The NFL is valuing youth and innovation more than ever before. A year after the Rams made Sean McVay the youngest head coach in league history, Patrick Mahomes became the youngest MVP winner since Dan Marino. This offseason, an avalanche followed: The Cardinals threw caution to the wind and paired Kliff Kingsbury with Kyler Murray, the Packers ended the Mike McCarthy era, and the Bengals poached the Rams’ quarterbacks coach to be their new head coach. When did the NFL begin to resemble Silicon Valley? Welcome to Wunderkind Week, when we’ll dive deep into how the NFL became a young man’s league.

Tucked into a precious patch of shade on a cloudless August afternoon, Sean McVay looks stunned. His Rams have just finished their second of two shared training camp practices with the Raiders in Napa, California, and his sun-bronzed face jolts back when he hears the latest detail about how his tenure in Los Angeles has shaped the NFL. He is entering his third season at the helm, and the 33-year-old coach’s influence on his team and quarterback Jared Goff is no longer novel. Goff looked lost as a rookie under former coach Jeff Fisher, but after spending two years with McVay—during which the Rams scored more combined points than anyone in the NFL—plays like his long touchdown toss to Robert Woods earlier in the day have become familiar.

Around the league, though, other teams are just launching their own versions of the Great McVay Experiment. Fifteen franchises will enter this fall with a different offensive play-caller than the one who held that title at the beginning of last season. Nearly half of the NFL has experienced turnover as organizations try to capture the magic that McVay has conjured in SoCal. When he hears that figure, the template’s patient zero struggles to comprehend the scale of the shift. “No shit,” McVay exclaims. “Is that the number?” 

It is. And there are more striking stats to go along with it. Like McVay, five of those first-year play-callers are also head coaches. Seven are 40 years old or younger. In the blink of an eye, the coaching wunderkind has emerged as the NFL’s most precious commodity. And McVay is the movement’s meticulously groomed face. 

This offseason isn’t the first time that McVay’s results have motivated teams to rethink their organizational infrastructures. On the heels of the breakthroughs by both McVay’s Rams and Doug Pederson’s Eagles in 2017—when the Philly coach helped turn Carson Wentz into an MVP candidate and Nick Foles into the Super Bowl MVP—the Bears and Colts made similar hires. Chicago took a chance on then-39-year-old Matt Nagy as its coach and play-caller, while Indianapolis brought in play-calling head man Frank Reich. As first-year coaches, Nagy and Reich thrived: The Bears went from 5-11 in 2017 to 12-4 in 2018, and the Colts’ win total jumped from 4 to 10. Those improvements further validated the McVay mold. “[McVay] is very smart, and he’s already won early in his career,” says Vikings general manager Rick Spielman, who tapped the 37-year-old Kevin Stefanski to be Minnesota’s offensive coordinator this offseason. “But now is everybody chasing that young version, or chasing … him?” 

That could be the question that defines this NFL season. If this latest crop of play-calling hires flourishes in the same way as their predecessors, the leaguewide pursuit of McVay clones will continue. If not, team brass will be forced to go back to the drawing board. The NFL’s post-McVay generation has arrived. And this class may determine whether it’s here to stay.

Matt LaFleur has heard all the jokes: Anyone who’s ever had a beer with McVay can become an NFL head coaching candidate these days. And given that he worked with his buddy on and off over the past nine years—first in Washington, and later in Los Angeles—LaFleur was a more sought-after candidate than most this offseason. “He’s one of my closest friends,” says LaFleur, who was hired by the Packers in January. “That’s why I ended up in L.A. with him. There’s just so much about him that I respect, but when people say that [joke], all you can do is laugh.” 

