By Michael Silver | Published Jan. 3, 2018

The Rams (11-5) secured their first winning season since 2003 and the NFC West title, which vaults them into the postseason for the first time in 13 years. After averaging just 14 points per game in 2016 -- by far the league's worst output -- L.A. finished this year atop the NFL rankings at a 29.9-points-per-game clip.

"They've had an incredible turnaround, and you have to give it up for Sean," says Seattle Seahawks general manager John Schneider, whose team was essentially dethroned as division kingpin by the Rams in Week 15. "People rave about his work ethic, his creativity and his ability to communicate, and for a guy who's that young, it's really, really impressive."

Even in a region that doesn't impress easily, McVay is generating palpable buzz. As evidenced by the "McVay Is The Way" T-shirts being displayed at the Coliseum, there's a new star in Tinseltown -- and the wunderkind whom former Redskins tight end Chris Cooley describes as a "football savant" has a chance to captivate this area like no coach since Pat Riley of the "Showtime" Lakers in the '80s.

"Anybody that spends five minutes with Sean McVay comes away from it and goes, 'Man, that kid's not 31,' " says veteran left tackle Andrew Whitworth, who signed with the Rams last March after a long tenure with the Cincinnati Bengals -- to play for a head coach more than four years his junior. "It's kind of the same as when you're around a truly great player, a future Hall of Famer. You hear people talk about Jonathan Ogden or Anthony Muñoz or Deion Sanders, and they say, 'You knew from the beginning this guy was gonna be special. You could just tell he's different.' That's how it is with Sean."

And that's precisely how it was for the Rams player most impacted by McVay's arrival in L.A.

As he greeted McVay in a room that would soon be vacated by Demoff, Snead and the other Rams officials present, Goff didn't know what to expect.

"They left us alone for half an hour, maybe a little longer," Goff recalls. "Afterward, I remember texting my dad, 'If they decide to hire him, I'm all in.' "

Goff also texted an NFL Network analyst who, nearly a year later, would write a very long feature story about the league's leading Coach of the Year candidate: "Loved him. Mini Gruden haha. Everything revolves around the QB... If McVay is the guy I'd be fired up"

Full disclosure: A few minutes later, I also got a text from McVay (who, incidentally, is not a huge fan of punctuation): "I loved him bro he is awesome"

From Goff's perspective, McVay's confidence in his offensive scheme and ability to communicate his principles stood out.

"We looked at some Washington film, and he walked me through some of their basic plays," Goff remembers. "I obviously was impressed; just the way he spoke and was able to convey his message. I thought, That guy knows what he's talking about. We talked about the previous year -- what was good, bad and indifferent -- and he asked me some real questions, like what I felt needed to be fixed."

In the wake of the rookie season Goff had just experienced, he might have been tempted to answer, "Everything." After the Rams made a bold trade to draft him with the first overall pick in April of 2016, the former Cal star was excited about playing for veteran head coach Jeff Fisher, whose focus was on the defensive side of the ball. However, offensive coordinator Rob Boras was untested in that role, and by mid-December, star running back Todd Gurley would derisively liken the Rams' scheme to a "middle school offense." After Goff replaced Case Keenum as L.A.'s starter in Week 11, he struggled behind a porous offensive line, managing a 63.6 passer rating (with five touchdowns and seven interceptions) and losing all seven of his starts. Fisher was fired with three games remaining in the season, and many football analysts wrote off Goff as a bust.

So yes, in that meeting with McVay, Goff could reasonably have been expected to vent. Instead, he struck a tone that endeared him to his future head coach.

"You almost kind of gave him an opportunity to make an excuse, and he didn't go that route," McVay recalls. "I loved that about him. He took accountability for what his responsibility was and never looked to blame anybody for whatever it was that didn't work out. It's what stood out. You could just see he was wired the right way. He was a guy that would never go the route of blaming anybody else, but it was all about, 'What can I do to be part of the solution?' And he was also supremely confident in his ability, and I sensed a guy that was just challenged in the right way."

To say Goff has responded to McVay's coaching is like declaring that young Marshall Mathers reacted favorably to Dr. Dre's production. In 15 regular-season games in 2017, Goff completed 62.1 percent of his passes (up from 54.6 percent in '16) for 3,804 yards with 28 touchdowns and seven interceptions, for a 100.5 passer rating -- a collective boom that has rendered the bust label into the "old takes exposed" file. Granted, the Rams enhanced his reality with a slew of key acquisitions, including Whitworth, center John Sullivan and receivers Robert Woods, Sammy Watkins and Cooper Kupp (a rookie who lived with Goff during part of the offseason). Yet McVay's cutting-edge game plans, detailed teaching methods and proactive play-calling approach have made the biggest impact in the quarterback's development.

