At 66 and 33, respectively, Bill Belichick and Sean McVay represent a generation gap on the Super Bowl sidelines. The two represent the largest age difference in opposing head coaches in the 53-year history of the game.
FOXBORO – This should be one for the ages.
Or one for the aged.
When the Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams take the field for Super Bowl LIII at Atlanta’s Mercedez-Benz Stadium the night of Feb. 3, the coaching matchup will pit a senior citizen against junior achievement.
The pair – the 66-year-old Bill Belichick and Sean McVay, who turned 33 on Thursday – will represent part of the generation gap, the largest age difference in opposing head coaches in Super Bowl history
The two teams’ quarterbacks – Jared Goff, 24 years young of the Rams, and Tom Brady, the Patriots’ 41-year-old – will represent the largest age difference in starting QBs in the 53-year history of the game.
As for the coaching matchup, the generation gap is every bit as dramatic as it appears.
McVay was in diapers when Belichick was contributing to the first of the seven Super Bowl championships in which he’s been involved (two as the defensive coordinator on Bill Parcells’ staff with the New York Giants; five as the head coach of the Patriots).
And not only is Belichick twice as old as McVay, he has nearly as many playoff wins as an NFL head coach (30) as his counterpart on the Rams sideline has years on this earth.
Growing up in a football family – his father, Tim, played defensive back in college at Indiana; his grandfather, John, was vice president/director of football operations of the San Francisco 49ers in the 1980s and 1990s, a time when that organization was winning five Super Bowl championships of its own – it didn’t take McVay long to graduate from his abc’s to football’s X’s and O’s.
McVay was a student at the Marist School in Atlanta, where he quarterbacked the football team to a state Class AAAA title as a senior in 2003, when Belichick drew up his first Super Bowl-winning scheme on Feb. 3, 2002 (exactly 17 years prior to the date of the upcoming game), the 20-17 victory over the St. Louis Rams that night in New Orleans, the first of their five championships.
“A lot of respect for the (Patriots). They’ve been doing it as consistently as any organization in the history of this league,’’ McVay told reporters in L.A. earlier this week. “Gotten a chance to get to know Coach Belichick a little bit. Had a relationship with Josh McDaniels (the Patriots’ offensive coordinator-quarterbacks coach). Really, we practiced against those guys when I was in Washington early on (McVay was an assistant coach with the Redskins from 2010-2016) and kind of kept in contact with them.
“They’re a team that you’re always watching the way they do things and you just have so much respect for the way that they’ve operated over the last handful of years. So, it’s going to be a great challenge.’’
Don’t think that McVay is merely an up-and-comer to be schooled by Belichick, dismissed with a pat on the top of the head, though, for he has already proven himself to be a head coach more than capable of meeting challenges head on since the Rams plucked him off the Washington Redskins coaching staff, where’d he spent seven seasons, his last three as offensive coordinator. At 30 years, 11 months and 19 days on the day of his hiring (Jan. 12, 2017), McVay became the youngest head coach in modern NFL history.
Inheriting a team that had gone 4-12 under Jeff Fisher and interim head coach John Fassel in 2016, McVay guided the Rams to an 11-5 finish to the 2017 regular season before they suffered a 26-13 postseason loss to Atlanta in the teams’ NFC wild-card game. This season, the Rams went 13-3 and have registered wins over the Dallas Cowboys, 30-22, and the New Orleans Saints, 26-23, in overtime in the divisional round and conference championship, respectively, to advance to their upcoming date in Atlanta when McVay will become the youngest head coach in the history of the Super Bowl.
If Belichick is a defensive genius, McVay is an offensive mastermind, his Rams putting up 1,005 points in his two seasons with them, ranking first in the NFL in scoring in 2017, second only to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2018.
“I have a ton of respect for Sean,” said Belichick. “I think he’s done a great job in the two years he’s been with the Rams. His teams have performed at an extremely high level. They’re very consistent. They’re well-coached. He has a great scheme. The players execute it on a consistent basis at a very high level.
“He’s got a great coaching staff. Offense, defense, special teams, they’re good in every area. Coach Fassel (the Rams’ special teams coordinator), Coach Phillips (defensive coordinator Wade Phillips), a great staff. Coach Fisch (senior offensive assistant Jedd Fisch) I know is also an important part of that staff. The coaching, the playing, the consistency, Coach McVay’s done a tremendous job out there. He’s got a great team.”
From his high school quarterbacking days at Marist, McVay went on to play wide receiver in college at Miami of Ohio where he earned the RedHawks’ Scholar-Athlete Award in 2007 and twice played Mid-American Conference games against Kent State teams led by a dual-threat quarterback by the name of Julian Edelman.
The Patriots, of course, selected Edelman in the seventh round of the 2009 NFL Draft and began the process of converting him to a wide receiver-return man. That same year, his second in coaching, McVay was toiling as the quality control coach/wide receivers coach on Jim Haslett’s staff with the Florida Tuskers of the long-since-defunct United Football League.
McVay broke into coaching as the assistant wide receivers coach with Jon Gruden’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2008. Following one season in the UFL, McVay returned to the NFL as the assistant tight ends coach with the Redskins in 2010.