Fast forward 10 months later and 31-year-old McVay has the Rams leading the NFC West with a 7-2 record. The Rams have gone from a league-worst 14 points per game last season, to a league-best 32.9 PPG this season. McVay has used 23-year-old quarterback Jared Goff to initiate that historic turnaround.
The youngest head coach-starting quarterback duo in league history has brought winning and playoff potential back to Los Angeles. To give you some perspective on just how young this pairing is, we've rounded up some facts about the youthful duo of McVay and Goff.
Sean McVay was only a sophomore in high school when Tom Brady won his first Super Bowl (XXXVI). Jared Goff was just seven years old.
Sean McVay was in the midst of his teens when Tom Brady came in for Pro Bowl quarterback Drew Bledsoe, who was injured in a Week 2 game vs. the Jets in 2001. Brady went 11-3 and led the Patriots to their Super Bowl in franchise history. At this same time, McVay was attending Marist School, a Catholic prep school in Georgia, where he played quarterback and became the school's first player to throw and rush for 1,000 yards in consecutive seasons.
Meanwhile, Jared Goff was growing up in Marin County, CA and there's a good chance he was playing with Bionicle Legos -- one of the hottest toys of the early 2000s.
If you combine McVay and Goff's ages (54), they're still younger than 13 of current head coaches in the league.
The age range of the 32 head coaches goes McVay who's 31 to Pete Carroll who's 66 years old. However, you get a bit more context of just how young McVay and his quarterback are when you take the sum of their ages and compare them to head coaches in the league. These are the current head coaches over the age of 54:
John Harbaugh, Ravens (55)
Ron Rivera, Panthers (55)
Mike Mularkey, Titans (55)
Chuck Pagano, Colts (57)
Dirk Koetter, Buccaneers (58)
Marvin Lewis, Bengals (59)
Andy Reid, Chiefs (59)
Mike Zimmer, Vikings (61)
John Fox, Bears (62)
Jim Caldwell, Lions (62)
Bruce Arians, Cardinals (65)
Bill Belichick, Patriots (65)
Pete Carroll, Seahawks (66)
The L.A. Rams have won 13 games in Jared Goff's lifetime -- he's been the starting QB for 7 of them.
Jared Thomas Goff was born on October 14, 1994 in Novato, California. Two days later, the Los Angeles Rams won their Week 7 matchup vs. the Giants. The Rams would win just one more game that season and finish the year 4-12. In April of 1995, league owners approved the Rams' relocation to St. Louis, the team would remain there until January 2016 when their move back to L.A. became official.
A few months later, on April 28, the Rams selected Goff with the No. 1 pick in the 2016 NFL Draft. The rookie made his NFL debut starting in a Week 11 loss vs. the Miami Dolphins. His first win didn't come until the 2017 season opener against the Colts -- Goff completed 21 of 29 passes for 306 yards and one touchdown. Goff has gone on to rack up another six wins while throwing for 2,385 yards on the season.
Bill Belichick has been in the NFL for the entirety of McVay's life, plus a decade (since 1975).
Bill Belichick is arguably the greatest coach in NFL history and a big part of his greatness has been the experience he's picked up along the way. The man with 270 career wins as a head coach, has been in the league for over 40 years. In 1975, Belichick got his start as an assistant to Baltimore Colts coach Ted Marchibroda and earned just $25 a week. This was over a decade before Sean McVay was born on January 24, 1986 in Dayton, Ohio.
Sean McVay was three years old the last time the Los Angeles Rams made the playoffs (1989).
The L.A. Rams were playoff regulars in the mid and late '80s, making it to the postseason six out of seven times from 1983 to 1989. However, 1989 was the last time the L.A. Rams made the playoffs. Sean McVay was 10 days shy of his 4th birthday when the L.A. Rams played their last playoff game -- a 30-3 NFC Championship loss against the 49ers.
At 7-2 the Rams are currently the projected 4th seed and seem poised to end this L.A. football playoff drought.
