LA Rams HC Sean McVay to forego Amazon to coach LA Rams in 2022

Okay, was there something to the rumor that LA Rams head coach Sean McVay would be content to jump into a broadcast booth just five years after signing on as the head coach of the LA Rams organization, and just moments after winning Super Bowl  LVI?  Perhaps.  But it may have been nothing more than a thinly veiled negotiation tactic to extend McVay as one of the highest-paid head coaches in the NFL.

Money talks. And if you haven’t paid attention to the scripts on the action/thriller movies coming out of Hollywood California over the past 20 or so years, everyone has their price.

We know that the NFL has been dissecting and agreeing to doll out television broadcast rights for the league’s ever-increasing number of NFL games played in any given season. One of the latest deals has been licensing the right to stream all Thursday Night Football games on the Amazon Prime streaming online platform.

Amazon made McVay an offer he almost couldn’t refuse

Of course, opening the 2022 NFL season with primetime NFL TNF games is a big deal, and so the folks at Amazon wanted to ensure that they have assembled the best broadcast booth crew that money can buy. Right now, the two names that pop up most often are those of NBC Sports broadcast persona Al Michaels, who will likely be joined by Fox Sports broadcast personality Troy Aikman.

But there apparently was room for one more. And my oh my, what a coup it would have been for Amazon to sign away the hottest NFL coach at his prime. Well, good in theory at least:

So the story seems to make some sense now.

McVay gets more pay to stay?

If McVay was offered a sum of $20 million/year to jump into a broadcast booth as he marries and begins to contemplate family and regular hours, that would certainly give cause for pause. And if that news spread to the locker room, or at least to reach the ears of All-Pro defensive lineman Aaron Donald, then it would have triggered an “I may retire too” response.

Are the LA Rams out of the woods just yet? Perhaps not. Everyone is willing to sacrifice in order to win their first Super Bowl. Now, players will want to be compensated for what they believe was their contribution to winning the NFL Championship. Even with a hefty sum of available salary cap funds, it gets dicey. With the LA Rams already in excess of their allotted salary cap funds, they will need to be quite creative if the organization intends to bring as many players back for the 2022 season as possible.

It’s not going out on a limb to conclude that the Rams upped the ante to retain Sean McVay as the team’s head coach going forward. By how much will likely be something we never truly know. And that pay increase for the head coach will likely prompt the agents of players to seek top dollar as well. But, for now, the mystery is solved. And as far as that goes, so is the question of whether or not Sean McVay will be back to coach the Rams in 2022.