The Rams locked up their most precious asset, signing coach Sean McVay to a five-year contract extension in the wake of the team's first Super Bowl appearance in 17 years. In two seasons, McVay has a 24-8 regular season record and a pair of postseason victories.
McVay, 33, is now under contract through the 2023 season. A year from now the Rams are scheduled to move into a new, state-of-the-art stadium, and locking up McVay should ensure that he remains the face of the franchise for the foreseeable future.
The deal replaces McVay's previous pact, negating the final three years of the five-year contract he signed in January of 2017, when the Rams hired him after a successful stint as Washington's offensive coordinator. At the time of the hiring McVay, then 30, became the youngest coach in modern NFL history.
"I'm very thankful to be a Ram for many years to come, working with great ownership, people, coaches, and players," McVay told NFL.com. "It's exciting to get camp going and we're ready to roll up our sleeves up and get to work."
The Rams also announced they have extended general manager Les Snead through 2023, ensuring their coach-GM pairing will stick together for the foreseeable future.
McVay made an immediate impact, guiding a Rams team that had gone 4-12 the previous year to an 11-5 record and an NFC West title. It marked the franchise's first winning season since 2003, and the Rams' first playoff appearance since 2004. McVay transformed an offense that had been the league's worst in 2017 into an elite unit that led the NFL in scoring, more than doubling the team's total points from the previous season and jump-starting the career of second-year quarterback Jared Goff, the top overall pick in the 2016 draft. After the season, McVay was named the NFL's Coach of the Year.
The success continued in 2018, as the Rams went 13-3 to capture another division title. L.A. then added a pair of playoff triumphs, including a dramatic overtime road victory over the New Orleans Saints in the NFC Championship Game, to clinch a berth in Super Bowl LIII. That game was a massive disappointment, with the Rams offense sputtering in a 10-3 defeat to the New England Patriots and McVay blaming himself for the poor effort.
The contract, whose terms were undisclosed, is expected to put McVay in the upper echelon of NFL head coaches in terms of compensation -- a stark change from his previous reality.
At the close of the most recent hiring cycle, McVay was believed to be the league's lowest-paid head coach. Coming off the team's Super Bowl LIII defeat, it was especially glaring that he had been leapfrogged by two of his former Rams assistants, Matt LaFleur (the team's offensive coordinator in 2017) and Zac Taylor (the team's quarterbacks coach in 2018), each of whom eclipsed McVay's annual average of $4 million upon accepting jobs with the Packers and Bengals, respectively.
Shortly after the Super Bowl, Rams executive vice president of football operations Kevin Demoff approached McVay and told him the team wanted to explore an extension that would better reflect his market value. Talks heated up in June and July, as the two sides worked to finalize a deal before the start of training camp.
Now that McVay's deal is done, Anthony Lynn -- the coach of L.A.'s other NFL team -- is believed to be the league's lowest-paid coach, at an annual average of $4.3 million. Lynn, who was hired the same week as McVay, has a 21-11 record in two seasons, including a 12-4 campaign in 2018. The Chargers won a road playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens last January before getting blown out by the Patriots in the divisional round.
Lynn has two years remaining on his original deal.
The Rams, meanwhile, will now focus on negotiating an extension with Goff, who is under contract through the 2020 season. In April, the team picked up the fifth-year option on Goff's rookie deal, but there is momentum within the organization to sign him to a new pact, especially in the wake of the Eagles' signing of Carson Wentz -- the quarterback selected immediately after Goff in the '16 draft -- to a four-year extension in June.