Now that Sean McVay has decided to return to the Rams for 2023, Matthew Stafford will be next. The Rams are expected to pick up Stafford’s 2023 option bonus and 2024 salary – a combined $62 million guaranteed – by the third day of the league year.https://t.co/9zLMCEDDB9

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 14, 2023

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The Rams are expected to pick up Matthew Stafford's option bonus, which will guarantee him $62 million

He ain't going anywhere https://t.co/NMmscdZ0BV

— Cameron DaSilva (@camdasilva) January 14, 2023

Goff and McV were not a good “marriage.” Goff did well with the Rams when he had his own dedicated qb coach. That was 2017 (Greg Olson) and 2018 (LaFleur). (Greg Olson is also responsible for Derek Carr playing well in the years he did–Olson left the Raiders in 2021, and Carr played well for him). In 2019 McV became the de facto qb coach. I think their relationship was based on McV’s impatience and the result was to weaken Goff’s confidence. What we saw in 2020 was Goff playing without confidence much of the time. In the best article on their divorce, a Rams coach is quoted as saying (anonymously) that McV knew how to tear Goff down but not how to build him up.

I think what we’re seeing in Detroit now is Goff playing with confidence, in a system that is specifically built to his strengths (and with a top notch OL).

I said all of this at the time of the trade btw but then I defended the trade. My take was, if the qb and the coach are not built for each other and the coach is winning, then, the qb will go. I don’t like the way they handled it (in fact they handled the entire trade very badly that way). But then Stafford was a better fit for McV. Stafford walked into the room demanding respect with his veteran smarts and longevity, so it was more of a case of coach and veteran qb collaborating than an impatient coach handling a young qb.

In a different way than Martz, McV is a mixed bag. He has all sorts of strengths as a coach, but they come with some pronounced liabilities. He may change, but at this stage, McV needs veterans in key positions to win. He’s not a patient team builder. By way of contrast DV was that and in fact did it twice, with the Eagles and Rams. McV inherited a team loaded with players like Gurley and Donald and Goff and did not need to “rebuild.” 6 years later there are still some pre-McV players starting for the Rams, including Donald, Higbee, and Hav.

Comparing Different Hells

The Bill Barnwell Show

#Rams coach Sean McVay intends to return as the team’s coach after taking a few days to consider his future, per me and @MikeGarafolo. He is sorting through potential staff changes for 2023. pic.twitter.com/oCCqp544Io

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) January 13, 2023

…

Jalen Ramsey posted a cryptic message on Twitter today and, uh, Rams fans may not be happy. Is he done in LA?

"If that's the end, I went out wit a BANG!" https://t.co/ZeXOY2Gk6H

— Cameron DaSilva (@camdasilva) January 13, 2023

The best run defender in the NFL? Jalen Ramsey.

PFF gave him that title, naming Bobby Wagner as an honorable mention 💪 https://t.co/Kfqi82g4A4

— Cameron DaSilva (@camdasilva) January 12, 2023

The Rams are facing a lot of questions this offseason, chief among them: Sean McVay's looming decision https://t.co/7qQAjflxhl

— Cameron DaSilva (@camdasilva) January 12, 2023

This is from the wikipedia entry on the Monty Python song, “Always Look On the Bright Side of Life,” which of course is from the ending bit from Life of Brian.

The song touched a chord with the British trait of stoicism and the “stiff upper lip” in the face of disaster, and became immensely popular. When the destroyer HMS Sheffield was struck by an Exocet cruise missile on 4 May 1982 in the Falklands War, her crew sang it while waiting to be rescued from their sinking ship,<sup id=”cite_ref-9″ class=”reference”>[9]</sup> as did the crew of HMS Coventry,<sup id=”cite_ref-10″ class=”reference”>[10]</sup> with the line from the song “Worse things happen at sea, you know” being especially ironic.

‘You won too fast too soon’: NFL coaches on Sean McVay, burnout, pressure of winning

Sam Farmer

https://www.latimes.com/sports/rams/story/2023-01-11/sean-mcvay-rams-coaching-burnout

The season is over for the Rams, but the hand-wringing is heading into overtime.

