[Elvis]

https://www.si.com/nfl/2021/06/21/mmqb- ... l-vaccines

MMQB: Sean McVay on Turnover, Expectations and Fighting Burnout

The Rams' coach is still the youngest in the NFL, as he enters what's unofficially the second phase of his career. Plus, how the NFL and NFLPA arrived at new COVID-19 protocols, a look at the 2022 draft, quarterbacks up for more deals and more.

ALBERT BREER

Sean McVay hasn’t given the Rams much to worry about over the four-plus years since his January 2017 hire, but there has been one thing on their—and his—radar for a while now.

And hanging over his head in his Thousand Oaks, Calif. office is a constant reminder of it.

In yellow and white letters above a couple sets of shelves are the words Urgent Enjoyment.

If it sounds like a hokey T-shirt slogan drummed up by a football coach to you, well, McVay’s probably not going to argue on that point. But to him, it’s as much about where he got to at a young age, where he’s been since and where he wants to take the Rams from here. Even more so, it’s about how he thinks he needs to get them there.

“That, to me, is the balance. Hey, we want to be urgent about everything we do. I want to be urgent; that’s who I am. But you want to do it with an enjoyment,” McVay said, from his place near L.A. on Saturday morning. “You want to have an urgent enjoyment. It kind of came to me one day where, Hey, there’s an urgency, but there’s a joy in the way you attack every day.

“I remember Zac Taylor was going through all his head coaching interviews, he had the pick of the litter, and he was telling me, and it was in a complimentary way, basically without saying I was a d--- or hard on people, ‘You got a good urgency.’ And I said, I like that. You’re urgent, and I think that is natural to the core that we have and a lot of the people that are in our building possess it. But the enjoyment is the biggest thing.”

McVay needs that reminder now, because of that one thing that others in the organization, and then he, started to watch as he and the team worked through in the weeks, months and now years following the Rams’ loss to the Patriots in Super LIII—burnout.

While the speed with which McVay turned the Rams around might be rare, his story arc over the last four years really hasn’t been. Young coach comes in, energizes an organization through the honeymoon phase of Year 1 and breaks through with a program established in Year 2. Then, staff and player attrition hit, expectations rise, pressure builds and that hard-driving young coach combats the changing landscape by driving harder and harder.

Eventually, through the blur of Years 1 and 2, then the pressure to follow, the coach finds a point of diminishing returns. Which is what McVay’s been trying to confront.

“Especially the last two years, you can let those expectations get in the way when you’re not as inside-out, and you’re letting an outside-in approach affect your daily enjoyment,” McVay explained. “When I reflect on it, I think there’s a lot of times where you are what you want to be, as far as being a leader and the guy that the players want to be around, that’s who I’d like to think I am. I’m enjoyable, positive, intentional about building and developing relationships in an authentic way.

“And then, I think sometimes you can get a little bit caught up in an outside-in approach, and say, Man, here’s these expectations, if I don’t do it, maybe you’re not living up to what we did as a team the first couple years. You gotta constantly remind yourself of it.”

So going into a big year for his organization—with fans’ coming into the team’s $6 billion palace for the first time, to see a roster aggressively built to give them a show—McVay’s trying to make sure he won’t ever forget it again. And he doesn’t have to look far for a reminder.

Last summer, McVay and I did a podcast that lasted about 90 minutes, and he and I dove into his path—from being an all-state quarterback at the Marist School in Atlanta, to his injury-marred run as a Miami of Ohio receiver, to his good fortune in climbing the coaching ladder—and eventually, we got to the topic of burning out. He knew then, having confided in Dick Vermeil, perhaps the NFL’s ultimate example of it, what he was up against.

He was also determined to figure it out so he could keep living his dream.

And where he first found some answers was in taking a hard look inward at what he loved about the job, and why it was the dream in the first place.

“It’s not hard to enjoy what you do when you get out on the field with the players,” he says. “Like, any time I’m around the guys, that’s when I’m in my truest happiness, with the foundational things that are the essence of what you do. But there’s a lot of stuff outside of that, that you can let blur the lines if you’re not careful. And those are the things you reflect back on. I’d say over the last couple years, there’s a lot of times where you’re saying, ‘Man, am I letting the expectations get in the way of the enjoyment?’ Let’s not forget about that.”

