How Does Rams' Sean McVay Keep Producing Head Coaches?

Make no mistake, every single organization, regardless if they hired an offensive or defensive head coach from the Sean McVay tree, has experienced a monumental boom in their offensive production during that coach's first year in charge.

Names like Matt LaFleur, Kevin O'Connell, Liam Coen, and Zac Taylor make up the premier offensive minds, while despite being defensive minds, Brandon Staley and Raheem Morris saw massive quarterback production during their first season in charge of their respective teams.

Even Jedd Fisch organized an offensive juggernaut at Arizona with quarterback Noah Fifita, and receivers Jacob Cowing (San Francisco 49ers) and Tetairoa McMillian (Carolina Panthers).

The results speak for themselves. Aaron Rodgers won two MVPs with LaFleur, Justin Jefferson established himself as the best receiver in the NFL with O'Connell, Baker Mayfield had a career year with Coen, and Ja'Marr Chase won the triple crown while Joe Burrow looked unstoppable in 2024 under Taylor.

So how does McVay keep doing it? How does he keep producing high level coaches? Innovation and unselfishness.

Why has Mike LaFleur grown as a coach in such a short period of time? He has a head coach who allows him to be him and in that same breath, a coach who pushes his ability to learn with new methods.

Back in August of 2024, LaFleur and the Rams used video boards to evaluate plays in real time. He spoke about the method.

“You take pride and to be able to obviously see it in real time so that you can go coach these guys, but whatever you miss, there's 22 guys out there,” said LaFleur.

“I'm not going to act like I can see everything at all times. Sometimes I'm focusing on one or two things. To be able to get that and really get that video, that picture, that play in your head so you can go coach whoever you got to coach. It's one thing to go into a meeting room, but even coaches after 10, 15 minutes sitting there, if you're in the back of the room, not the one coaching, those can be long days. Those players, you don't know exactly what they're always hearing at that moment, but if you can do it on the sideline in real time, I think that's big.”

When asked if LaFleur had used or employed video boards during his other coaching stops, he stated that this was the first time he has used such a tool.

McVay has also allowed coaches to take over major duties or offensive playcalling in preseason games, regular-season finales when there's nothing to play for, and so on.

Things that we're seeing McVay's former assistants do with their staffs today.

Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski spoke about being able to call plays at practice, something he did with O'Connell in Minnesota and with Coen in Jacksonville.

“Really kind of in a similar setting, the way we did here when we do two spots, or the one defense is up against the two offense, and you split, so you go over to a second field and have the opportunity to call it and run the drill. That was really my opportunity to do that there, so it mirrored pretty similarly to what I was able to do here.”

So when people wonder why coaches such as Coen, who didn't have the best of exits from the Rams, continue to praise McVay unprovoked, it's because he lets his guys do their jobs while giving them job training for their next one.