Even with Rams a Super Bowl favorite, coach Sean McVay is "tormented"

The Los Angeles Rams enter the 2026 NFL season as a Super Bowl favorite, but head coach Sean McVay is "tormented."

He was named the NFL Coach of the Year for the 2017 NFL season, just after becoming the youngest head coach in modern NFL history, and, a few seasons later, won the Super Bowl in 2022 . Faced with lofty expectations for a winning season, McVay said he's learned to focus on the journey.

"You're either in a storm, you're coming out of one or you're getting ready to go back into it," McVay said. "And it's one of those three things. But how you handle that is the separator."

McVay's Super Bowl win came after acquiring quarterback Matthew Stafford . But the coach's joy over the win was fleeting.

"The lies I told myself were, 'I won't be happy until I — until we win one.' Or, 'I win one,'" McVay said. "It was a lot more selfish. And, you know, you're embarrassed to kind of look back on how you got to where you did."

"It revealed a lot of insecurities that I had. My identity was so tied up in winning and losing games, and that was where I felt like my self-worth lied," McVay said. "It was very revealing of how fragile I was and all the insecurities that I did have."

With the team facing another challenging season, McVay considered stepping away from coaching for a career in broadcasting "and hide behind a convenient narrative of some media opportunities." He discussed the possibility with his wife.

"And she said, 'That never sounded like the kind of leader you wanted to be,'" McVay said.

He stayed with the Rams, and the team has made the playoffs every season since. McVay, with 100 wins under his belt before he turned 40, concedes that he's still a work in progress.

"I think that's one of the biggest things, is the awareness of when those triggers, what are the things that, you know, that you're being somebody or you're getting to a point you don't want to be, and how quickly can you snap out of that," McVay said.

"And let's make no mistake about it. When we take the field, the expectations are to win," he said.

It's a big change from a decade ago when the Rams left St. Louis and returned to Los Angeles. The team had played in L.A. for 49 years before leaving after the 1994 season.

At a time of big change, general manager Les Snead, backed by ownership, gambled on an unproven commodity and hired McVay, then 30, for head coach.

"This guy changes the math," Snead said of McVay. "Tactically, when he's in flow, it's like you're trying to defend 12 instead of 11."