"Every time a play comes over the headset, you think, We could score," Goff says. "That's just because of the confidence he expresses, and the way we know we can execute it."

That confidence stems from obsessive preparation, an uncanny aptitude -- McVay's offensive coordinator, Matt LaFleur, says his boss' recall of past plays is so freakish, "it inadvertently makes you feel inadequate" -- and an all-inclusive leadership style that exudes self-assurance without ever veering off toward entitlement.

"I think that's one of Sean's best qualities," says Rams assistant head coach/linebackers Joe Barry, who worked opposite McVay as Washington's defensive coordinator in 2015 and '16. "He is really, really good and really, really young -- and usually, when you have that combination, the dude's a total asshole. And Sean's the complete opposite, in any setting. He's more inquisitive than anything. He could 'big boy' anybody, in any situation, and he doesn't."

Tim vividly remembers his son's reaction to winning out over the future NFL superstar: "That's kind of a joke, isn't it, Dad?"

McVay signed with Miami of Ohio, which was still riding the momentum of the 2003 season, when the RedHawks ended up 10th in the final rankings. The quarterback of that team, Ben Roethlisberger, had gone on to star for the Pittsburgh Steelers, but Short Sean would not be tabbed as the heir apparent to Big Ben.

"They recruited him as an athlete," recalls Mickey Mann, a linebacker who was part of McVay's incoming class. "He was a real hotshot recruit, so we were all anxious to see him. Then we were like, 'Wait a second ... He's a 5-10 white kid? We recruited him as an athlete? What are we missing here?' But his sheer athletic ability was exceptional, and his work ethic was insane."

Sporting a bangs-heavy hairstyle that Barry jokingly refers to as "straight cheese," McVay found his niche at wide receiver, catching 38 combined passes over his sophomore and junior campaigns. He left a bigger impression off the field.

"If I had to describe Sean, the three things that come to mind would be intense, competitive and no off switch," Mann says. "When we'd work out, he didn't just want to be the best receiver ... He wanted to be the best, period. In the weight room, he'd come down and try to bench press with me and [Chris] Shula and the other linebackers. He was a specimen. He'd do agility drills with the defensive backs and sprints with the receivers. Everything he did, he wanted to compete against the best. And by no means did Sean ever have a sense of entitlement about anything."

Says another of McVay's RedHawks teammates, future Packers and Buccaneers tight end Tom Crabtree: "Coming out of high school, he was a state champ who had put up all those ridiculous numbers, but he was never arrogant about it. He has that football pedigree, that family history, but he never brought it up in a bragging kind of way. He was a model teammate. He was always trying to find that edge."

After college, McVay got a job as the Bucs' assistant wide receivers coach under Jon Gruden, whose duties as a 49ers special assistant in 1990 had included aggregating the players' ticket requests for road games. McVay displayed a similar do-anything, grinder's mentality -- "You have never seen a young person work like this kid," says McVay's mom -- while also unconsciously adopting many of his boss' mannerisms.

When Goff referred to McVay as a "Mini Gruden," he wasn't just pointing to their similar career trajectories. McVay's word choices and speech patterns, right down to the syllables of emphasis, often resemble those of the "Monday Night Football" analyst, who was 34 when he became the Oakland Raiders' head coach in 1998. "They sound so much alike, it's scary," says Rams quarterbacks coach Greg Olson, who was Gruden's offensive coordinator on that 2008 Bucs staff. "And they're both insanely smart."

To Whitworth, who played for the Bengals when Jay Gruden was their offensive coordinator from 2011 through 2013, McVay is "a great marriage of both of them. The looseness and the way he works a room, that's Jay. He's detailed and a grinder and hyper-intense like Jon, and of course, the mannerisms -- completely Jon."

Cooley was right -- after Washington's 2016 campaign ended with a disappointing 8-7-1 record that left them out of the playoffs, McVay was soon channeling his inner Horace Greeley: Go west, young man. In the end, the only question was which California-based franchise would hire him.

The 49ers' president, Jed York, was so excited by McVay's interview that, a couple of days later, he called the young candidate and gave him the phone numbers of two top general manager candidates, encouraging him to feel out the possibility of working together. The Rams, however, proceeded at a quicker pace and got their man. On Thursday, Jan. 12 -- exactly a week after he met with Goff in that Marina del Rey hotel -- McVay agreed to a five-year contract that officially made him the youngest head coach in modern NFL history, a reality underscored by the fact that he brought his parents to the introductory press conference.

Then came the hard part.

