NFL teams looking for next McVay, Nagy could miss next star

You started hearing the rumblings of it last December.

Sean McVay, the wunderkind head coach of the Los Angeles Rams, was on pace to lead the previously bumbling franchise to an 11-5 record and an NFC West crown. Everyone across the league took notice, especially the franchises that would be hiring new coaches as soon as January 2018.

Almost overnight, it was as if the value of defensive-minded head coaching candidates plummeted as teams sought sharp, offensive-minded candidates who could develop a quarterback in today’s pass-happy era of football.

“Everybody wants the next Sean McVay, offensive coaches who can develop the quarterback,” one coach who had previously interviewed for head coaching openings told me at the time, with no shortage of disappointment. “That’s the hot thing right now.”

And indeed, it came to pass. Both the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears found a McVay-like candidate in Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy, a 40-year-old former quarterback with a sharp offensive mind and charm about him, and after interviews with both teams, Nagy chose the Bears.

That left the Colts to hire the 42-year-old Josh McDaniels, another young coordinator with play-calling and quarterback-development chops, before he backed out of the job to stay and learn in New England. Chris Ballard, the Colts’ general manager, was furious, but calmed down enough to make a smart hire in Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Frank Reich, who — despite being on the older end of the scale at 57 — fit the McVay prototype due to his quarterback chops and play-calling background.

The fact that Reich’s offense got red hot in the playoffs last season and won the Super Bowl did not hurt this trend toward hiring offensive-minded head coaches. Hell, the Eagles’ head coach was Doug Pederson, a former quarterback himself who was hired the previous year (under much scrutiny) after spending three seasons as the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator.

The Eagles’ championship only reinforced the desire within the league to hire McVay prototypes, much like the success of Nagy and Reich has this fall. While Nagy has led the Bears to a 10-4 record and an NFC North crown, Reich has guided the Colts to an 8-6 record and a possible playoff berth. The teams were a combined 9-23 last season.

As such, you’ll hear calls for both men — who also built successful offenses around struggling (or in Andrew Luck’s case, injured) quarterbacks (like McVay did with Jared Goff) — to win Coach of the Year honors, and that’s fair. For the job they’ve done, they deserve that. But what’s unfair is for the half-dozen or so teams that could be looking for a new coach this offseason to assume that hiring a McVay-like candidate is the only way to win today, as I fear teams are starting to do.

The amount of commentary and punditry about the need to find a “young, offensive-minded head coach” has reached absurd levels. That’s typically a sign that a “trend” has started to jump the shark.

Remember back in the late aughts, when hiring former New England assistants or front-office executives was the thing after the Patriots won Super Bowls in three of four years? Turns out Scott Pioli didn’t have the leadership skills or mentality to be a general manager, just like Romeo Crennel and Charlie Weis — while fine coordinators — weren’t cut out to be head coaches. McDaniels, who was 33 when he was hired to be Denver’s head coach in 2009, wasn’t ready either.

The teams that hired these men failed to realize at the time — and as a Detroit native, I fear the Lions are now in the same boat with general manager Bob Quinn and coach Matt Patricia — that New England’s success was largely a result of the greatness of coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady.

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