Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay stood on his sideline, with a raucous Detroit crowd raving, watching the medical team assess Joe Noteboom, the Rams' backup left tackle, after the game's first snap. He couldn't imagine such a nightmarish scenario back in OTAs: His starting left tackle was suspended, and his backup was now gone.
It was far from a picturesque start, but life rarely resembles a Basquiat painting. As the medical team tended to Noteboom, McVay's mind was already mulling, assessing the situation and adjusting, calculating and adapting. Every game presents its own curveball, but this one was different.
Then, in the second quarter, McVay lost two of his standout second-year players. Puka Nacua and Steve Avila were both sidelined with knee sprains. He would have to scrap the game plan, assess the strength of his players, and develop a plan on the fly.
He had poured over that game plan for weeks, sacrificing hours of sleepless nights planning for every possible counter Detroit would muster. It was now useless, little more than meaningless fonts color-coded on the laminated paper in his hand.
But like any good general on the battlefield, you adapt and overcome.
"You say, 'All right, hey, everything we were going to do, rip it up and adjust,'" McVay said.
If there's one thing McVay knows, football, like life, is rarely linear. Success isn't about executing the playbook to perfection, but how one responds when the script is torn to shreds. He had always told his players that resilience wasn't just something you practiced on the field; it was woven into your DNA, a quiet strength that showed up when everything else fell apart.
Looking out onto the field, he knew he had two choices if you could call them such. He could fold under the mounting pressure and succumb to the overwhelming weight of everything falling apart or rely on the foundations he established during OTAs and training camp and pivot.
This was what it means to be a coach—not just to have a plan but to be prepared to discard it and trust your gut when things go awry.
"Well, that's your job," McVay said, considering how he and his staff handled the pressure of adjusting. "I think that's what we're tasked to do. We didn't just sign up for, 'Hey if everybody stays healthy, this is what you do.' I thought just what we ask of our players, we need to be able to do as
coaches."
He marched up to coaches and players on the sidelines, their faces a mix of frustration and optimism. They'd undoubtedly been dealt a snakebitten hand, but McVay wasn't about to let them wallow in the kiddie pool of doubt. He preaches flexibility, agility, and fluidity within the framework of the game from his players. Now, McVay would practice it.
How does he prepare his team for this scenario? How does he build and plan for this contingency? He doesn't.
"You really don't have time to," McVay said. "Part of that is foundationally built based on what you do in OTAs and in training camp, but if you told me, 'All right, all the stuff that you had planned for, throw it out the window.' There's just not enough reps throughout the course, but you do try to establish a foundational understanding of, 'Alright, here's some of the different things that we can do based on these parameters that were dealt.'"
There was no time for long speeches or motivational quotes. McVay didn't need to remind them what was at stake. They knew. They all felt it, just as he did. The weight of losing again, on the same field, to the same team that ended their playoff run last year; the expectations, the criticism, the voices in their heads telling them they couldn't pull this off.
But McVay has been there before, standing in that strange space between doubt and possibility. He knew that his players were capable of more than they even realized. That's what coaching was—seeing something in someone before they could see it in themselves.
He believed his third-string tackle, a kid barely out of college, before he squared up against Aidan Hutchinson, ready to protect his quarterback. He saw it in the determination of his veteran wideouts, tightening their gloves, nodding silently as they adjusted to new routes on the fly in Nacua's absence.
McVay knows he can rely on his quarterback, Matthew Stafford, with whom he's experienced the elation of winning a championship.
"I have a lot of experience in this offense, Cooper does [too]," Stafford said.
"We were able to kind piece some things together and put guys in spots and be able to communicate enough, like, 'Hey, this is what we're going to try to do, and this is how we're going to go for it.' It's a huge testament to coach and really, our entire coaching staff. Some of the things that we thought were going to do earlier in the week weren't able to do. So we just kind of adjusted on the fly and we're able to put drives together and make some plays."
The game that followed wasn't perfect, far from it. It was messy and ugly at times, but it was also beautiful in its own way—a testament to what happens when a group of men decide to defy the odds, regardless of how things appear. You keep trudging forward; you keep pushing.
Down 14 points, it would've been easy to fold, to give in to the fatigue, the mounting injuries, the sense that the universe was conspiring against them. Yet, they didn't.
They clawed their way back, scoring 17 unanswered points, drive by drive, inch by inch, until they captured the lead with just over four minutes remaining. McVay didn't smile. Not yet. There was no room for celebration.
The job was Incomplete. But at that moment, McVay felt something akin to pride, a quiet sense of satisfaction that had nothing to do with winning or losing but how his guys fought to get there.
When the clock finally struck zero and the dust settled, McVay knew what the headlines would say. They'd talk about the injuries, about the mistakes, about how they came up short in the end. And that was fine. He doesn't coach for the headlines. He coaches for moments like these—the kind you don't see in stat lines or post-game interviews–he coaches for his people and the moments where everything falls apart and somehow, against all odds, you find a way to keep it together.
As he walked off the field, the stadium's noise fading into the background, he allowed himself to reflect briefly. Coaching isn't easy. It is messy and complicated and often thankless. But in the chaos, in the uncertainty, there is something pure about it—something that conveys why he loves the game. It wasn't about perfection. It was about resilience. It was about the ability to adapt and overcome, no matter what the game throws at you.
"You're just kind of in the moment trying to make sure that you handle things accordingly, and then afterward, you're saying, 'Man, that was pretty wild.' But I was really proud of the way that we competed and showed some resilience and grit," McVay said.
And in that way, McVay exemplified that football isn't so different from life after all.
