All about the prep
If anyone should get credit for developing the Rams’ McVay, it’s his high school coach — a former Bears QB
ATLANTA — Behind Sean McVay, the 33-year-old Rams wunderkind who already has his own NFL coaching tree, is a onetime Bears quarterback. Before Alan Chadwick became a coaching legend in Georgia and the man who guided McVay through his formative years at Marist School, just north of Atlanta in Brookhaven, he was one of dozens of quarterbacks the Bears tried to solve their long-running issues at the position. It’s unlikely you recall his name, but the role he played with McVay is unmistakable.
It was 1974 and the Bears were coming off five consecutive losing seasons, sputtering through rocky play by Bobby Douglass, Gary Huff and Jack Concannon among others. Chadwick was the first of three quarterbacks the Bears selected for coach Abe Gibron in that draft, seeking a solution 2½ decades removed from the Sid Luckman era. It’s the last time the Bears selected more than one quarterback in the same draft.
Unfortunately, it was the wrong draft to need one. None was selected in the first two rounds — unheard of these days — and Danny White (Cowboys) and Mike Boryla (Eagles) were the only two quarterbacks in the 17-round draft to reach the Pro Bowl, doing so once each.
The Bears drafted Chadwick, the Ohio Valley Conference player of the year as a senior at East Tennessee State, in the eighth round, 186th overall. They followed with Joe Barnes of Texas Tech in Round 13 and Craig Holland of Texas-Arlington in Round 17.
It was a good thing they had three. Veterans went on strike July 1, beginning a six-week labor impasse that accomplished little. That meant Douglass and Huff weren’t in training camp when it opened at St. Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Ind.
“Well, that was pretty cool,” said Chadwick, now 67. “I really enjoyed that time. Great people. Great opportunity. Wish I could have parlayed that into a long, outstanding career. I guess it was about six, seven weeks. That was all I stayed there.
“They wore our butts out. Quarterbacks had three-aday practices for about five weeks, and I thought I was going to die. My legs were so tired, I couldn’t throw it and hit the side of a barn. I blamed it on that. They kept Joe Barnes. He fit into Gibron’s idea of a quarterback a little bit better, I guess. I was a little bit more of a throwing quarterback, and Joe was a good runner.”
Chadwick made it back to Chicago with the Bears for a little more than a week after they broke camp. He and two other players were called in to get the bad news together: They had been cut.
“We all went to some steakhouse down the street,” Chadwick said. “Had a few beers and a big ol’ steak and then said, ‘So long.’ I went back to Tennessee wondering, ‘What the hell am I gonna do now?’ ”
The Bears’ miserable 1974 season (4-10) paved the way for the fourth pick in the 1975 draft, which they used on Walter Payton. Barnes appeared in three games as a rookie, completing 2 of 9 passes with one interception, before heading to the CFL, where he became an All-Star. Chadwick got a brief shot with the Redskins the next year but again didn’t make it to the regular season. Holland never made it in the NFL.
In 1976, Chadwick’s father was playing in a regular Wednesday night poker game when he found out about an opening for an assistant coach at Marist. He encouraged his son to apply, and sure enough, he was hired.
He became head coach in 1985 and has held the role ever since, amassing 375 victories — second in Georgia history — and two state titles. The last came with McVay at quarterback in 2003.
‘He called it’
Before McVay won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 2017, when he turned the Rams around in his first season as a head coach at age 31, retired Bears long snapper Pat Mannelly was the most successful NFL product from Marist, a private school with a current enrollment of about 1,100 and a rich athletic tradition.
At one point when Mannelly was active, there were seven Marist alumni on an NFL roster or practice squad. In Chadwick’s 34 seasons as head coach, the War Eagles have never missed the playoffs. They’ve been state runner-up four times in addition to the two titles.
Mannelly was talking up Marist football in the Bears locker room back before he knew much about McVay as the War Eagles were mounting a run to the 2003 state title. McVay was named the Georgia AAAA offensive player of the year over Calvin Johnson, something McVay has admitted since was “ridiculous.”
“You started to hear about him, but you didn’t know how smart he was,” Mannelly said. “You just heard how well he could run the wishbone.”
McVay didn’t have a great arm and wasn’t very big, but he was a magician operating the wishbone and had the speed and lateral quickness to make defenders look silly as he would dash down the sideline, cut back toward the middle of the field and motor toward the end zone. It was instinctive for him, coming from hours and hours of film study each week.
He grew up in a football family. His father, Tim, was a safety at Indiana in the late 1970s, and his grandfather John was head coach of the Giants from 1976 to ’78 before a long run in the 49ers front office during their dynasty. Tim’s brother Jim ran the Outback Bowl for 30 years. Football was the family business.
“Sean had tremendous skill for an option quarterback: quick, athletic, explosive, tough, physical,” Chadwick said. “But his knowledge and intelligence and feel for the game were extraordinary for a high school quarterback, and that came from being around the game at such a young age.
