Sean McVay never coached with Broncos, but his influence is all over Denver’s staff

Neither the Los Angeles Rams nor the Denver Broncos have been successful this season. Injuries are an inescapable and primary reason why both teams failed to launch.

Those struggles leave this Christmas Day game — a duel that seven months ago appeared poised to pit teams battling for playoff position — as one leaving some pundits muttering about flexing out holiday games.

But what the Rams do works. And specifically, what Sean McVay does works.

This will be Los Angeles’ first losing season since McVay became their head coach in 2017. But considering that the Rams didn’t break .500 in the 13 seasons before he became their head coach, Los Angeles’ season isn’t one that makes his tenure a failure, not with a Lombardi Trophy, four playoff appearances and two NFC titles in McVay’s back pocket.

And his influence goes far behind the offense. Broncos defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero learned this when he served as a defensive coach on McVay’s staff from 2017-21.

“Especially in the offseason, he’s so involved in the defense — and not in terms of just telling the coordinators in a position coach what to do, but he’s involved in the dialogue of how to put things together,” Evero said.

“And he’s just so intrigued by not just offensive football, but football in general. He loves conversations about what works versus what schemes and those type of things and so he’s he understands football on both sides as much as anyone I’ve ever been around or ever witnessed.”

“And I think that’s where he helps you grow, because he’s constantly challenging you and testing the rules and find ways to make you better from that standpoint.”

Special-teams coordinator Dwayne Stukes, who served as a special-teams assistant in Los Angeles in 2021, said that the biggest thing her took from McVay was in learning how to better connecting with players.

“I think if you can communicate with players, if you can find a common ground, then those guys are more willing to do whatever they can to help you win a football game,” Stukes said. “So, you’ve got to find some type of common ground with players who can communicate.”

But Stukes also learned something else: that his 4 a.m. wake-up time isn’t early compared with McVay. Stukes would make it to Rams headquarters and find McVay already at work, grinding.

“I get up at four o’clock in the morning and I think he gets up at three, maybe two o’clock,” Stukes recalled. “He goes in; he gets his day started.

“… I thought that I was doing a good job as far as getting up early. But [I would] see him prepare and go into his office and lock himself in there and just try to scheme things up. You can you can take a lot from that because he’s dedicated to the job.”

Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett didn’t work under McVay before coming to Denver.

But he worked three seasons on the staff of Matt LaFleur in Green Bay. And of course, LaFleur is a branch of the McVay-Shanahan tree; he was McVay’s offensive coordinator in Los Angeles in 2017. The two also worked together on Mike Shanahan’s staff in Washington from 2010-13.

“I learned so much from Matt and all the different things that we do here. A lot of it is from Matt and that system. There’s a lot of similarities,” Hackett said. “We have definitely utilized a lot of stuff from Sean.”

The Rams’ success hasn’t yet come in Denver. But the direct and indirect influence of McVay is there.

***