LaFleur parlayed his role as the Rams offensive coordinator in 2017 into play-calling duties for the Titans last season before springboarding into his current job in Green Bay. His task now is to squeeze all he can out of Aaron Rodgers’s Hall of Fame career, and restore the QB to MVP form after the Packers turned in a pair of lackluster seasons under former coach Mike McCarthy. The other first-year play-callers in this class are expected to generate similarly immediate gains with their passers. Stefanski’s job in Minnesota—along with offensive adviser Gary Kubiak—is to build a system tailored to the strengths of $84 million man Kirk Cousins. Kellen Moore’s charge in Dallas is to ensure that Dak Prescott is worth every penny of what’s likely to be a massive payday. Kliff Kingsbury’s priority in Arizona is to help no. 1 pick Kyler Murray translate his prolific college production to the pros. Adam Gase, Zac Taylor, Freddie Kitchens, and Byron Leftwich were brought in to get the most out of Sam Darnold, Andy Dalton, Baker Mayfield, and Jameis Winston, respectively. 

Every head coaching candidate whom Cardinals GM Steve Keim interviewed this offseason was of the play-calling variety. He believes that the blueprint embraced by the Rams, Eagles, and others—one that guarantees the mind behind a team’s offense and a quarterback’s growth will remain in place—is the only way to ensure stability as a franchise. “To be able to have a guy that calls the plays, has that relationship [with the QB], and cannot be hired away, I think that’s huge,” Keim says. “If you hire a defensive coach, it’s pretty simple: If the offensive coordinator has a tremendous amount of success and develops your quarterback, he’s moving on.”

Considering what McVay, Reich, Nagy, and coaches like former McVay boss Kyle Shanahan have accomplished with young QBs, this model’s results are hard to ignore. In McVay’s first year on the job, the Rams went from dead last in points per game (14.0) to first (29.9). Goff morphed from a lost cause into a QB who averaged 8.0 yards per attempt in his second season. In Year 1 under Nagy, Mitchell Trubisky’s adjusted yards per attempt jumped from 6.1 to 7.3; in Andrew Luck’s first season with Reich, the former no. 1 overall pick completed 67.3 percent of his passes, 8.1 percentage points higher than his career average entering last season. “The answer is obvious—it’s just not easy,” Reich says of finding a play-caller who can shepherd a QB’s career. “You want that synergy, you want that chemistry, and it can develop. But why not get out of in front of it in the hiring process and [pair] two guys that you know are going to have a connection?” 

The key to making this type of hire work lies in the intricacies of the coach-quarterback relationship, and that extends far beyond scheme. When Reich interviewed for the Colts’ job in February 2018—shortly after Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels accepted and then abruptly spurned Indy’s offer—a crucial portion of his pitch centered on his plan to propel Luck to new heights. Throughout his career, Reich has worked with some of the smartest quarterbacks the NFL has ever seen, and he believes that the Stanford-educated Luck possesses the same level of football acumen. Reich made clear that he intended to give Luck a rare amount of freedom within the new-look Colts’ offense. “You can’t give [control of the offense] to just anybody,” Reich says. “[Philip] Rivers, [Peyton] Manning, Andrew—they all live in the same ZIP code. They’re all brilliant.” 

Before each down, Reich relays two plays into Luck’s ear: the primary call, and a check or “kill” call that Luck can audible to against inopportune looks and coverages. That’s standard fare in the NFL, and a practice that Reich has long espoused. “If you have a quarterback that 10 times a game can change the call and get out of a bad play into a great play, why wouldn’t you want to do that?” Reich says. “I’ve never understood the notion of not giving that to a quarterback.” But Luck is also afforded a different sort of autonomy than most of his peers. In advance of each game, Reich and Luck will agree on four to five “alert” calls that Luck can audible to whenever a particularly vulnerable defensive tendency arises. The Colts may not know when a specific blitz or coverage will come; when it does, though, they know that Luck will have a backbreaking response. Luck threw 39 touchdown passes last season for an offense that averaged 28.1 points per game while going 9-1 down the stretch. Reich credits Luck’s increased role in the offense for much of that. “That makes all the difference in the world,” Reich says. “That’s why you win 10 games.” 

Nagy’s Bears also won double-digit games in 2018, and he sees the head coach-slash-play-caller approach as the path to NFL prosperity—with one integral caveat. It works only “if you’re really hands-on with the QB,” Nagy says. “If you’re a head coach, and there’s a conduit with the QBs, and that person in the middle is the only one relaying to you what [the quarterback] thinks, or what the QB is saying, there’s not that connection. I’m hands-on with Mitch. Mitch is hands-on with me. I probably feel at times like a QB coach to him.” 