What will Sean McVay do? Will he continue to coach the team? Will he take a TV job? How about a leave of absence on a beach in St. Somewhere?

Whatever McVay decides — and that could come any day — there’s a community of former NFL coaches, some of them in the Hall of Fame, who are all too familiar with the pressures of the job. They understand the notion of burnout, even among those with incredibly high-paying and coveted positions.

“There’s only a few Bill Belichicks or Andy Reids out there,” said Dick Vermeil, citing two of the league’s longest-tenured coaches. “There’s only a few Don Shulas or Bud Grants around. I think coach McVay has proven he’s in that talent level. He’s a potential Hall of Fame coach. But if he doesn’t have that personality make-up, no fault of his own, then that may not happen.”

Vermeil gets it. He was Philadelphia’s head coach from 1976-82 and took the Eagles to the Super Bowl. But then he left for a TV job — doubling his $75,000 salary — and didn’t return to coaching until taking over the St. Louis Rams in 1997. There, he won a Super Bowl with Kurt Warner and the “Greatest Show on Turf,” before closing out his career as coach of the Kansas City Chiefs from 2001-05.

He said he retired from coaching the first time because the euphoria of winning had evaporated. He only was relieved when his team won, depressed when it lost.

“The loss hurt far more emotionally than the win affected you positively,” said Vermeil, 86, enshrined in Canton last summer. “I found myself thinking about what I should have done last week to win when I should have been thinking about what I had to do to win next week.”

The idea of NFL coaching burnout isn’t going to elicit a lot of sympathy from the public. These coaches aren’t saving lives, and they can make as much in one season as five teachers can earn in their entire careers. Nonetheless, coaching burnout does happen and the topic is particularly relevant to the Rams, who have enjoyed tremendous success with McVay at the helm.

Tony Dungy played for and later worked as an assistant under legendary Pittsburgh Steelers coach Chuck Noll, who oversaw that organization for 23 years. Instead of being an old-school, sleep-in-the-office coach, Noll was ahead of his time in supporting a work-life balance for people in the organization. Those coaches left work early once a week to play golf and frequently had family days at team headquarters.

“One of the first things coach Noll told us when I was a rookie player was, `Do not make football your whole life. If you do, you’re going to be disappointed when you leave the game,’ ” said Dungy, inducted in the Hall of Fame in 2016. “He told us that as players, and I watched him demonstrate that for the 10 years that I was there.

“I worked at some other places where it wasn’t necessarily like that and where guys thought, `I have to make sure everything goes perfectly.’ If you take that approach, it can get to you right away. Because there are a lot of things to manage and oversee. If you have to be cognizant of everything, and everything happens to come across your desk, it can wear you down and wear you out.”

Winning has always been the bottom line for NFL coaches. That’s nothing new. But with the popularity of the league, round-the-clock news coverage, fantasy football and everyone feeling like an expert, the spotlight on coaches has never been brighter.

“It’s almost unfair today to compare the longevity and stamina of [the coaches from 30 to 40 years ago] with what the job is today,” Vermeil said. “Because the evaluation process has gotten so intense, so magnified. It’s like comparing a 1980 Cadillac with a 2023 Cadillac. They all move forward but the technology and everything within it is totally different. … I think it’s tougher today on coaches.”

McVay, hired at 30 in 2017, was the youngest head coach in NFL history and remains the youngest of the 32 now employed. He got to the Super Bowl in his second season, and his team won it all in February, hoisting the Lombardi Trophy at SoFi Stadium, no less. He inherited a 4-12 team that ranked 32nd in scoring, and flipped that in his inaugural season when the Rams were No. 1 in that department.

“I only sat down and visited with coach McVay one time,” Vermeil said. “The only thing I can remember saying to him was, `You won too fast too soon.’ Every team I took over had been losing, especially the Eagles and Rams. Anything you did — make a first down and they applauded you.

“But when you start out as fast as coach McVay has, it makes every year tougher. Even after you win it all last year. Geez. What do you do to prove that you still have the ability to do it? It’s tough.”

