first met Demoff, who worked in the front office. Demoff could’ve never known the winding path that would bring McVay to Los Angeles. But even then, he remembered the young assistant leaving an impression on those around him.

“When you’re around football teams, the young guys who come in and help out, they don’t often stand out,” Demoff said. “But everyone kept talking about Sean’s maturity. Every step along the way, when people mentioned someone as rising star, and I thought, ‘I can see that.’”

Eight years later, Demoff could see it still, as McVay left the Rams front office lost for words. Concerns about his age had faded. After such a sterling first impression, they were sure that they’d found a coaching star, with plenty of rising left ahead.

How Sean McVay became the NFL’s newest prodigy

By Alden Gonzalez

http://www.espn.com/blog/los-angeles-rams/post/_/id/32766/how-sean-mcvay-became-the-nfls-newest-prodigy

LOS ANGELES — Jon Embree left his job coaching Washington Redskins tight ends to become head coach at Colorado in the second week of December in 2010. Four games remained in the Redskins’ season. Chris Cooley, by that point one of the game’s most productive tight ends, quickly became uneasy about what would follow. His new position coach would be Embree’s assistant, a 24-year-old named Sean McVay, and Cooley was skeptical.

It took one day to reverse that.

“This 24-year-old kid came in and knew everything about the offense, and everything about everything,” Cooley said. “I learned more about football than I had in my entire career in four weeks.”

In McVay, Cooley saw peerless intelligence and remarkable self-assurance. McVay didn’t just know the offense by heart, or direct his tight ends in great detail; he was able to explain why. Cooley began to see the game from a wider scope and quickly developed an admiration for McVay, even though he was four years younger and never played an NFL snap. In the 2011 opener, Cooley broke the franchise record for receptions by a tight end and gifted McVay the football. Today, Cooley credits McVay for the way he sees the game.

“His ability to understand the game from every aspect — fronts, coverages, line play, checks, from top to bottom — is uncanny,” Cooley, now a member of the Redskins’ radio broadcast team, said in a phone conversation on Saturday, the day after McVay was introduced as the Los Angeles Rams’ head coach. “To understand it in that way, and to speak it the way he speaks it, it’s just a love thing. You have to spend unlimited time doing it. And it has to be what you love. When you talk to him, when I talk to him, you just hear it in his voice. You see it.”

Growing up with the 49ers

The love began with his upbringing. McVay’s grandfather, John, was an executive for the San Francisco teams that won five Super Bowl titles in the 1980s and ’90s. McVay’s father, Tim — an accomplished safety for Lee Corso-led Indiana teams — immersed McVay into that environment as often as he could. As a toddler, McVay would watch 49ers practices and sometimes find himself within earshot of conversations between his grandfather and Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh. He idolized Joe Montana and Steve Young, then later got to know Jeff Garcia.

Tim will tell you Sean learned “a ton” from his grandfather, even though he was so young when John’s front-office career was winding down.

“He learned how to interact with people,” Tim said. “He learned how to treat people.”

Sean was born in Dayton, Ohio, and raised in Atlanta, where his dad now runs the local ABC affiliate. He began to learn how offenses worked as a read-option quarterback in high school. By that point, Tim began seeing Sean engage in high-level conversations with his coaches. He watched his son serve as a receiver and return specialist in Miami (Ohio), then begin his coaching career as a low-level assistant, and then, eight years later, become the youngest head coach in the NFL’s modern era at age 30.

Yes, Tim is surprised it all happened so quickly.

But …

“He’s absolutely capable of this,” Tim stressed. “It’s not too big for him. I can tell you.”

Getting started in the NFL

Sean got his first NFL job in 2008 under then-Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden. In 2009, McVay became an assistant on a team called the Florida Tuskers in the defunct United Football League, which had Jim Haslett as the head coach and Gruden’s younger brother, Jay, installed as the offensive coordinator. When he became the Redskins assistant tight ends coach in Washington, Mike Shanahan ran the team and his son, Kyle, ran the offense.

It was about that time when Sean began reading books on leadership, gravitating towards those centered on Walsh and legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. His favorite is called “The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership.” Walsh wrote it, and John McVay has his own chapter. The central question he searches for in his reading, McVay said, is: “How can you figure out ways to develop and build relationships that are authentic and genuine?”

Bears tight end Logan Paulsen, who spent 2010-15 in Washington, was amazed at how McVay remembered the names and backgrounds of every Redskins employee, from coaches to cooks to janitors. Standout Redskins tight end Jordan Reed wanted to keep working specifically with McVay even after he became the offensive coordinator in 2014. The following season, McVay began to call plays and Cooley marveled at the way he inflated the confidence of quarterback Kirk Cousins, a fourth-round pick who spent his first three seasons stuck behind Robert Griffin III.

“He has a way; this ease about him,” Paulsen said. “He talks football all the time, but he finds a way to speak to you.”

Making his mark

Under McVay’s watch in 2015, the Redskins scored the NFL’s 10th-most points and won the NFC East behind Cousins, the first-year starting quarterback who posted a 126.1 passer rating in the second half. Heading into the 2016 season, Cooley told everybody willing to listen that McVay would be an NFL head coach the following year. They all basically told Cooley he was crazy, but then the Redskins gained more yards than all but two teams and McVay began to be taken seriously as a head coaching candidate.