At the same time, Nagy admits that there has to be a trade-off. He’s previously worked as a quarterbacks coach and understands the sanctity of the position coach–player relationship. After each offensive drive, Nagy waits until Trubisky has debriefed with position coach Dave Ragone before joining his young passer on the bench to discuss what transpired. During daily quarterback meetings, Nagy will stay for only the first 15 minutes, allowing Trubisky to speak frankly without the boss hovering. “We’ve all been there, where players aren’t as vocal when the head coach is in the room,” Nagy says. “They don’t express themselves. The second that coach walks out, they express themselves. They need that. That’s their way to vent, that’s their way to be able to talk.” The Bears’ coach has struck a deft balance between being attentive and overbearing, all while reinforcing that he’s always there for Trubisky. “If you want to be a good play-caller, I feel like you have to connect with that quarterback,” Nagy says. “And that has to be on a daily basis.”

As the poster child of this movement, McVay has fine-tuned his interactions with Goff entering their third year together. During the season, the duo will sit down and chat for 30 to 45 minutes three or four times every week. “We’ll bounce things off one another, we’ll really have some dialogue that you can’t necessarily have in the midst of everyone else,” McVay says. “Because he might have some questions specific to what we’re trying to get done.” These meetings aren’t new; they’ve been happening since McVay’s Rams debut in 2017. The difference now is how honest Goff is in voicing his preferences. “Because he understands and owns the concepts and what we’re trying to do, he’s comfortable telling me if he doesn’t like something,” McVay says. “If that’s the case, we’ll throw it out, or I’ll try to explain it. If he still doesn’t feel good, the play’s gonna be out.”  

More than youthful enthusiasm or schematic ingenuity, this rapport is what teams around the league hope to emulate by bringing in new play-callers. The way Spielman sees it, the quality that will make or break this post-McVay generation is whether the coaches have the right sensibilities to maximize the talents of the quarterbacks who are now entering the league. With the chance to draft an Air Raid QB in Murray, the Cardinals hired an Air Raid maestro in Kingsbury. With Lamar Jackson going into his first full season running an NFL offense, the Ravens promoted rushing QB specialist Greg Roman to offensive coordinator. The Browns elevated Kitchens to head coach after discovering that his passing scheme dovetailed perfectly with Mayfield’s penchant for pushing the ball downfield. “I think the NFL is adjusting to the new quarterbacks who are coming up from the college ranks,” Spielman says. “Murray, and Baker, and Jackson from Baltimore, they’re different from Dan Marino. There aren’t a lot of Tom Bradys coming out of college anymore. Teams are trying to adjust to the type of athletes playing that position. And how is that going to be able to be successful at this level?”  

During his three decades of work in pro football, Spielman has seen plenty of fads come and go. The phrase copycat league exists for a reason, as teams are quick to follow the hot new trend, from schematic wrinkles to salary-cap strategies and beyond. “‘I see that they had success, and they hit a home run with this and that, so let’s try to do the same thing,’” Spielman says of this mind-set. “But I think people make mistakes doing that, too, instead of staying true to what you believe and what your philosophy is.” 

Among the 15 first-year play-callers around the league, there will almost surely be as many failures as successes. The law of averages dictates as much. And while most of the coaches in this class have proved their bona fides as gifted offensive minds, the ones who falter—especially as head coaches—will likely do so because they struggle to grasp the other aspects that come with the job, the ones that aren’t related to mad-scientist play design or dialing up the perfect call at the perfect moment. 

Kitchens says that when he interviewed for the Browns job with general manager John Dorsey earlier this year, the results he coaxed from Mayfield late last season weren’t the primary topic of conversation. The 44-year-old longtime assistant stressed the “people” aspects of the gig most, an ethos that resonated with Dorsey. “To me, it’s the guys who can execute the CEO mind-set, guys who can lead men,” Dorsey says. “Consistency, trust, a fair firmness. My time around Freddie displayed that.”