"There's a lot of diversity on that staff," Cooley says. "He did a brilliant job of putting it together. A lot of young coaches make the mistake of [only] hiring guys they know. Sean didn't."

He also showed emphatically that, unlike some young coaches, he was secure enough to hire experienced, highly regarded assistants without feeling threatened.

"I think that goes back to just being around my grandfather -- knowing that it's not about rank; that it's about us collectively trying to work together to help our players and our team achieve success," McVay says. "I think it would be silly as a head coach that's doing this for the first time to pretend to know the answers to things that I don't know. It's not being afraid to say, Hey, I've got a great resource like a Wade Phillips [and ask him], 'What do you think is the best way to handle this?' And when you've got people around you that are better than you at what you do, that's where you've got a better chance to improve."

Says Shula: "He wants people that are smarter than him in their respective areas. He has no insecurities about learning from anybody."

McVay also lobbied Snead to acquire key veterans with whom he and his assistants were familiar -- players like Whitworth, Sullivan, Woods, outside linebacker Connor Barwin and cornerback Kayvon Webster (who suffered a season-ending Achilles tendon tear in a Dec. 10 defeat to the Philadelphia Eagles).

"The first criteria we set was, we wanted people with football character that were productive players and were people that we had some familiarity with," McVay says. "They helped set a tone, and then you couple those with the leaders who were already in place, like Aaron Donald and Robert Quinn and Alec Ogletree, and others can follow. It goes back to the influence my grandfather had on me -- when your leaders and your best players are the ones setting the example and the standard, you know you're giving yourself a chance, because nobody's above it."

As for McVay's ability to enunciate that standard, and convey it effectively to scores of proud men? Well, that wasn't necessarily a given.

"He's a pretty boy, and I always worried about him being strong enough in front of the guys [if and when he became a head coach]," says former Washington general manager Scot McCloughan. "But he has an edge to him. When you meet him, you wouldn't think that. But he's unique, and he's really, really intelligent."

And yet, with the exception of attempting to out-scheme opponents, McVay rarely weaponizes that intelligence.

"I think he knows a lot of times he's the smartest guy in the room, but he doesn't make you think that," Goff says. "Some of our coaches say they've been around guys that are super smart, maybe even as smart as Sean, but who are not necessarily as good at teaching, not nearly as personable. It's rare that you get both."

Says Barry: "He's really good with the team, and he gets better every single time. And it's not that he wings it, although he could. He could bulls--- his way through a team meeting and a [game plan] installation; he's that talented. But every single meeting we have is so well thought out, and his presentation is phenomenal. He's got that 'it' factor, but he also works his ever-living ass off. He works tirelessly at every single thing he does, whether it's a third-down play or a five-minute jolt speech he gives to the team every Friday morning."

McVay preaches accountability and harps on the fact that no one is bigger than the team. Those convictions are hardly unique; his penchant for self-scrutiny, however, drives those points home.

"He's got high expectations and standards for everyone, and it starts with himself," LaFleur says. "He's the first one to accept responsibility, even when it's not his fault. That's a pretty endearing quality. 'Cause the role of a head coach, it naturally puts you as the head guy, above everybody ... and he always knocks himself down to everyone else's level. People gravitate toward that, and appreciate it. He criticizes himself, and I think he makes it easier for everybody to do that when he does it in front of the team. Who wouldn't want to follow a guy like that? He lets people know it's OK to be vulnerable. And you know how many coaches don't do that."

Says Barry: "The way we build the 'We Not Me' thing, we tell the players, 'Hey, nobody is above being coached.' Every single time, he follows it with, 'Especially and including myself.' He says, 'No one's bigger than the team -- even me.' And he's incredibly hard on himself. The cool thing about it is, when you're around a guy like that, it kind of motivates you. You think, If this guy's crushing himself for something little, I've gotta pick my game up."

Being hard on himself might be McVay's nature, but in Cooley's eyes, the coach's willingness to do so openly is shrewd and calculated.

"I think he's really, really self-aware, in a lot of good ways," Cooley says. "In a football way, he's very cognizant of breaking tendencies. In terms of relating to others, he knows the way people view him, and in a social environment, he's observant. He's so aware if someone talks about him, even in the moment. And he's very aware of making sure to be critical of himself. It's not as common in today's NFL for people to be critical of themselves; everyone is trying to project strength. Being self-critical is probably the hardest thing for a young head coach. But Sean definitely is."

McVay might not have known it when he was telling his dad "I don't want to hear your pep talk" after fruitless youth-sports outings, but he was developing a philosophy he now considers essential to effective leadership.