McVay blew teams away during the interview process, then signed a five-year contract with the Rams and said he’s “embracing the expectations, the situation, and the city of L.A.”

He inherits an offense that has been the NFL’s worst each of the past two seasons and will take on the play-calling duties. McVay’s greatest gift as a play-caller is his knack for consistently putting players in positions to succeed, which might best be characterized by his success on third down. The Redskins ranked third in the NFL in third-down percentage these past two seasons, while the Rams were dead last.

In that time, McVay did a masterful job of putting the Redskins in the favorable third-down situations that allowed them to convert at a high rate. The Redskins needed three or fewer yards on 32.2 percent of their third-down plays this season, fourth-highest in the NFL, according to ESPN Stats & Information.

The next Jon Gruden

Cooley likes to joke that when McVay’s alarm goes off before sunrise, he shoots his fist in the air with great enthusiasm.

“I don’t sleep much,” McVay admitted. “If you can tell, I’m a little wired, a little high strung.”

The Saturday before the Redskins’ regular-season finale against the Giants, Cooley walked into the facility at 5 a.m. thinking he would be alone. McVay was already in the film room. “Look at this!” he said, showing clips of plays run against the Browns and Falcons that had nothing to do with the upcoming game plan. Cooley said he’s “never met anyone who liked the game of football more than Sean McVay, and it’s not even close.”

His unbridled enthusiasm bears a striking resemblance.

McVay’s agent, Bob LaMonte, a pioneer when it comes to representing prospective coaches, first met McVay about four years ago and came away thinking: “This guy is the next Jon Gruden.

“The dynamic, the brain, everything about him,” said LaMonte, who has also represented Gruden for decades. “I had lunch with him and said, ‘This guy is electric.’ Jon Gruden was electric.”

It isn’t just that Jon Gruden gave McVay his first job. It’s that McVay took part in Gruden’s Fired Football Coaches Association in 2009 and learned so much about what it took to be a head coach. It’s that Gruden’s father, Jim Gruden Sr., was close friends with McVay’s grandfather and then recruited McVay’s father in college. It’s that Gruden, in McVay’s words, “truly taught me to look at the game from a 22-man perspective.”

Gruden helped advise the Rams as they went about searching for their new coach and raved about McVay. Though the Rams were interviewing McVay on Jan. 5, COO Kevin Demoff, who led the search, shot Gruden a text that read: “Holy crap, he is you.”

The voice, the cadence, the gestures, the intensity.

“One of the things that stands out about Jon is when you’re in a room with Jon, you always feel Jon,” McVay said. “He’s got a presence about himself. That’s something that I think is important. I’d like to be described that way.

zn wrote:

Four games remained in the Redskins’ season. Chris Cooley, by that point one of the game’s most productive tight ends, quickly became uneasy about what would follow. His new position coach would be…a 24-year-old named Sean McVay….Cooley said “I learned more about football [in those 4 weeks] than I had in my entire career….”

In the 2011 opener, Cooley broke the franchise record for receptions by a tight end and gifted McVay the football.

“His ability to understand the game from every aspect — fronts, coverages, line play, checks, from top to bottom — is uncanny,” Cooley, now a member of the Redskins’ radio broadcast team, said in a phone conversation on Saturday, the day after McVay was introduced as the Los Angeles Rams’ head coach.

Well to invent a phrase.

That right there is some lofty-ass praise.

.

Yeah…..I don’t know what’s happening. I think I might be feeling some optimism.

from Assessing the New Head Coaches—

Albert Breer

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/01/13/49ers-coach-gm-search-josh-mcdaniels-kyle-shanahan-sean-mcvay-vance-joseph-sean-mcdermott-doug-marrone-anthony-lynn

Los Angeles Rams

New coach: Sean McVay
Previous position: Redskins offensive coordinator
Previous HC experience: none

Why: The Rams’ list at the outset was completely comprised of NFL assistants for a reason—the team’s idea was to worry less about hiring guy who’s a big deal now than it was to find the next big thing. And that’s why McVay was a logical candidate from the beginning, his age (he turns 31 later this month and is the youngest head coach in NFL history) be damned. Here’s the bottom line: Had McVay spent a fourth year as Washington’s offensive coordinator and repeated the success he had the last two seasons, he’d have been the belle of the 2018 coaching-carousel ball. So the Rams jumped a year early, which is smart, because they won’t have an opening next year, and the makeup of the team is such that McVay can grow into the job. Good luck finding someone who’s worked for McVay who thinks this is anything but a grand slam hire. Bottom line—this is good for the Rams, it’s good for Jared Goff, and everyone will see why this makes sense when they see the energy McVay will infuse here. He has the same forward-thinking, program-building strengths that P.J. Fleck and Tom Herman have brought to the college game, and that’s in addition to being a prodigy of offensive football.

Questions: OK, youth. Questions with young coaches usually involve their ability to reel a team back in when the you-know-what hits the fan, and you never really know how a coach will handle that until he’s in it. But McVay’s leadership style figures to be different, and he plans to surround himself with an experienced staff.

Testimonial: “He’s really smart—great with the X’s and O’s and a great communicator,” said one Redskins staffer. “He’s wise beyond his years. He’ll do great.”