Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay will stay on for the 2023 NFL season, according to reports. Rumors had the soon-to-be 37-year-old coach stepping away after the 2022 season due to burnout. McVay won a Super Bowl at the end of the 2021 NFL season, but his team fell on hard times in 2022, going 5-12 to give the football coaching prodigy his first losing season. While the head coach coming back for another go-round is good for the 2023 Rams, McVay has to make some changes next season for his team to get back to the top. One of those changes is there should be no more Sean McVay play-calling. That is one responsibility he needs to give up to an assistant next season.
Sean McVay must give up Rams' play-calling duties
There is no denying Rams head coach is an offensive genius. After an undistinguished college career as a wide receiver at Miami (OH), the grandson of former New York Giants head coach and legendary San Francisco 49ers executive John McVay took a job under Jon Gruden with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
After one season in the NFC South, Sean McVay moved on to Washington to work under Mike Shanahan and later, Jon’s brother, Jay Gruden. The young coach quickly claimed the ranks and became the team’s offensive coordinator at age 28. And three seasons later, became the youngest coach in NFL history at 31.
On the strength of his offensive genius, McVay had immediate success in the NFL. He went 24-8 in his first two seasons as a head coach (with Jared Goff as his quarterback), made two Super Bowls and won one, and came into Year 5 with a 55-26 career record.
The 2022 season was a disaster, though.
The team went 5-12, by losing nine of the final 11 games. Yes, Copper Kupp went down after Week 10, and Matthew Stafford followed after Week 11, but the team finishing 27th in points scored (307) and dead last in yards gained (4,796) is bad.
This is just one of the many reasons that the Sean McVay play-calling should stop for the 2023 season.
McVay is an offensive genius, and he can still put in his offensive system and game plan each week. However, sometimes geniuses struggle when working with lesser talent. That‘s what happened in 2022. Another play-caller may be better able to take McVay’s scheme and adapt it to fit the talent on the field, especially if that talent is less than stellar.
Also, McVay almost walked away this offseason because he was burnt out. Part of that burnout has to do with being the team’s de facto offensive coordinator as well as head coach. Any NFL coach doing more than one job isn’t doing his jobs at the optimal level usually.
The Rams head coach merely needs to look around the league to see that fewer and fewer head coaches are calling their own plays these days. There are a few notable exceptions like Andy Reid and Kyle Shanahan who are having success.
However, some of the best-run offenses in the 2022 season were ones under former offensive coordinator head coaches who let their top lieutenants call the plays. This is true of Nick Sirianni and the Philadelphia Eagles and Brian Daboll and the New York Giants. They design the offense but leave the play-calling to Shane Steichen and Mike Kafka, respectively.
And that is part of the reason that the Eagles and Giants had more success than several teams with play-calling head coaches like the Las Vegas Raiders (Josh McDaniels), Indianapolis Colts (Frank Reich, before he was fired), Cleveland Browns (Kevin Stefanski), and Arizona Cardinals (Kliff Kingsbury).
The modern NFL coach is more of a CEO than anything else. That’s why the 2023 NFL playoffs are full of coaches who don’t call their own plays, like Sirianni, Daboll, Mike McCarty, Pete Carroll, Sean McDermott, John Harbaugh, Todd Bowles, and Brandon Staley.
Plus, Rams head coach Sean McVay has a proven play-caller on the Rams 2023 staff already. Offensive coordinator Liam Cohen didn’t call plays when he was with the Rams earlier in his career (2018-20) but left for Kentucky to get play-calling experience. In the college booth, he turned the Wildcats into the fifth-best scoring (32.3 points per game) and eighth-best total offense (425.2 yards per game) in the SEC.
With Cohen in the fold, the Sean McVay play-calling days should be over for the Rams 2023 season. If they are, maybe the team will have more success, and the coach won’t feel so burnt out at the end of next season that he considers walking away again.
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