"When you ask players to be receptive to coaching -- 'This isn't criticism, it's correction' -- I don't think you can be above that as a coach," McVay says. "If you're not willing to look at yourself critically and try to be accountable for the decisions that you've made, and to look at 'What is my responsibility?' in terms of trying to get things figured out, then I think it's hypocritical to ask the players to do that. I'm a big reader. I like these leadership books, and continuing to learn about self-improvement, how you can be the best version of yourself. I read this book, 'Extreme Ownership,' about the Navy SEALs, and one of the things they continue to talk about is the accountability. When you're accountable, I think it opens up the avenue for the people you're trying to lead to realize that, Hey, nobody's trying to pretend that they're perfect here, but we can all figure out a way to try to improve."

And yet, even by McVay's standards, the degree to which he pummeled himself after that defeat to the Redskins was severe. The Rams had opened the season with a 46-9 thrashing of the Indianapolis Colts that signaled a new level of offensive explosiveness; their Week 2 flop against Washington caused the rookie coach emotionally to implode.

Said Barry: "I'd be lying to you if I said he didn't want that one a little bit more."

"I feel like I pressed a little bit in that game -- maybe because that organization, it was such a big part of my life, and there were so many people there who you want to make proud," McVay says. "We talk about process over results, and it didn't necessarily have to do with the fact that we didn't win the game. It was the way we handled the flow of the game, where I felt like, just to be honest, I panicked. I was a big reason why we didn't win that game, and that's the truth."

In LaFleur's eyes, McVay "was way too hard on himself. He felt like he wasn't at his best, and he wasn't afraid to share that with the guys on the team. I know he was unhappy with our rhythm on offense, and he felt like it was on him. There was a moment of hesitation. He vowed that would never happen again, and it hasn't."

On a related note, here's one thing that hasn't happened under McVay, period: consecutive defeats. The Rams' four bounce-back victories have included triumphs over the playoff-bound Jaguars, the NFC South-leading Saints and, most recently, the Seahawks. To Shula, that's yet another sign that the players have bought into McVay's way.

"Since the day we got here, he set a tone for the culture by taking ownership of his actions," Shula says. "He takes accountability, and it has filtered through the team. If he can do it, and he's the smartest guy and the hardest worker in the building, then anyone should be able to."

Whitworth: "His memory is insane. A few days before the Indy game, I was sitting in his office talking about a play from a game from four years ago when I was with the Bengals. We threw a ball out in the flat to Gio Bernard, and he got absolutely destroyed. Sean literally stopped me in mid-sentence. He knew the play, the yardage, where [quarterback] Andy [Dalton]'s read was and who hit [Bernard]. I said, 'How the hell would you know that?' It didn't make any sense. But that's who he is."

Olson: "That 'Quick Z' pass we hit to (rookie tight end) Gerald Everett for [44 yards] against the Giants? When we put it in, Sean goes, 'Remember, we hit that in Tampa in '08 ... Jeff Garcia to Antonio Bryant?' I looked back, and he was right. That was nine years ago! When he interviewed Aaron Kromer for the job (as offensive line coach), Aaron mentioned that the way he did it in Buffalo was that the assistant was in a room right off his office, so it was easy for them to talk. It was just a throwaway line, and Sean had a million things going on. When Aaron took the job and got to the facility, Sean said, 'By the way, we don't have it so that (assistant offensive line coach Andy Dickerson) can be right by your office, but it's just down the hall.' Kromer's like, 'He remembered that?' "

Shula: "We were playing the Vikings this year, and on the bus on the way to the walkthrough the day before the game (at the University of Minnesota), he goes, 'Hey, remember we played at Minnesota (in college)? Eric Decker and Ernie Wheelwright balled; Adam Weber was the quarterback ...' And then he starts reciting the whole game."

LaFleur: "Every day, it's something. There's a play Jacksonville hit on Seattle (in a December victory), a touchdown pass in the high red area where the receiver stems inside, and we were watching it, and Sean said, 'Oh, yeah -- I remember Jacksonville hit that play on Seattle in 2013.' I thought, There's no way he knows that. But he did. It is the damnedest thing I've ever seen. We have a file called 'all-time cuts,' which is where we store all the instances in which every team has run various plays. This guy doesn't need an all-time cut library, 'cause he has the library in his head. It just makes you question your own intelligence. And what's really freaky about it is the guy doesn't sleep."

Goff: "He has such an amazing memory. He'll say, 'Hey, pull up that Washington play from 2013, against the Eagles ... I think it was the second play of the third quarter, second-and-4 from the 35.' And sure enough ..."

