Extending LA Rams Les Snead, Sean McVay is right move at wrong time

The LA Rams are in the throes of afterglow. Winning the NFL Championship has placed the team into a state of prolonged euphoria, and rightfully so. It’s the first Super Bowl victory for the combination of Rams GM Les Snead and HC Sean McVay. And with two Super Bowl appearances in just their first five years together, many expect this to be the tip of the iceberg.

This is not just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Since taking over the helm of the LA Rams, McVay has led the team to unprecedented success:

1. 2017 NFL Season: 11-5 Postseason: 0-1
2. 2018 NFL Season: 13-3 Postseason: 3-1
3. 2019 NFL Season:   9-7 Postseason: N/A
4. 2020 NFL Season: 10-6 Postseason: 1-1
5. 2021 NFL Season: 12-5 Postseason: 4-0

Doing the math, the LA Rams are 55-26 in the regular season and 8-3 in the postseason under head coach Sean McVay. That’s pretty impressive.

And that’s coming off a 4-12 season in 2016. He inherited the Top rookie from 2016, quarterback Jared Goff, who finished the previous year at 0-7. Goff would be traded before the 2021 NFL season, despite success in the playoffs.

He also inherited All-Pro defensive lineman Aaron Donald. The only other player inherited from the previous regime who remains on the roster is offensive right tackle Rob Havenstein. The success that McVay has found with this team has been due almost entirely to the collaborative and cooperative effort between himself and Les Snead.

This has been a team built from a detailed plan of what the organization wants to do on the football field, and then reverse engineering those results back into the playbook, the coaches, and ultimately the players who can make it happen. So far, the results have been real, and they’ve been spectacular.