Dorsey may have crafted a perennial playoff contender behind offensive wizard Andy Reid in Kansas City and then gone with Kitchens over the defensively minded interim head coach Gregg Williams in Cleveland, but he warns against blindly subscribing to the belief that play-calling head coaches are the only route to modern-day NFL prominence. He points to Pete Carroll, Mike Tomlin, and Bill Belichick as defensive coaches who’ve produced winning teams over an extended period of time. 

Belichick, in particular, provides a useful point of reference for unpacking why coaching imitations often pale in comparison with the original. Since the Pats emerged as the NFL’s gold standard in the early 2000s, many teams have lured away Belichick assistants in attempts to emulate New England’s winning ways. Each time, though, that route has gone awry. Take the cases of Josh McDaniels, Eric Mangini, and Romeo Crennel. The list goes on. Matt Patricia, now the head coach of the Lions, is just the latest Belichick disciple to struggle upon leaving his boss’s shadow. And Patricia has stumbled for the same reason as his predecessors: You can’t follow a blueprint without first understanding what that blueprint entails.

If this year’s first-year play-callers are to effectively mimic McVay (as well as Nagy, Reich, and Pederson), they’ll have to understand all of the aspects of the job that he has mastered. That includes assembling the right staff, both on offense and defense. One of McVay’s early strokes of genius was seeking out legendary coordinator Wade Phillips to run his defense. Nagy made a similarly shrewd move last offseason by retaining coordinator Vic Fangio, who led the Bears to a no. 1 finish in Football Outsiders’ defensive DVOA before departing for the Broncos head coaching job in January. 

For their part, this year’s crop of coaches seems to understand the staff’s significance. LaFleur’s decision to bring back proven defensive coordinator Mike Pettine mirrors Nagy’s approach with Fangio. Kingbury, no doubt hoping to avoid defensive fiascos like the ones that he oversaw at Texas Tech, hired former Broncos head coach Vance Joseph to coordinate the Cardinals defense. And Bengals first-year coach Zac Taylor—yet another McVay disciple—recognizes that Cincinnati’s future hinges on how Lou Anarumo oversees the defense. “You have to trust your defensive coordinator, first of all, and you have to have people to lean on situationally throughout the game,” Taylor says. “Because when you are calling one side of the game, a lot of your focus is there.”

The Colts hit on their defensive coordinator hire by tabbing former Cowboys linebackers coach Matt Eberflus for that role. Even as a play-calling head coach, Reich says his offensive coordinator pick was equally paramount. He spent two seasons as the Eagles OC working underneath a head coach who called plays. The job entails gathering and synthesizing information, even if someone else is implementing it. To that end, while Indy coordinator Nick Sirianni may not dial up calls on Sunday, he helps build the play menu each week. It’s an essential part of Reich’s game-day toolbox.

McVay also sees early-week game planning as a critical factor in his success. And with two seasons—and an underwhelming Super Bowl showing—under his belt, he believes that his key to taking the next step is getting better at envisioning every possible outcome before one happens. “The biggest thing is playing out all the situations and scenarios and making sure that you’re playing the game before the game,” McVay says. “If you get this [look], then what do you do? If you’re down two scores, are you jumping into your two-minute? What kind of plays do you want to activate there?” 

McVay brings up the Super Bowl unprompted. Six months after the game, the sting of his team’s rudderless performance—in which his offense scored just three points against the Pats—seems to have stuck with him. McVay is hell-bent on never feeling that way again. “Every year you get humbled as a play-caller,” he says. “But as long as you learn and don’t make the same mistakes, I think you have a chance to improve. It’s a never-ending focus on improvement.” The coach whose triumphs have reshaped the NFL doesn’t think he’s done enough. 

Not long after McVay’s admission, a Rams official privately refers to his team’s head coach as “a unicorn,” a distinction that may lie at the crux of this NFL season. Franchises risked it all to have what the Rams have. It won’t be long before half the league finds out whether McVay’s model is sustainable outside L.A., or whether they’re merely chasing ghosts.

Robert Mays