Sean McVay let Liam Coen call the plays in Week 12 vs. Chiefs
Things didn’t go according to plan for the Los Angeles Rams during the 2022 season, and while everything was spiraling downward, Sean McVay deployed multiple strategies to get the team back on track. The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue recently wrote a fantastic, in-depth piece on how one of McVay’s ploys was to try and give play-calling duties to Liam Coen in Week 12 against the Kansas City Chiefs.
The low point came when the Rams traveled to Kansas City in Week 12. McVay gave up play-calling, handing off duties to Coen. McVay wanted to see if ceding control could ease some stress, and at 3-8, the Rams had nothing to lose by trying it out.
The Rams lost that game to the Chiefs, 26-10, gaining just 198 total yards, their second-lowest total of the season. Clearly, delegating play-calling duties wasn’t the answer.
McVay has called plays for the Rams since being hired in 2017 and he’s shied away from handing it over to anyone else during his tenure — aside from the preseason. But with McVay searching for ways to ease some stress off of himself, he thought that maybe delegating play-calling would help.
Despite the effort to let Coen call plays, McVay realized that allowing someone else to handle the play-calling wasn’t the solution. Kevin Demoff, the COO of the Rams, went on to say that he believes McVay’s decision to let Coen call plays made him “even more miserable.”
After a flurry of rumors of McVay potentially retiring for the second straight offseason, the bright offensive-minded coach has elected to return and he’s replaced Coen with Mike LaFleur as offensive coordinator. LaFleur has confirmed that McVay will continue to call plays in 2023 and he now realizes there are better ways to deal with the rigors of coaching in the NFL.