So McVay stayed at it, and the harder he looked at that specific thing, how great it was to be on the grass, the clearer the answer became. Out there on the field, he could focus on what he was doing—what was crossing his desk or popping up on his cell phone was no longer relevant, at least until he went back inside. Out there, he could just coach, which is what he’s always wanted to do.

And out there, he figured out that being able to focus on what he was doing, and only what he was doing, rid him of the mental clutter. When he carried that over into other areas of work, and then life, he found himself more at peace, sleeping easier and avoiding having his mind race through a perpetual to-do list he had a way of unconsciously posting in his head.

Now, for McVay, it might be as simple as closing his door at work to drill down on a single task or, in his personal life, leaving his cell phone in the car when he goes out for dinner. The difference, he says, has been immense.

“That’s one of things—leave your cell phone away—that helps you to be so present,” he explained. “We all joke about being intrinsically motivated, but that can be a detriment to our ability to just be able to decompress and enjoy those things. Things like the cell phone? I’ve definitely done that, sitting down at dinner, where you eliminate those distractions. Being present is a real thing. And if you’re focused on that, so much of the time, we’ve got so many things going on, you can lose sight of, Hey man, the best people, they’re just totally present with you. There’s nothing like that.

“And it’s been a good thing, I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time these last few months. And I’m hopeful you can apply these principles once the season hits and you get into a little busier rhythm and routine. I think just the enjoyment—I mean, man, what an amazing blessing it is to be here. Let’s not lose sight of the joy in the journey.”

So now, on the topic of burnout?

“We’d talked about the burnout and things like that, but I say this, and I really mean it: I feel like I’m 30 years old again in a lot of good ways, because of the people I’m around, because of the place I’m in,” he continued. “And I think it’s going to really help me and help the way I interact with people over the course of the season as well.”

That line—I feel like I’m 30 years old again—puts a few things in perspective here.

McVay’s still only 35, which means he remains the NFL’s youngest coach by a margin of nearly three years over his old assistant, Taylor.

But he’s also tied for having the eighth-longest tenure of any coach in the league. He’s been through, more or less, two offensive, two defensive and two special teams coordinator changes. There are only five coaches left from his original staff (Zak Kromer and Eric Yarber on offense; Thad Bogardus, Ejiro Evero and Chris Shula on defense), and just four players on the roster who predate him (Tyler Higbee, Rob Havenstein, Aaron Donald and Johnny Hekker).

All of which is part of why he thinks, now, heading into Year 5 with the Rams, he’s in a really good place to confront some of those outsized expectations. And beyond just that, he thinks his sustainability as a coach, and the Rams’ sustainability as a football operation, are in an equally good spot, because of all the experience and intellectual capital that has been built up since 2017, for a number of reasons.

In fact, while there is downside to all that turnover, McVay thinks he and the Rams gain more than they lose from it. Taylor is joined by Green Bay’s Matt LaFleur and new Chargers boss Brandon Staley as Rams alumni who’ve become head coaches, and a number of others (Shane Waldron, Joe Berry and Aubrey Pleasant) have left for coordinator jobs elsewhere in the league.

McVay says that result is a legitimate dream come true for him. He wants the Rams to be the sort of finishing school for staff that his grandfather, John McVay, was a part of in San Francisco with Bill Walsh a couple of generations ago. “I always thought one of the coolest things that he and Bill Walsh did, if guys get opportunities, it means we’re all doing well,” he said.

“That to me is the coolest thing you can do. Hey, you come here, you work hard, we’re going to have fun, and we’re gonna give ourselves a chance to win games, we’ve got a bunch of great players that we can work with. And then oh by the way if it goes the way we expect it to go, then you’re going to get opportunities,” McVay said. “And if we can’t provide that opportunity for you here, then we’re going to help you try to achieve that elsewhere. It’s not what you’d expect, having as much turnover as we’ve had, but that’s as cool a thing as anything. …

“Part of the appreciation for that is I’m not far removed from remembering how good I’ve had it, with the amount of people that put their arm around me, that helped me get to the role that I got to at a young age. That’s what it’s about, man.”

And in the process, the idea goes, the Rams have become a destination for the best and brightest coaches, and McVay gets to learn from them as much as they do from him.

