In 2005, 41-year-old Mike McCarthy was the NFL’s youngest offensive coordinator. Two decades later, 11 OCs are in their 30s. Two more are in their 20s.
Ask insiders to explain the trend, and they’ll point to Jan. 12, 2017.
That was when the Los Angeles Rams shocked the NFL by making Sean McVay, then 30, the league’s youngest head coach since Art “Pappy” Lewis, who was 27 when the Cleveland Rams hired him in 1938. A few weeks after McVay’s hiring, the San Francisco 49ers named Kyle Shanahan, then 37, their head coach. Both have led their teams to two Super Bowls, putting their (also young) offensive assistants in demand.
Teams have hired 20 head coaches younger than 40 since the McVay-Shanahan cycle, after hiring just 11 that young over the preceding 20 years. That includes four sub-40 offensive head coaches hired from McVay’s tree — Matt LaFleur, Zac Taylor, Kevin O’Connell and Liam Coen, plus Brian Callahan, who worked under Taylor in Cincinnati — and one from Shanahan’s (Mike McDaniel).
“The ripple effect of Sean not failing was huge,” said Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski, who was 37 when the team hired him in 2020.
That 2017 hiring cycle was indeed transformational, but McVay’s resounding success merely accelerated a movement spurred by a technological revolution dating to the early 2000s, changing how the game is learned, taught and played.
GO FURTHER
Beyond the Sean McVay effect: Inside the coaching youth revolution that reshaped the NFL
