Sean McVay has called the Rams’ offensive plays since he was hired in 2017, and he’s had plenty of success in doing so. His two offensive coordinators in the last four years, Matt LaFleur and Kevin O’Connell, both helped him on game days and during the week of planning, but neither called the plays for the Rams.
LaFleur left to become the Titans’ OC in 2018 and eventually the Packers’ head coach, but McVay wasn’t going to let the same thing happen with O’Connell this offseason. It was reported that he blocked O’Connell from interviewing for the Chargers’ offensive coordinator position, which McVay confirmed on Thursday.
McVay explained that he values O’Connell immensely and he’s a big part of what the Rams want to do on offense, so he didn’t want to lose him to Brandon Staley and the Chargers – especially with O’Connell’s role set to grow.
“That is accurate. Kevin’s a great coach. He’s our offensive coordinator. He has a huge say and a huge influence on how we want to operate, and I think even more so moving forward,” McVay said. “I was really excited about the opportunity to be able to work with him in year two, continue to collaborate, learn from him. He understands how valuable he is to me and to the Rams and we talked about all those things, but I think it’s a credit to the respect that he’s garnered around the league. What I would say is he’s our OC and that’s why we blocked him.”
McVay has always been a big supporter of his assistant coaches by trying to help them advance their careers with various promotions – even at the expense of losing those coaches to other teams. He’s helped the likes of LaFleur, Staley and Zac Taylor, among others, with all three of them going on to earn head coaching jobs.
McVay isn’t giving up play-calling duties to O’Connell, and he’s aware that O’Connell likely would’ve gotten the chance to do so with the Chargers, but he didn’t want to lose his offensive coordinator to the same position with another team.
McVay said he’s talked to O’Connell about play-calling, but it doesn’t sound like a change will be made in the near future.
“Yeah, and those are things that you always talk about. I think each situation is independent,” he said. “I don’t think you ever want to pigeonhole yourself into – Kevin and I had a lot of great dialogue and I’m always going to listen. I’m not interested in losing a coach to go do that same role and I’m not naive to the fact that the play calling, and those things are very important and when that situation came up with Matt (LaFleur), we talked about that. Kevin and I have had great conversations, but I would like to think that anybody that’s been a part of this Rams’ building knows that there is an investment in us trying to help guys continue to grow and if opportunities that they have outside this building don’t exist in-house, then usually that’s when we’re going to let guys go, even if it doesn’t help the Rams and that’s kind of been the approach.”
O’Connell worked closely with Jared Goff and the quarterbacks last season, and will likely continue to do so with Matthew Stafford in 2021, too. Clearly, McVay values him greatly and it’s not unreasonable to think O’Connell could get looks as a head coach next offseason.
But for now, McVay wants him by his side in Los Angeles – at least for one more year.