Sean McVay and the Rams’ All-In Bet on a Super Bowl in Their Own Stadium

Sean McVay

Photo: The 621st Contingency Response Wing / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	January 24, 1986 Omaha
Occupation	Footballer
Honours	Super Bowl · NFC West ×4
Individual awards	AP NFL Coach of the Year · Super Bowl champion · NFC champion

For the better part of a decade, NFL owners looking for a head coach kept trying to hire the next Sean McVay. Several of the young play-callers they found had learned the trade on his staff. The coach who made youth a hiring fashion is no longer the young one in the room, and his Los Angeles Rams are no longer a project. They are a wager: a reigning MVP quarterback near the end of his career, a two-time Defensive Player of the Year bought with draft picks and a homegrown pass rusher, and a Super Bowl scheduled for their own stadium at the end of the season. Five games in, the wager stands at two wins and three losses, and too many of those losses lead back to decisions McVay made himself.

Football runs through the family. His grandfather, John McVay, coached the New York Giants and then spent two decades in San Francisco’s front office through the years of its Super Bowl dynasty. His father, Tim, captained Indiana’s team as a defensive back before a long career as a television executive.

Sean was born in Dayton, Ohio, in January 1986 and grew up mostly around Atlanta, where the family settled when he was six. At Marist School he started for four years at quarterback and safety, won a state championship as a senior and was named Georgia’s 4A Offensive Player of the Year ahead of a receiver called Calvin Johnson. Three seasons as a receiver at Miami University in Ohio produced 39 catches, numbers that pointed him toward the sideline.

Jon Gruden gave him his first job in 2008, with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. After a season in the short-lived United Football League he joined Mike Shanahan’s staff in Washington in 2010, coached tight ends, and in January 2014 Jay Gruden, by then Washington’s head coach, made him offensive coordinator in place of Kyle Shanahan. By 2016 he had made Kirk Cousins a Pro Bowl quarterback.

Stan Kroenke hired him in January 2017, less than two weeks before his 31st birthday, which made him the youngest head coach of the NFL’s modern era. The Rams he inherited had scored fewer points than any team in the league; a year later they scored more than anyone, won the NFC West and earned him the Associated Press Coach of the Year award. In 2018 they went 13-3 and won the NFC Championship Game in overtime in New Orleans, and at 33 McVay became the youngest head coach to reach a Super Bowl.

That Super Bowl is where the “genius” label first cracked. Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots held the Rams to a single field goal in a 13-3 defeat, the lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever played, and McVay did not hide behind his players. “I got outcoached,” he said that night. The second crack was quieter. The Rams decided McVay’s offense needed a different quarterback than Jared Goff, and in 2021 they sent Goff, two first-round picks and a third-rounder to Detroit for Matthew Stafford. It became the franchise’s template, trading future picks for players who can win now, a habit summed up by a team motto ESPN can only print with dashes. The method has a cost, and McVay paid it in 2022: a 5-12 season after the championship, with Stafford injured for long stretches. He later admitted he had considered stepping away from coaching, and that his wife talked him into staying.

The Stafford trade paid off at once. In February 2022 the Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 in Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium, the franchise’s first title since 1999, and McVay, at 36, became the youngest head coach ever to win one. What followed said more about him. In 2023 a roster full of first- and second-year players, led by Puka Nacua, reached the playoffs anyway. In 2024 he passed John Robinson as the winningest coach in Rams history, then won a playoff game moved to Arizona by the Los Angeles wildfires.

The 2025 season was his best since the title. Stafford won the MVP award, the Rams went 12-5, and they beat Carolina on the road and Chicago in overtime in the snow before losing the NFC Championship Game 31-27 at Seattle. “That game the other day probably hurt more than any loss I’ve ever been a part of,” McVay said days later, on the day the Rams announced multiyear extensions for him and general manager Les Snead, terms undisclosed. Across nine seasons the Associated Press counted a 92-57 regular-season record, a 10-6 mark in the playoffs, seven playoff berths and four NFC West titles.

The offseason was an exercise in raising the stakes. Mike LaFleur, McVay’s offensive coordinator, left to become head coach of the Arizona Cardinals. The Rams traded for cornerback Trent McDuffie, used the 13th pick of the draft on Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson, and McVay closed any succession debate on the spot: “Let’s make one thing clear: This is Matthew’s team.” Then, on June 1, they sent Jared Verse and three draft picks to Cleveland for Myles Garrett.

The season has not followed the script. The opener in Melbourne ended in a 27-7 loss to the 49ers after McVay’s quarterback sneak on fourth-and-goal from the 1 failed and San Francisco answered with a 99-yard touchdown drive. “Sometimes sports can humble you, and today was one of those days. I make no excuses,” he said. A 16-0 halftime lead in Denver became a 30-26 defeat; a comeback in Philadelphia evened the record; and on October 12 a blocked 48-yard try at a winning field goal led to a 37-34 overtime loss to the Buffalo Bills. McVay blamed the kicking unit, the Rams replaced Harrison Mevis with Blake Grupe, and he then softened his verdict: “I probably should have articulated it better.”

Away from the field, McVay lives in Hidden Hills, California, with his wife, Veronika Khomyn, a Ukrainian-born former model he met while coaching in Washington. They married in June 2022 and have two sons, born in 2023 and 2025.

His influence already outruns his record. Matt LaFleur in Green Bay, Zac Taylor in Cincinnati, Kevin O’Connell in Minnesota and Liam Coen in Jacksonville all worked for him before becoming head coaches, and the Cardinals team arriving at SoFi Stadium in Week 6 belongs to the latest of them, Mike LaFleur. The bigger date is further off. Super Bowl LXI will be played at SoFi Stadium in February, the reason the Rams spent picks as if the future could wait, and the measure by which this season of McVay’s will be judged.

Tags: sports, athletes, NFL, American football, Los Angeles Rams, Matthew Stafford, Myles Garrett, Super Bowl LVI, Sean McVay, Les Snead