Sean McVay dined with an NFL legend, got inadvertently feted by a celebrity chef and rubbed elbows with two Hollywood A-listers, then returned to his hotel room and hoped for the phone call of a lifetime.
January 2017. What a month for McVay. He started it as a well-regarded but relatively unknown assistant coach and, within two weeks, he became the youngest head coach in NFL history.
One dinner, last Jan. 10, changed McVay’s life, and as the Rams prepare for their first playoff game in 13 years, Saturday night against Atlanta at the Coliseum, it’s fair to think that night might have changed the course of the franchise. It’s the night McVay aced the test be needed to pass in order to coach the Rams.
“It was such a whirlwind,” McVay recalled this week, almost one full year after his league-rattling hiring.
First came the appetizers, so to speak.
The Rams fired Jeff Fisher on Dec. 12, 2016 and compiled a list of potential replacements, most of whom were young NFL assistants with no head-coaching experience. McVay appeared to be a footnote on that list.
He had developed a good reputation in two years as Washington’s offensive play-caller, both for his football acumen and his personality. McVay also had a pedigree because his grandfather, John McVay, was a longtime executive with the San Francisco 49ers.
Still, he was 30 years old. He would get a couple interviews, league pundits figured, then be a more serious candidate after the 2017 or 2018 season. The Rams had heard good things, though, so after Washington ended its season on Jan. 1, McVay flew to Los Angeles to meet with Rams executives.
An initial dinner in Santa Monica on Jan. 4, with McVay, Chief Executive Officer Kevin Demoff, General Manager Les Snead and Senior Assistant Tony Pastoors went well. A more formal interview the following day made the Rams believe they might be onto something with McVay.
“The best part about it was, it never felt, formally, like an interview,” McVay said. “It felt more like a conversation the whole time, and that’s a credit to them. Even the next day, when it was a little more formalized, it still felt like you were just kind of talking about ball and talking about things that you enjoy.”
The Rams were so impressed that they brought in quarterback Jared Goff to meet with McVay and watch game film. Snead told Demoff: “I’m buying stock in Sean McVay.” Further, as part of his due diligence during the coaching search, Snead collected comments from players who worked with McVay.
“Very good players with strong personalities, on both sides of the ball, were very quick to give him a thumbs-up,” Snead said recently. “Like, ‘Oh yeah, home run.’”
The Rams were intrigued, but not totally sold. They did more interviews, with Carolina’s Steve Wilks, Arizona’s Harold Goodwin, New England’s Josh McDaniels and Matt Patricia, Jacksonville’s Doug Marrone and Buffalo’s Anthony Lynn.
Meanwhile, McVay interviewed with San Francisco on Jan. 9. That night, Demoff called McVay and invited him back to Los Angeles the next day. McVay would be the first (and only) candidate to receive a second interview, and Demoff wanted to take him to dinner again.
Except this time, on Jan. 10, McVay would dine with team owner Stan Kroenke, at Spago, the famous Beverly Hills bistro. All around, lumps grew in throats.
The Rams’ football folks felt confident in McVay and decided that his age shouldn’t be a hindrance. They weren’t totally convinced Kroenke would share in their optimism, especially given that McVay could pass for a high school student if he shaved his ever-present light beard.
“But the nice thing with Stan is,” Snead said, “Stan is very innovative. He appreciates the young entrepreneurs, people like that in the business world who are bright and making a mark on the planet. So I don’t think it felt like an uphill battle.”
Still, the Rams had a contingency plan. Demoff, after consultation with Snead, decided to invite former Rams running back Marshall Faulk, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, to the dinner.
Faulk served a purpose. Kroenke already had heard Demoff praise McVay, but the front-office folks wanted Kroenke to believe on his own. So, Faulk was a conversation conduit. Demoff and Snead hoped Kroenke would hear McVay and Faulk talk football on a high level, and be impressed.
“They could have hated each other,” Snead said, “but we had an intuition. Marshall is very smart and Sean is very smart. We thought, ‘They’re going to hit it off.’”
