Rams coach Sean McVay “tormented,” even with the team as Super Bowl favorite

The Los Angeles Rams enter the 2026 NFL season as a Super Bowl favorite, but head coach Sean McVay is “tormented.” 

He was named the NFL Coach of the Year for the 2017 NFL season, just after becoming the youngest head coach in modern NFL history, and, a few seasons later, won the Super Bowl in 2022. Faced with lofty expectations for a winning season, McVay said he’s learned to focus on the journey. 

“You’re either in a storm, you’re coming out of one or you’re getting ready to go back into it,” McVay said. “And it’s one of those three things. But how you handle that is the separator.”

How McVay’s handled winning and losing 

McVay’s Super Bowl win came after acquiring quarterback Matthew Stafford . But the coach’s joy over the win was fleeting.

“The lies I told myself were, ‘I won’t be happy until I — until we win one.’ Or, ‘I win one,'” McVay said. “It was a lot more selfish. And, you know, you’re embarrassed to kind of look back on how you got to where you did.”

The Rams’ 2022 Super Bowl win was followed by a losing season. 

“It revealed a lot of insecurities that I had. My identity was so tied up in winning and losing games, and that was where I felt like my self-worth lied,” McVay said. “It was very revealing of how fragile I was and all the insecurities that I did have.”

With the team facing another challenging season, McVay considered stepping away from coaching for a career in broadcasting “and hide behind a convenient narrative of some media opportunities.” He discussed the possibility with his wife. 

“And she said, ‘That never sounded like the kind of leader you wanted to be,'” McVay said.

It served as a wake-up call. 

He stayed with the Rams, and the team has made the playoffs every season since. McVay, with 100 wins under his belt before he turned 40, concedes that he’s still a work in progress.

“I think that’s one of the biggest things, is the awareness of when those triggers, what are the things that, you know, that you’re being somebody or you’re getting to a point you don’t want to be, and how quickly can you snap out of that,” McVay said. 

What’s behind the Rams’ success 

The Rams, McVay said, “are wired to achieve.” 

“And let’s make no mistake about it. When we take the field, the expectations are to win,” he said. 

It’s a big change from a decade ago when the Rams left St. Louis and returned to Los Angeles. The team had played in L.A. for 49 years before leaving after the 1994 season. 

At a time of big change, general manager Les Snead, backed by ownership, gambled on an unproven commodity and hired McVay, then 30, for head coach.

“This guy changes the math,” Snead said of McVay. “Tactically, when he’s in flow, it’s like you’re trying to defend 12 instead of 11.”

McVay’s prowess comes in part from his power of recall, according to Rams offensive coordinator Nate Scheelhaase. McVay can quickly recall play calls, formations and game situations from his career and apply those lessons in developing his gameplan each week. 

The team owners, the Kroenke family, are also building on that ability by investing in artificial intelligence, headed up by director of scouting, strategy and analytics Nicole Blake. She believes it could fundamentally change NFL coaching. 

“You’ll have significantly more patterns identified that the human eye would never catch,” Blake said.

The Rams try to exploit their opponents’ patterns on the field. Players will “try to create conflict,” Stafford said.

“That just comes through endless hours of studying tape, talking about it, understanding defensive responsibilities, and knowing their adjustments,” Stafford said. “And how can we try to put those adjustments in conflict on every play.”

The coach-players connection

Rams culture is demanding, but there’s also a lot of trust. Just days before the 2022 Super Bowl, for instance, the team failed to pull off the jet sweep, a complicated play, during practice. Stafford worked with his teammates and told McVay he could trust the team to execute it. 

With the Super Bowl on the line, McVay called for the jet sweep and the Rams players executed it perfectly. The Rams won, 23-20.

McVay’s the youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl, and his youth and vitality help him connect with the team.This summer, a shirtless picture of McVay went viral – even Rams players took notice.  

“We all were like, ‘We better hit the weight room, because this guy’s shredded,'” Stafford said. “I mean, that’s the guy, he’s putting the time and the effort in.”

Team members also work to be close with one another, which “comes with vulnerability,” Stafford said.

“Being able to be close and open up with our head coach leading the way, it brings us closer as an organization, as a team,” he said.

Read a full transcript of the “60 Minutes” piece.