Zooey wrote:

The Jones trade is still shrouded in mystery, afaik. I bet Jourdan knows.

I thought at the time it happened, it went like this. Jones was actually very vocal about how he deserved an extension. Being “family” with the McVay/Snead Rams means, you do not do yer boat rockin in public. By being vocal, Jones made himself a “non-Rams type.” (“Fredo, you’re my older brother, and I love you. But don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family again. Ever”)

There’s no doubt that the culture in the locker room is topnotch. And that that’s a big part of the Rams success.

However, off at the edge there in the shadows…there’s lines.

Kupp was a little different. As we all know, that comes from this iteration of the Rams being ruthlessly unsentimental in the off-season. Yes it’s a family, but then family members are there on the basis of an annual invitation, and if there’s no invitation…then, here’s the door. Kupp was Nacua, but a more expensive Nacua who got injured too often.

What is it about Sean McVay that has the Rams on the cusp of another Super Bowl?

Nate Atkins

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6990881/2026/01/23/sean-mcvay-rams-super-bowl-playoffs-nfc-championship/?source=emp_shared_article

Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay could barely feel his body, but he knew he had to find his voice.

The frigid wind swirled off Lake Michigan as the crowd’s silence at Soldier Field shifted into a crescendo. Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams had just done something so ill-advised, outrageous and nearly impossible when he scrambled 26 yards behind the line of scrimmage on fourth down and launched a prayer into the snow-filled sky that soared into the hands of Cole Kmet in the end zone with 18 seconds left.

It hit McVay’s Rams like a meteor to the gut. And that’s when he started screaming.

“We are winning this game!” he shouted, his voice cracking. “Whatever happened, who cares? Move on. Be present. Let’s go and beat them.”

Here was a team unexpectedly headed to overtime and in need of a pick-me-up.

And here was a coach, locked in one of the worst games he’s ever called for an offense, banking on the rest of his traits to save a season slipping away.

Rams players remember the feeling of that blood circulating, right as the snow was easing and the referees were calling for captains to walk over for a coin toss. A new game was unfolding. A new time to be present and alive.

“He’s always been great at that kind of stuff,” quarterback Matthew Stafford said, “whether it be in that game or other games we’ve been a part of, maybe just the offense or the defense, inciting some wisdom on us in the moment. Let’s be where our feet are planted.”

Added defensive end Kobie Turner, “It’s like, all right, what he’s saying is absolutely real. It’s not something that’s made up, or he’s talking just to talk.”

That’s because, even as his face was beet-red and felt frozen in a city far from home, he owned a level of sweat equity in all of his players’ journeys to get to that point.

This was McVay in a different space than when the Rams placed a bet on him nine seasons ago to be their next head coach, back when he was just 30 years old. That version of McVay was a bet on energy and offensive acumen, on the future development of leadership traits, which created a risk in a role overseeing players older than him.

McVay turns 40 on Saturday, and the next day he leads his team to an NFC championship matchup against the Seattle Seahawks. He will bring with him 10 playoff victories, the most of any NFL coach before their 40th birthday.

He’s 102-62 between the regular season and playoffs. He still has the radiant positivity that showed up in his first interview, but it’s hardened by 15 playoff games against 15 different franchises, by the highs of a Super Bowl victory and the lows of high expectations and falling just short.

He still has plenty of offensive ability, showcased by leading the NFL’s No. 1 scoring offense with a MVP-contending season from the 37-year-old Stafford and a 1,700-yard receiving season from Puka Nacua, whom the Rams drafted in the fifth round in 2023.

But those skills can fluctuate, and he ran into the worst display of them Sunday in Chicago, when his game plan to throw so much out of 11 personnel mostly froze in the wind and snow and backed his team into a corner in overtime.

As other teams continue to try to poach from his ever-growing coaching tree with head-coaching interviews for defensive coordinator Chris Shula, offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur and passing game coordinator Nathan Scheelhaase, what the league is ultimately reaching for is a McVay Effect that goes beyond play designs.