Much has been made of the fact that, on occasions when Goff gets the Rams lined up quickly, McVay will sometimes bark out "alerts" before the coach-to-quarterback communication system is automatically turned off with 15 seconds remaining on the play clock.

"I'm a second-year quarterback," Goff says. "Who, in my position, wouldn't want the benefit of a smart coach's input before the snap?"

Before the start of the season, McVay helped relieve pressure on Goff by telling him not to stress out about getting the ball to any specific player, no matter how fervently he might be lobbied. "Put that on _me_," he assured the quarterback. "You just run the offense."

McVay elaborates: "A lot of times when you've got good players, certainly there's a pressure of, you've gotta get this guy the ball X amount of times. It's Jared's job to execute the plays and the concepts based on what the defense presents. It's my job as a play caller, and it's our job as a coaching staff, to be smart with the selection of those plays to get guys involved."

Goff has executed the offense more proficiently in his first year with McVay than the coach could have imagined. Yet that's not what excites him most about his young quarterback. Rather, it's Goff's mental makeup -- his "stones," as the coach put it in September.

"I think the thing that really starts to separate him," McVay says, "and shows week in and week out, is that this guy's a fearless competitor. And one of his best traits is he's not afraid to fail. He doesn't let bad things affect him. He stays even-keeled at the tightest moments in the game. And this guy competes to win, which is what you want from your quarterback. Yes, you want a smart decision-maker who'll take care of the football, but you also don't want to be out there with a guy who's afraid to lose games, and he certainly is anything but that. And his confident demeanor and disposition, it almost rubs off on you. It certainly makes me feel more confident as a coach, and I know it resonates with his teammates. One of the things that's gonna make him special -- and I think he's gonna be special -- is that he's unflappable and fearless."

In other words, Goff's approach to quarterbacking is eerily similar to McVay's mindset as a play caller. It's the start of a potentially prodigious partnership, and if all goes well, it could last another decade, perhaps even a decade-and-a-half.

Says Goff: "I sure hope so."

"We were showing the players the end of the Bears-49ers game," McVay says, "and the Niners ran down the clock to set up a game-winning field goal. I told them, 'Situationally, the right move there is to let them score (a touchdown on purpose), so you can get the ball back with time to answer. That's what we would do.' As I'm saying that, I notice Wade in the back, and he's shaking his head ... like, No way."

"I'll bet he was!" Dave Shula says, laughing.

Continues McVay: "I just looked at him and said, 'Waaaaaadddeee? Come on, now.' And we both cracked up."

As darkness descends on the Valley, McVay takes me upstairs to his home office, where a framed Kirk Cousins jersey rests prominently on the wall, with an inscription from the quarterback: "Sean, I owe you my career ..."

"Isn't that cool?" McVay says, sounding entirely age-appropriate for once.

To be fair, for an intensely driven young man who can be so hard on himself, McVay does have his share of carefree moments. Many coaches are socially awkward buzzkills who have trouble relinquishing control; McVay, by contrast, is typically the life of the party in an organic and effortless way. It's part of a unique makeup that tends to keep him from being envied by those who might be prone to doing so. As Barry puts it: "We know in this profession it's very uncommon for a person like that to be un-douche-like."

For all the McVay Memory stories, it's perhaps even more mind-blowing that this coaching supernova refuses to forget the forces that helped propel him to the top of his profession, and now of this vast city, literally and figuratively.

"What I do have is an appreciation for the fact that I've been very blessed and fortunate with timing, in getting opportunities that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten, if I weren't from a football family where my grandfather had so much success," he says. "I'm not naïve enough to think otherwise. It's not normal when you finish playing collegiate ball to be able to jump right into the NFL and work for Jon Gruden. That doesn't happen if you don't have your grandfather that has the connections and has earned the respect around this league. And for that, I feel very fortunate.

"And I'm not gonna shy away from that opportunity that I feel so thankful for. The only thing I can control is working as hard as I possibly can to do a good job and make people right on the opportunities that they've given me. As long as you try to carry yourself the right way, be a leader, demonstrate consistency and really try to help people continue to improve, and then not be afraid to say, 'I made a mistake, and I'll continue to try to fix that and be better for our team and for you guys moving forward' -- that's what's important."

As he finishes his thought, even in the smoky evening gloom, it all seems so perfectly clear: Yes, there will be plenty of Sunday nights when McVay comes home in a deep, dark funk. And then, inevitably, he'll wake up early, bright-eyed and engaged, and glide down over Mulholland, en route to the job he was born to do.

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Editors: Ali Bhanpuri, Tom Blair, Brooke Cersosimo, Gennaro Filice | Illustration: Mary Jane Kim