“Just the exposure he got from being around the pro game, you could tell that he understood the game. His skill set was outstanding, but his leadership … he was the unquestioned leader of that team for two years, and it could have been three if we had pulled the trigger when he was a sophomore.
“In the huddle, his command was outstanding, and the kids would follow him anywhere and they believed in him. The confidence he had in himself was unbelievable.”
The defining play of McVay’s prep career didn’t come in the state championship game. It was two weeks earlier in a quarterfinal meeting with top-ranked Columbus Shaw. Marist was trailing 17-12 at the start of the fourth quarter when the War Eagles took over on their 23-yard line.
Slowly, McVay led his team downfield on a 15-play drive, all runs, none more than 10 yards. It was a little here and a little there before the War Eagles were stacked up on first and second down and faced third-andgoal from the 5.
“Our first two plays we didn’t get a whole lot, so we’ve got a coaches conference trying to figure out what we’re doing,” Chadwick said. “Myself and the offensive coordinator, we were talking about two or three plays we thought might work for us. Sean just says, ‘Let’s run “wham naked.” ’ So we kind of look at each other and shrug our shoulders and say, ‘Go with it.’ ”
Marist came out in a traditional wishbone set. McVay took the snap and reversed out, faking a handoff to the left halfback, who was headed off right tackle. He gave it a hand-fake follow and then stuck the ball in his stomach — and paused.
If it works, 21 players wind up in a pile near the goal line. If it doesn’t, two or three Shaw defenders pummel McVay to bring up fourth-and-10 or more.
“He just boots it out that back door, absolutely untouched, and walks in,” Chadwick said. “No one in the whole stadium knew he had the football. He called it. It’s one of those plays, if it works, everyone looks great, particularly the head coach. But he called it.”
McVay, playing with a bloody nose from an injury suffered the week before, sealed the win with an interception.
He went on to play receiver at Miami of Ohio, but his college career never really took off after he suffered a broken ankle. Jon Gruden hired McVay as the Buccaneers receivers coach in 2008. He was 22; every player in his position room was older than him. He spent a year in the United Football League and then climbed the ladder in seven seasons with the Redskins, eventually rising to offensive coordinator.
‘I’ve never met one’
Only 15 years removed from his days as a high school star, McVay is now the model for what NFL teams are seeking when they hire a head coach. He’ll match wits Sunday with the Patriots’ Bill Belichick, twice his age at 66. Tom Brady won two Super Bowls before McVay graduated from Marist.
“I was just talking to some of my classmates, going over the photographic memory of how McVay can recall all of these high school plays,” Mannelly said. “And we’re saying, ‘What was that play called? 42 triple? 43 triple? 40 top?’ We were going over the different play calls we had back in the day to see if we could remember just the name of the play, but he’s talking about situation, the quarter, what happened. That to me is wild. It’s amazing.”
Everything about McVay seems a little surreal. His Marist accomplishments were so grand, they don’t need the embellishment old high school tales often get. The human element plays a huge role.
“When we talked to people, just the confidence and the energy and the way he changed their offense, that’s what really got us to look a little bit harder,” Rams vice president of football operations Kevin Demoff said of the team’s coaching search in January 2017. “You knew the scheme was fine. Did he have the emotional intelligence and awareness to handle what was coming?”
The answer has been an overwhelming yes. Rams center John Sullivan, an 11-year veteran from Notre Dame, says he’s still amazed how McVay, five months younger than him, orchestrates the whole thing.
“He’s so innovative in terms of the schemes,” Sullivan said. “More than just being a brilliant head coach in terms of X’s and O’s, he’s so relatable and so charismatic. Most of the time when guys are brilliant like that, they can’t connect to people, and Sean is able to do both and that is what sets him apart.
“Look, maybe there are other guys like that. I’ve never met one. To me, he’s very special in that way.”
One joke in the current NFL hiring cycle is that candidates are judged on their ties to McVay. The Packers hired his former offensive coordinator, Matt LaFleur. The Bengals are expected to hire his quarterbacks coach, Zac Taylor. Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury mentioned that he’s friends with McVay at his introductory news conference.
Chadwick has ties as well, and he’s in the hunt for a ticket to the game. But he won’t dare ask McVay and take any time away from preparation.
“I’m almost better off watching it at home with my family and just getting into it and screaming and hollering and cussing and yelling and cheering,” Chadwick said.
Maybe he’ll enjoy it with a few beers and a big ol’ steak.
“No one in the whole stadium knew he had the football. He called it. It’s one of those plays, if it works, everyone looks great, particularly the head coach. But he called it.”
— Marist coach Alan Chadwick on Sean McVay calling and executing a dazzling play to upset Georgia’s No. 1 team in 2003