Sean McVay is deservingly heralded as one of the best coaches and leaders anywhere in the NFL. Players love playing for him, coaches love working on his staff and the result has been two Super Bowl appearances with one championship in five years.
Liam Coen enjoys working with him so much that he returned to the Rams as McVay’s offensive coordinator, leaving his role at Kentucky where he was the offensive coordinator and play caller for one year.
In meeting with the media for the first time on Wednesday, Coen said the opportunity to return to the Rams was too good to pass up. And McVay is a big reason for that, wanting to learn more from the 36-year-old head coach.
Coen also shared a story about how McVay is always showing appreciation and respect for those in the Rams’ building, whether it’s coaches, players, chefs or security staff. In that way, Coen says McVay flips the coaching narrative on its head because in the NFL, you don’t get many pats on the back.
“It’s also the communication aspect and the caring of people aspect,” Coen said. “I remember being a young coach in 2018, being here in this building and I had just gotten hired a few months prior and it was later on in an afternoon and Sean came by – and I hadn’t had a ton of dialogue with him, just being hired. I’m the assistant receivers coach. And he came by and just said, ‘Hey man, love what you’re doing. Truly appreciate what you’re doing on a daily basis, man.’ And I’m like – you know, you just don’t hear that that often in this profession and the things you’re expected to do are typically expected, and you don’t get a ton of pats on the back. Sean kind of flips that narrative on its head and truly appreciates people with the way he communicates with his staff, with his players, with the chefs here, with the security. He knows all these people, everybody’s names. He expects the building to be the same and I think that helped with being able to go back to college and communicate with guys differently. … It’s like, ‘Hey, how can we do this thing together in the best way to be successful?’ And a lot of the time, being able to put the players in a position to have their own philosophy on things. The buy-in’s different. All the ways Sean communicates with people on a day-to-day basis, not just the staff or players, really makes you have a different respect for how to communicate with people in general.”
Coen learned a lot from McVay in his first three years with the Rams from 2018-2020, working as the assistant wide receivers coach and eventually the assistant QBs coach. He’ll get to learn even more now after returning to Los Angeles as McVay’s offensive coordinator, allowing the two to work more closely together.