Sean McVay celebrated his 33rd birthday earlier this week as the head coach of a team heading to the Super Bowl. Not a bad way to blow out the candles. What could be better?
Probably being a 14-year-old football-crazy kid who gets tickets to the big game as a present from his grandpa.
McVay got to experience that, too.
Nineteen years ago, McVay attended his only other Super Bowl (in Atlanta, just like this one) to watch the Rams (the organization he currently leads) beat the Titans in one of the more epic games in the history of the Lombardi Trophy. His grandfather, John McVay, had been the 49ers general manager during their dynasty and still had enough connections with the league to get tickets for Super Bowl XXXIV played in the Georgia Dome. At the time McVay, was a student at Marist High School in nearby Brookhaven, Ga.
"It's kind of ironic," he said of returning to the same city _ with one of the same teams _ for his second Super Bowl experience.
While that Super Bowl was decided on the final play, with Mike Jones tackling Kevin Dyson at the goal line as time expired to preserve the Rams' 23-16 victory, McVay, who normally has a photographic memory for in-game events, said this week that he doesn't recall every detail of that contest.
"I was so young at the time, but I remember it was a great game," he said. "I remember, for whatever reason, I really always respected both the offenses. I thought Eddie George was outstanding. Steve McNair's ability to create off-schedule. Jevon Kearse, that was his rookie year where he was having a lot of success. Then, you look offensively at Kurt Warner and how prolific he was. I can still remember Torry Holt catching that slant. Isaac Bruce making big plays. Marshall (Faulk)'s versatility. Just a fan of the game and watching that."
Neither McVay nor anyone else had any way of knowing at the time that it would be the Rams' first and, until perhaps next week, only Super Bowl win.
That game remains memorable for a lot of reasons besides the attendance of a future NFL head coach as a teenage.
It was the first Super Bowl of a year with a 'two' in front of it, and viewers at home were inundated with commercial after commercial for dot-com companies that hardly anyone had heard of before (and many that never have been heard from since). It was a week that a pair of ice storms crippled the Atlanta area, forcing the Rams and the Titans to practice in frigid and sometimes dangerous outdoor conditions, creating concern about people's ability to get to the game. McVay was among the ones who wondered if he would get to enjoy his birthday present.
"It was a real problem for us to get there," he said, "but it was a great game."
The contest itself was unlike many of the ones that preceded it in that it was competitive. This was an era when Super Bowls were generally lopsided affairs decided early. Of the eight Super Bowls before XXXIV, only one of them was decided by one possession and the average margin between the teams was more than two touchdowns (16.75 points). It was only the second Super Bowl in almost a decade _ since the Giants beat the Bills in XXV _ to be decided in the fourth quarter, never mind the final play.
Super Bowl XXXIV became even more newsworthy after the teams left the field. That night, Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis was one of three arrested and charged in the stabbing murder of two men at a party in nearby Buckhead. He eventually pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and testified against the two other men. A year later, Lewis was MVP of Super Bowl XXXV against the Giants.
Super Bowl XXXIV also was the last one played without Tom Brady in the league. Three months later he would be selected by the Patriots in the sixth round of the NFL draft. Two years later he led the Patriots to their first championship ... over the Rams.
The Rams, who moved from Los Angeles to St. Louis for the 1995-2015 seasons and returned to Los Angeles in 2016, is a far different team now. They'll be wearing jerseys similar to the ones worn in Super Bowl XXXIV, but unlike 2000, when those were called uniforms, in this game they're considered "throwbacks."
But Super Bowl XXXIV still echoes for the current team, in particular the coach who was there to witness the franchise's crowning achievement.
"I'll tell you what's so unique is you get a chance to be in this role and the exposure that it gets you to people that you have so much respect for," McVay said, referring specifically to Dick Vermeil who coached those Rams to the title. "(He) is a guy that, he texts you after all the games and he's been so supportive. Watching the way that he connected with those guys and wasn't afraid to say 'I love you' to these guys. I think those players could feel how much he really cared about them and how much he was invested."
McVay also is well-versed in the challenges those 1999-00 Rams faced when they lost not one but two starting quarterbacks early in the season and had to turn to an Arena League passer hardly anyone outside of the Iowa Barnstormers' Fan Club had ever heard of _ Kurt Warner.
"You talk about some of the adversity that that team, specifically being our organization, faced early on in the year when no one gave him a chance," McVay said. "But they kept believing."
How will this Super Bowl be remembered? And who in the stands will do the remembering one day, perhaps years from now, getting ready for their own championship experience?
That's hard to say. There will be plenty of potential future Sean McVays in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday when Los Angeles faces New England in Super Bowl LIII. McVay said it is "wild" to be returning and admitted that he is getting a headache from all of the ticket requests that have landed on his desk since the Rams won the NFC championship last week.
"You know, I didn't realize how many friends I had from Atlanta," he joked. "I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing."
Nor does he know if Super Bowl LIII will be a good or a bad thing. The only thing certain is that for McVay, his second Super Bowl figures to be more personally significant that his first.
"Now we'll get a chance to go back," he said, "(along with) a lot of people that are very special to the McVay family."