They want a slice of the culture that can take that meteor to the gut in a raucous and snow-filled Soldier Field and find a bedrock to fall back on to keep a team alive.

“Guys, when they walk in that door, they want to be here,” LaFleur said of McVay’s impact. “That’s not always the case everywhere, even if you’re winning, because some of these days can be tough. It’s not all flowers and daisies every day out here by no means.”

Sometimes, it means staring down a playoff highlight from an opposing quarterback that will live forever if those players can’t find a way to reset.

Turner recalled the time he felt like he was slipping away from the team — just momentarily, but still enough to feel a little lost. The Rams opened last training camp without him, as he was nursing a groin injury and dealing with a personal issue. McVay called him to his office.

“‘Hey, man,’” Turner remembers McVay starting out, “‘I just want to let you know I’m here for you if you want to talk about anything.’”

And then, during one of the longest days of their season, the two talked for more than an hour about life, not football.

It’s an area where McVay has grown since he arrived in Los Angeles in 2017. After spending those early years pouring every hour he could find into game plans, he married in 2022, had a son named Jordan in 2023 and another named Christian born the morning after a Week 15 win over the Detroit Lions.

As the family grew, McVay decided to rewire his sleep schedule to make his coaching and home life more compatible. He now sleeps at least seven hours on most nights, going to bed when 2-year-old Jordan does and making a point to make up family time in the offseasons.

It’s a method that has made him more present and approachable, as Turner learned in that hour in McVay’s office during training camp.

Turner returned to the field and has followed his nine-sack rookie season with 15 more over the past two years, becoming a captain along the way. McVay now sends the occasional text to Turner, thanking him for the chance to lead this team together.

Jared Verse had a similar experience with his coach in Week 3 of this season. McVay could sense his outside linebacker was pressing after two games with zero sacks to follow up a Defensive Rookie of the Year campaign that now meant double-teams, chips and protections sliding his way. So he played a video of Verse’s sacks from the year before, culminating in the two he posted in the divisional-round playoff loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.

The timing was intentional, with the Rams returning to Philadelphia that week. McVay told Verse he wanted to see him play that way again. He knew it was still inside the pass rusher. So Verse went out and recorded his first sack to start the second half, a strip-sack deep in Eagles territory that his team recovered and quickly punched in for a touchdown the next play.

Sometimes the messages are private when he knows his players are battling something internally. Other times, he rallies the rest of the team to help him stoke that fire inside.

That’s what Nate Landman discovered when he arrived at one of his first team meetings after joining the Rams as a free agent from the Atlanta Falcons. At that point, Landman was fresh off shoulder surgery and a free agency that didn’t go as planned. It left him with a one-year deal at the veteran minimum of $1.1 million.

But in front of the team, McVay played clips of Landman punching at the football, a habit that produced six forced fumbles in two seasons.

McVay told him to be that player from the jump. He started trying it in training camp. And when the first game arrived, and the Houston Texans were driving down one score with less than two minutes remaining, Landman squared up on a running back in open space and punched the football free for a recovery to seal a 14-9 win.

Two months later, McVay and the Rams re-did that veteran minimum contract for Landman, handing him a three-year, $22.5 million extension.

“Four of the most powerful words you can tell somebody are, ‘I believe in you,’” McVay said. “The power of belief is a real thing when it’s authentic. That’s what we try to instill to bring out the best in people.”

McVay’s personalized connections live in moments grand and minute. He visits every meeting room to check in on position groups. He swings through the trainer’s room to talk to players about their lives. He calls each of them by their first name, and he directs veterans to call each rookie by their first name, too.

“I appreciate that he takes note of those small, little things, just to be acknowledged within the building,” rookie outside linebacker Josaiah Stewart said. “He understands we’re a family.”

Added safety Kamren Kinchens, “It’s not just a cookie-cutter type of thing. It’s personalized to everybody.”

It’s what had McVay, after his most humbling loss of the season in overtime to the San Francisco 49ers in Week 5, moving from the postgame news conference into the locker room to find his wide receivers huddled around a cellphone watching his final play call again. He’d asked for a run with Kyren Williams up the right side behind two of those receivers, Nacua and Jordan Whittington, that the 49ers blew up to end the game.