“I think that attracts high-caliber, high-quality coaches,” he said. I think in a lot of ways it helps where people wanna be in a building where they feel like, Hey, there’s a lot of good stuff going, there’s an urgent enjoyment with the way they’re attacking every single day, you’re gonna give yourself a chance to win some games, and if we do good, they’re actually invested in my well-being in the long-term, even if that’s not what’s best for the Rams. …

“You don’t want to make the changes a normal thing year-in and year-out, but at the same time, when they occur for all the right reasons, which is typically the conversation we’re having, man, what an amazing thing it is. And you keep in touch, you stay connected with those guys, and you get a chance to bring in new ideas, new thought processes, new perspectives, and you’re able to learn from these guys.”

So add that experience, and where McVay’s chipped away at getting a little more centered personally, and you’ll find a coach more ready than he’s ever been to attack what’s ahead.

Expectations, again, are high in L.A. Matthew Stafford’s a Ram. Aaron Donald’s been Defensive Player of the Year three of the last four years. Jalen Ramsey was a candidate for that award last year. Around those three are Robert Woods, Cooper Kupp, Andrew Whitworth and Leonard Floyd, guys either right in the heart of their prime or near the end of it. And the front office mortgaged draft capital and cap real estate to assemble the group.

The Rams are playing for the now. And, as we’ve detailed here, McVay’s ready for everything that comes with that.

“You’re not gonna run away from the expectations,” he conceded. “Every single team in the NFL has one goal right now, and that’s to win a Super Bowl. And I believe the teams that know, and the teams that have actually accomplished that, they know that you only do that by being where your feet are planted. The one thing that I would say, there’s a belief in the ability to do what we want to be able to do. Now, you don’t do that unless you are where your feet are planted. But there’s a belief, there’s a confidence in the people you’re around.

“And when you enjoy that? We’re not gonna ask anybody to do anything that’s more than they can actually accomplish. And there’s a real peace of mind that accompanies that if you know, Hey, there’s gotta be hard work, there’s gotta be a process, there’s gotta be standards that we uphold day-in and day-out. But you know what? If we do those things, I believe we can go into games, and expect to be able to come away with the result that we want.”

McVay’s also hyper-aware of the implications people draw from his strong feelings for the group he has now. So while he’s over the moon to have his buddy Raheem Morris in as defensive coordinator, that’s no indictment on Wade Phillips or Staley; and if he sounds excited about Kevin O’Connell going into O’Connell’s second year, that shouldn’t cast any shade on the job LaFleur or Waldron did.

Just the same, McVay’s very appreciative of what Jared Goff meant for his program over the last four years. And that he sounds the way he does when you start asking about Stafford doesn’t change that. But in case you’re wondering how he sounds talking about Stafford, let’s just say it sounded, to me, like McVay was about to jump through the phone.

“Bro, this dude’s a bad MF-er,” he said, laughing. “Whatever people say about him, as good as it can be, he’s even better than advertised. It makes sense to him. The guy’s ability to see the game, his ability to draw on his experiences, the feel that he has, it’s pretty special and unique. And man, his feel for people, his authentic way of connecting with his teammates, his coaches, this guy, it’s great being around him.”

Even better, McVay’s given himself the chance to feel that about a lot of his players over the last two months, as the team’s rolled through its offseason program. That, in turn, allowed him to build on the foundation of his program, one grounded in strong communication and energy, with a little less rigidity and a little more creativity.

And now, over the next few weeks, he’s going to take some time to step away from all of that and get away with his fiancé. He’ll spend time with his friends. He’s going to try not to worry about football so much, and just trust that when he comes back to it he’ll be more ready than he ever has been to be at his best for a team that should be really good.

“I can step away, and I’m present with my fiancé, I’m present with my friends, and, sure, a lot of those conversations entail football,” he said. “But your mind’s not always racing about checking off the to-do list for the following day. I’m sleeping better because of it. And just the balance in anything that you do, the more you dive into people that are doing anything at a really, really high level, there’s an intentional, intrinsic motivation they possess, but there’s also a balance.

“They can unplug. They allow themselves to get rejuvenated and refreshed. And I feel like I’m in a better headspace.”

And soon enough, we’ll see what that means for the Rams, and the rest of the NFL.

[St. Loser Fan]

Fox News' repackage of the story:

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/rams-sea ... afford-nfl

Rams' Sean McVay raves about Matthew Stafford: 'This dude’s a bad MF-er'
The Rams traded for Stafford, who spent his entire career playing for the Lions

The Los Angeles Rams shocked the NFL in the offseason when they traded for Matthew Stafford in hopes he could elevate the team back to the Super Bowl.

