There were plenty of skeptics when the Rams hired Sean McVay in 2017, handing the keys to a 30-year-old head coach one year after moving to Los Angeles. It didn’t take long for McVay to prove himself because in Year 1, the Rams won 11 games and in his second season, they made it all the way to the Super Bowl.
McVay’s stock has been on the rise ever since, with 2022 being his only losing season – a 5-12 record after Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp and Aaron Donald all missed about half the season.
Heading into the 2024 season, which will be McVay’s eighth year at the helm, he’s widely seen as one of the top coaches in football. Jarrett Bailey of Touchdown Wire thinks particularly highly of McVay, putting him at No. 2 in his coaching rankings.
McVay took a different approach to his offense last season and turned the Rams into a run-through-your-face power run team with a lot of play action mixed in. Matthew Stafford still has the ability to sling it, and it’ll be fun to see what the offense can do in year two of Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp as a duo. McVay has already been to two Super Bowls and won one. Can the Rams make another appearance in the biggest game of the year? Who’s to say they can’t?
With McVay ranking second, there’s only one coach ahead of him – and it’s a fairly obvious choice. Bailey put three-time Super Bowl champion Andy Reid at No. 1, who has led the Chiefs to back-to-back titles in the last two years.
The majority of NFL experts would put Reid atop any coaching list with how dominant the Chiefs have been under his guidance, even before Patrick Mahomes arrived. He’s a lock for the Hall of Fame but if McVay continues on his current trajectory, he’s going to be in Canton at the end of his career, too.