“That’s my fault there,” McVay told them as he walked away.

McVay then changed plenty about his offense — leaning on Stafford on critical downs, crafting a three-tight-end offense that load-managed the health of players like Nacua, and building a split between Kyren Williams and Blake Corum in the backfield to keep both fresh — and his team won its next six games.

Sunday in Chicago, his players raised their fists in the air and started shouting as McVay’s overtime speech wrapped up. It was time to take the field again.

“The most important thing is you trust your gut, and you immediately address it right away,” McVay said of the moment. “That was a play where you’re like, ‘What the hell just happened?’ I think it was important for us to be able to reset.”

As his team took the field for the kickoff, McVay would again bet on his season- and career-long traits to save him from his mistakes in this game. However, they didn’t stop in overtime.

On third-and-1 on the opening possession, McVay called a pitch play to the short side of the field to Corum, and immediately regretted not calling a timeout to reassess, since the Bears were loaded up to stop it and did, for a 2-yard loss.

“I’m thinking, ‘If that ends up being the play that costs us because I didn’t put us in a great spot, I mean, that would be a rough offseason,’” McVay said.

His defense forced the Bears to run a tush push with Caleb Williams to convert a fourth-and-1 across midfield. Then Kam Curl lined up at strong safety and noticed a formation that Chicago had run for a shot play after conversions to help spark its league-high seven fourth-quarter comebacks. And as Bears wide receiver DJ Moore ran deep, Curl undercut the route and dove into the snow for the interception.

Stafford then made one of his best throws of the season, a sidearm rope while falling backward to Davante Adams along the sideline. And soon, another McVay coaching decision was on the line.

He’d decided at midseason to swap kickers — from Joshua Karty to a strong-legged, cold-weather-built rookie in Harrison Mevis amid the six-game winning streak because he knew their tendency to have field goals blocked could cost them in the playoffs.

Mevis then drilled the 42-yard field goal to seal a 20-17 overtime victory to send the Rams to the NFC Championship Game.

It set up a third meeting this season against the Seahawks, a game that will require the very best McVay has to offer. He’ll go up against Mike Macdonald and his No. 1-ranked scoring Seahawks defense at Lumen Field in a chess match of two of the younger and more aggressive schemers on opposite sides of the ball.

Expect the Rams’ coach to be prepared for the challenge.

After Mevis’ kick sailed through the uprights in the win over Chicago, McVay sprinted over to find Stafford for a hug.

“Hey, way to hang with me,” Stafford told him. “I was dog s— for a while.”

“Hey, we both (were),” McVay responded. “But we won’t be again.”

“I'm really curious to see what Sean Payton is going to do with Jarrett Stidham…”

“I would bet he will NOT be conservative…”@GregCosell shares what he’s seen from the Broncos backup on film: pic.twitter.com/0sRanmb0nb

— Ross Tucker Podcast (@RossTuckerPod) January 23, 2026

“He should NEVER have thrown that ball…”@GregCosell discusses Caleb Williams overtime interception against the Rams: pic.twitter.com/oQa8JfITEG

— Ross Tucker Podcast (@RossTuckerPod) January 22, 2026

Rams Wire@TheRamsWire
Rams-Bears was the most-watched divisional playoff game in NBC history

From The Insiders on @NFLNetwork: Reacting to the hire of Jesse Minter as the #Ravens new head coach. pic.twitter.com/AjkVZMgonP

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) January 23, 2026

Kevin Clark@bykevinclark
The Broncos got the most pressures in the NFL from their starting defensive tackle duo. The Seahawks were second. The Rams were third. The Patriots were fourth. I think I just noticed a pattern.

OK, I stuffed this AFC Championship Game preview with stats. I tried to go back into Jarrett Stidham's starts from 2022-2023. I looked at Patriots blitz rates. I asked where the Broncos defense has a weakness. All kinds of stuff.https://t.co/UvO3OdOdg4

— Aaron Schatz 🏈 (@ASchatzNFL) January 22, 2026