As Stafford learns the new offense in camp, head coach Sean McVay gave the veteran quarterback a glowing review in an interview published in Monday Morning Quarterback.

"Bro, this dude’s a bad MF-er," he said in the column. "Whatever people say about him, as good as it can be, he’s even better than advertised. It makes sense to him. The guy’s ability to see the game, his ability to draw on his experiences, the feel that he has, it’s pretty special and unique. And man, his feel for people, his authentic way of connecting with his teammates, his coaches, this guy, it’s great being around him."

Stafford, who surprisingly only has one Pro Bowl selection to his credit, played all 16 games in his final season with the Lions. He had 4,084 passing yards, 26 touchdown passes and 10 interceptions.

He leads the reloaded Rams into a highly competitive NFC West.

McVay admitted that he knows the expectations are even higher for this Rams team.

"You’re not gonna run away from the expectations. Every single team in the NFL has one goal right now, and that’s to win a Super Bowl. And I believe the teams that know, and the teams that have actually accomplished that, they know that you only do that by being where your feet are planted. The one thing that I would say, there’s a belief in the ability to do what we want to be able to do. Now, you don’t do that unless you are where your feet are planted. But there’s a belief, there’s a confidence in the people you’re around," McVay said, adding that he wouldn’t ask for anything more than what he knew they could accomplish on the field.

Los Angeles won its wild card game last season but lost in the divisional round to the Green Bay Packers.

I like how the last line forgets the Los Angeles Chargers exist.

[Hacksaw]

Who?

[snackdaddy]

Maybe "Who are the Chargers?" should be the answer to a Jeopardy clue. "An NFL team in Los Angeles not named the Rams". The contestants would look puzzled trying to figure it out.

[PARAM]

As Ram fans we should probably have a little angst if we don't have amnesia.


Sean McVay has started out hot. But we remember another "offensive genius" who did the same. Martz had an identical record to McVay (43-21) and went 10-11 his last 2 years. I don't anticipate McVay taking that path but it's not like Bill Walsh types come around all the time.

Some other "offensive" head coaches who started out hot and didn't maintain.

Mike Shanahan. After 2 years with the Raiders, he was an assistant for 6 years, then got another shot. 47-17 the first 4 seasons, 34-30 the next 4. Of course he rebounded again going 42-22 over 4 years before becoming just a name from the past and a 39-57 record over his last 6 seasons.

Don Coryell. After a decent run with the Cardinals (42-27-1), he started out on fire in San Diego (41-19), then fizzled (28-37 the next 5).

What will our guy do going forward?

Of course Shanahan lost Elway, Coryell had an aging Fouts and Martz lost Warner. McVay may be taking the opposite trajectory if we're to believe the hype. I sure hope so.

[/zn/]

Of course Shanahan lost Elway, Coryell had an aging Fouts and Martz lost Warner. McVay may be taking the opposite trajectory if we're to believe the hype. I sure hope so.

I disagree with just a bit of that but this post is not "debate," it's just me thinking out loud about these issues and using your post as a springboard into that. I'm sure you will agree with a lot of it.

It wasn't losing Warner that did it with Martz though. It was a long string of stunningly bad draft picks and bad free agency decisions. A lot of what Martz did was simply to win with an inherited team. From 2000-2005, they pretty much squandered that. That wasn't all Martz of course--it was the front office Shaw set up, which included giving Zygmunt power in football matters.

McVay inherited a team too but not one of the caliber Martz inherited (young qb for example). But he did inherit a lot. Unlike 1997 or 2012, that was not a rebuild situation. BUT unlike the Martz years, they did not just run with what they had and squander it with bad personnel decisions. That of course is not just McVay (anymore than the squandering of 2000-2005 was just Martz). But McVay did play a big role in it all, as we all know.

Here's a good example.

Draft hits from round 4 on down, 2000-2005: out of 27 picks, they hit on Fitzpatrick, Young, Bowen, and Massey. Hit rate: 14.8%

It's harder to do recent drafts but I will try to do 2017-2020. Out of 24 picks, I would argue that they hit on key starters like Joseph-Day, Edwards, and Fuller, and then productive players who contributed significant snaps like Ebukam and Reynolds...plus there's promise in guys like Gaines and Howard, who look like they are going to get playing time this year at least (so I count those 2 as hits). That (admittedly provisional) count puts it at 7, which is at this point looks like a hit rate of 29.2%.