This season’s Rams took a dramatic plunge from last season’s dizzying heights, finishing 5-12.

“It isn’t the workload,” said Rick Neuheisel, a former college head coach and offensive coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens. “You get up in the morning, you come into work but you’re never looking at the clock. Ever. You’re just doing what you love to do.

“The problem is the pressure of winning, and the weight that it puts on you when you’re unsuccessful. For Sean McVay to go through the year he went through, after the euphoria of the year before, is a feeling like burnout. He’s never gone down a road where it’s been this exasperating.”

Even before and in the immediate aftermath of the Super Bowl win, there was rampant speculation McVay might leave for a TV job. This season there was a revolving door of Rams offensive linemen, almost never the same group from week to week, and an injury list that included the club’s biggest stars: quarterback Matthew Stafford, receiver Cooper Kupp and defensive tackle Aaron Donald.

“You know all that next-man-up stuff? That’s just coach-speak,” said Steve Mariucci, former coach of San Francisco and Detroit, speaking generally about losing star players. “That’s like false bravado sometimes. The next man up isn’t as good as the guy he follows, OK? That’s the reality of it. When you’ve got a lot of next-men-up, you’re going to get your butt kicked. Let’s face it. Let’s talk real here.”

And no matter how compelling a coach might be in talking to his players, at some point those messages lose their edge.

Said Mariucci: “When I got hired by the Niners, [team president] Carmen Policy says, `Coach, you’re not going to be here forever. Bill [Walsh] wasn’t here forever. George [Seifert] wasn’t here forever. There’s going to be a shelf life for every coach. That’s how it works in this league. Enjoy it while you can. It’s going to be the ride of your life.’

“He was very forthright in knowing full well that in his mind the message gets a little boring or stale and it needs to come from somebody new every now and then. Bill lasted 10 years, George lasted eight and I was six. Not everybody is Bill Belichick or Mike Tomlin or Pete Carroll. That’s the exception to the rule.”

McVay isn’t tipping his hand. He wants time to mull his future, and the Rams want to give him that. There are strong indications they are willing to give him a leave of absence, a sabbatical to reboot, but they want him back when he’s ready to return. They don’t want to coach against him.

And there’s no denying the appeal of TV for him. He only needs to look at former New Orleans coach Sean Payton, who worked as a studio analyst for Fox this season and whose coaching stock has exploded. He’s the most coveted coaching candidate out there.

Said McVay of the network interest: “It’s flattering. These are always going to be things that you anticipate and expect that are going to come up, because I haven’t run away from the fact that down the line, or whenever that is, that’s something I’ve been interested in.”

Dungy took a job as an NBC studio analyst after retiring from coaching at 53. He wasn’t conflicted about leaving coaching; he was ready to go. He loves working in TV, but the job doesn’t tick the same boxes that coaching did.

“It’s not the same thing,” he said. “You are involved in the game. You do get to see your buddies. You do get to talk. You get to think about strategy and all those kinds of things. But it’s not the same thrill as bringing an organization together, getting everybody going in the same direction, chasing that one goal and knowing at the end of the year that there’s only one of us that’s going to achieve it and 31 that are going to come up a little bit short but try again next year.

“The satisfaction you get out of molding a team and taking them to the playoffs, winning playoff games. TV is great, it’s fun, but it’s not that.”

Ultimately, for Vermeil, the allure of coaching proved too strong. He had to come back.

“You miss being the king,” he said. “You miss being the boss. You miss making the decisions. The only thing you don’t miss is the pressure.”

Alaric Jackson got brutally honest about the Rams' O-line on Twitter last night, sharing his unfiltered thoughts about who should start and who should come off the bench 👀 https://t.co/M6pxdppmHT

— Cameron DaSilva (@camdasilva) January 11, 2023

Zooey wrote:

Just a heads up to everyone. I know many people don’t check the board daily, so I want to remind everyone now that Friday is the day to remove our hats in honor of a long-loved friend of ours.

Thanks for that.