Rams' Sean McVay is 36, has coached in the NFL for five seasons and already has numerous branches on his coaching tree

LOS ANGELES

The NFL’s most successful coaching trees are built over years — decades, even — and the results often are mixed.

San Francisco 49ers legend Bill Walsh has arguably the most fruitful sideline progeny, with Super Bowl-winning coaches on just about every branch — George Seifert, Mike Holmgren and Mike Shanahan among them.

Bill Parcells, the first Giants coach to win a Super Bowl, counts Bill Belichick, Tom Coughlin and Sean Payton among his greatest former assistants.

And Belichick himself is now a coaching forefather of many head coaches, although their success when they left New England has been muted.

Enter Sean McVay, who turned 36 two weeks ago but whose coaching tree has grown at warp speed. It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen: a coach this young with this many former assistants getting a shot to run their own teams. Included in that group: Bengals coach Zac Taylor, a former Rams quarterbacks coach who will face his former boss Sunday in Super Bowl XLVI.

McVay became the NFL’s youngest head coach ever when general manager Les Snead took a gamble on the former Shanahan assistant in Washington. Not only have the Rams grown into a two-time Super Bowl participant on McVay’s watch, but the grandson of one-time Giants head coach John McVay is producing head coaches for other teams at a dizzying pace.

There’s Taylor, who in three years has gotten the Bengals to the Super Bowl, thanks in part to his development of quarterback Joe Burrow, the No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft. And Matt LaFleur, who has led the Packers to the playoffs in all three seasons since taking over for Mike McCarthy.

Brandon Staley, McVay’s defensive coordinator in 2020, was hired by the Chargers in 2021. Current Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell is expected to become the Vikings’ coach after the Super Bowl. And defensive coordinator Raheem Morris, a former head coach in Tampa, interviewed for some head-coaching vacancies, although he doesn’t appear likely to get any of the remaining available jobs.

It’s almost gotten to the point that if you work under McVay, your chances for a head-coaching opportunity increase exponentially. Or, as Taylor likes to say, all you need to do is have a cup of coffee with the Rams’ coach and you’re on your way.

"There’s a ton of truth to that," said Taylor, who literally met McVay over a cup of coffee before he was hired for the Rams’ staff. "Because if you spend time around the guy, he gives you a ton of confidence in yourself.

"He’s really shown a lot of young guys that you can do it in your own way. It doesn’t have to be the way it’s always been done for the last 20 years around the league. He was very open about how he did things, why he made certain decisions."

McVay will look to destroy Taylor when it comes to matching wits in Sunday’s game. McVay is coaching in the Super Bowl for the second time in four years, with his other appearance resulting in a loss to the Patriots in Tom Brady’s final Super Bowl run in New England.

McVay and Taylor, 38, will make history in this one: It will be the first time that two men under 40 years of age will be head coaches in the Super Bowl.

"I’m glad we’re going against each other, but we’re going to do everything in our power to finish this off," McVay said. "And I know [Taylor] feels the same way."

Taylor said his time working under McVay was "the best two years of my life. It was fun. You loved coming into the building."

McVay now sees a lot of himself in Taylor.

"I think that team plays with a swagger and a confidence similar to the way Zac carries himself," McVay said.

If there’s a reason so many coaches who work under McVay earn bigger opportunities, it has a lot to do with the environment he creates.

"I think it is important to be intentional about identifying the greatest coaches that you can, to be able to have a positive environment where we’re pushing each other in the right way," he said. "You want to be around ambitious people."

There are few with more ambition than McVay, a former high school quarterback in Georgia who got his first coaching gig in 2008 with Jon Gruden’s Buccaneers. After a year as wide receivers coach with the Florida Tuskers of the United Football League, McVay worked on Mike Shanahan’s staff in Washington alongside Shanahan’s son Kyle, who went on to become the 49ers’ head coach in 2017. That’s the same year McVay was hired by the Rams, who got themselves not only a great coach but a great coaches’ coach.

Even if he doesn’t like to take the credit.

"I think it’s a little ridiculous when you talk about the [coaching] tree, because these guys are co-workers where we positively pour into one another," McVay said. "I just happen to be in the role that I’m in. Whether it’s Kevin [O’Connell], Brandon Staley, Zac Taylor, Matt LaFleur, I learned more from them than those guys have from me."