It turned out to be a high-risk decision. In an interview with the Rams’ website last January, Faulk said he talked to Snead before the dinner and expressed his concerns. First, McVay would have to sell Faulk.
“I said, ‘Les, I just think it’s hard, when you have a young quarterback, to put a young play-caller or a young head coach in with him. I think that’s a dynamic that could be a disaster,’” Faulk said.
But the dinner went as well. McVay and Faulk connected, as had been hoped, and the night even had something of a comedic, Hollywood feel. Wolfgang Puck, Spago’s owner and executive chef — and a longtime Rams fan — visited the table multiple times during the night and urged Kroenke to hire a new coach, unaware that he was about to get his wish.
“I wanted to say, ‘Hey, man, right here,’” McVay later joked.
Between bites, famous singer Fergie and her husband, equally famous actor Josh Duhamel, visited the Rams’ table and greeted Kroenke.
“You could tell they were fans,” McVay said, “and definitely didn’t know who I was.”
The night ended well, but not as well as McVay had hoped in his most optimistic dreams.
“We had a great dinner,” McVay said. “In my mind, I was thinking, OK, if everything goes great, at the end of the dinner, (Kroenke) is going to shake my hand and say, ‘Hey, do you want to be the head coach?’”
It didn’t happen. The Rams hadn’t booked a flight for McVay out of Los Angeles, so he sat and waited in his hotel room.
“I’d finally let myself get to the point where I was thinking, ‘All right, I think I might get this job,’” McVay said. “Then you don’t hear anything that night. You let your mind wander to a bunch of places. It becomes, ‘Man, you know, if you don’t get it, you’ve got a good job with Washington and it’s not the end of the world.’”
McVay joked that the Rams “kind of kept me there for a couple days and tortured me,” but really, the final machinations were taking place, inside and outside Rams headquarters.
That included another Faulk-Snead phone call, post-dinner, and this time Faulk said he told Snead, “‘I’m a big enough man to tell you when I’m wrong. I think that this could work.’” Faulk also endorsed McVay in a conversation with Kroenke and, if necessary, that probably pushed McVay over the top.
The Rams brought McVay back the day after the dinner, to meet with star defensive player Aaron Donald, head trainer Reggie Scott and Senior Director of Communications Artis Twyman. A few months later, Donald said he’d never been around a coach who could explain both offense and defense like McVay.
Finally, the Rams had no further reason to hesitate. McVay had all the traits they were looking for, and they liked the idea of hiring a young coach who could grow with a young team and “make their names” together.
The Rams even passed on a chance to interview Atlanta offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, who had started the month above McVay on many pundits’ list of head-coaching candidates. Shanahan had an interview scheduled with the Rams on Jan. 6, but it got cancelled because poor weather prevented Rams executives from making their flight to Atlanta. The Rams tentatively rescheduled with Shanahan for Jan. 14, but in the interim, they decided there was no need to look past McVay.
“At the end of the day,” Snead said, “you had a guy really good at what he does, has unbelievable enthusiasm and is a great teacher and a clear communicator. Authentically, you knew that everything he wanted to do would be to make the Rams better. No other motive. That’s a special trait.”
On Thursday, Jan. 12, less than 48 hours after the Kroenke dinner, McVay accepted a five-year contract and, 12 days short of his 31st birthday, became the youngest coach in NFL history.
Now, one year since the initial meeting, McVay has the Rams to an 11-5 record, an NFC West title and their first playoff appearance in 13 years.
McVay said he hasn’t returned to Spago but might during the offseason. Maybe he will sample a Kroenke-owned wine label that is offered at the restaurant.
It would be fitting if Kroenke joined again. A year ago, Rams executives felt they had to sell Kroenke on McVay. This time, they could celebrate a decision that now seems quite wise.
“I’m sure he started off the dinner with, ‘Why?’” Demoff said shortly after the hiring. “By the end, it was, ‘Why not?’”