When the Los Angeles Ramshired Sean McVay to be their head coach in January, the risk was clear. At just 31 years of age with just eight years of coaching experience in the NFL, experience was minimal. If the Rams faced adversity, McVay’s lack of functional experience certainly posed a threat to stability throughout the club. And were the Rams set to get off to a bad start in the 2017 regular season after 14 years without a winning season, their new home in Los Angeles was not only going to tune out the team – they might tune out their interest entirely.
Instead, for all his inexperience, McVay guided the team through the preseason without star DE Aaron Donald into Week 1 and through a 46-9 season opener as Donald returned to the team after McVay’s personal involvement.
Suffice to say, it’s been a perfect start.
And McVay quite certainly deserves credit for as much.
The perils were obvious. Donald could have well extended his holdout deeper into the regular season. The Rams could have failed to take advantage of an injury-depleted Indianapolis Colts side in Week 1 or have done so in much less impressive fashion. Instead, he guided the team to a start as good as Rams fans could have wished for now looking to validate all the optimism his hiring provided.
Moving forward, we’ll quite obviously learn more about the 2017 Rams and expose issues with more clarity that weren’t stressed by the Colts in Week 1.
But for me, the most surprising thing through one game week of the 2017 regular season is how well everything has gone under the oversight of a first-time head coach with as little experience (both in the NFL and in life) as Sean McVay has.