The Super Bowl is more than just Rams vs. Patriots. It could also be a changing of the guard.
In more than one way, Super Bowl 53 is giving viewers a matchup between the new school and old school. There’s the literal way — the Rams are led by Sean McVay, who at 33 is the youngest person to ever coach in the Super Bowl. His starting quarterback, Jared Goff, is 24 — or the same age as 41-year-old Tom Brady was when he started his first Super Bowl for the Patriots 17 years ago.
Brady’s boss, 66-year-old Bill Belichick, is the second-oldest coach in the NFL. The two are also the most decorated quarterback-coach duo in NFL history. This is the Patriots’ ninth appearance with Brady and Belichick, and they have a chance to win their sixth Super Bowl together.
McVay and Goff are in a much more unfamiliar situation. They only just got their first playoff wins this season. In fact, this is the Rams’ first Super Bowl appearance since playing against the Patriots all the way back in February 2002 — when McVay was just 16 years old and Goff was 7.
Then there’s the figurative way. McVay has helped usher in a new era of the NFL, one where offensive innovation is king, resulting in an inimitably watchable brand of all-or-nothing football. It’s in some ways less disciplined, more chaotic, but more exciting than the Patriots’ cohesive version. It’s one where “Do Your Job” is pushed aside for “We Not Me.”
But Brady and Belichick haven’t passed the torch just yet. The Patriots are, as much as they don’t want to believe it, the favorites to win on Sunday night. What they’ve done and continue to do is unprecedented and may not ever be topped in NFL history.
What the Rams are doing is still special, though. And with a win, they could be on the verge of kickstarting their own magical run.
Jared Goff’s stats are better than Tom Brady’s were at a similar point in their careers
When they first teamed up in the early 2000s, Brady and Belichick weren’t the feared versions of themselves that they are now. Outside of a Super Bowl ring, McVay and Goff have arguably accomplished more than Brady and Belichick did in their first two years together.
In his first two years as a starter, Brady was still a bit of an unknown, a guy who had usurped Drew Bledsoe with a mix of clutch play and luck. He won MVP honors in Super Bowl 36, although he threw for just 145 yards and the award could’ve easily gone to kicker Adam Vinatieri instead. That following season, the Patriots went 9-7 but missed out on the playoffs.
Before McVay came on board, the Rams had missed the playoffs for 12 straight seasons. They hadn’t won their division in even longer. In the first two years of the McVay-Goff era, the Rams have won double-digit games and back-to-back NFC West titles. McVay and Goff have turned around an offense that was dead last in the NFL to one that has ranked in the top two each of the past two seasons.
That’s especially impressive considering their history. When McVay was hired in 2017, he had never been a head coach before at any level. Meanwhile Goff was coming off an apocalyptically bad rookie season under Jeff Fisher when he went 0-7 as a starter. Since then, he’s played like an MVP, even if his performance has flown a bit under the radar.
Comparing their first two seasons as a full-time starter, Goff’s numbers blow Brady’s out of the water.
There are a couple key differences. Brady got his start in an era of football when teams averaged three fewer points and 50 fewer yards per game than they did in 2018. There’s also a big contrast in how much each team invested in Goff and Brady. The Rams traded multiple first- and second-round picks to trade up to draft Goff with the No. 1 pick in 2016. The Patriots had Brady fall into their lap in the sixth round 16 years before.
There are a couple similarities to how Goff and Brady began their career, too. Like Goff, Brady was helped by a strong supporting cast.
It’s difficult for young quarterbacks to have success on teams that are bereft of talent — Goff learned that the hard way in 2016. The Rams had Todd Gurley and Aaron Donald in the fold, but they still needed to revamp their entire offense after their horrid 2016 season where they averaged just 4.4 yards per play.
The Patriots teams in the early 2000s may not have had the offensive firepower that the current Rams had, but they had a ton of defensive talent. Ty Law, Richard Seymour, Willie McGinest, Lawyer Milloy, Mike Vrabel, and Tedy Bruschi populated the Patriots’ defense for their first Super Bowl title in 2001.
Goff and Brady also both benefited from the leadership of a head coach with remarkable knowledge about the game of football.
Bill Belichick and Sean McVay have each turned the NFL into copycats
Belichick had plenty of coaching experience when he joined the Patriots in 2000. He spent five seasons as the head coach of the Browns, and sandwiched between that were nine years as a defensive coordinator, first for the Giants and then for the Jets. In his first two seasons with Brady as the starter, Belichick’s record was 20-12. While that’s good, it didn’t hint at the dominance that they’ve had over the past two decades.
Part of what has made Belichick such a special coach is his ability to adapt to whatever players he has on his roster. The Patriots have seen a lot of different types of players come through their team over the past 20 years — especially on offense. Whether it was Corey Dillon and the Patriots power run game, running a vertical attack with Randy Moss, two-tight end sets with Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, or the current iteration of their running back-led offense, Belichick has always been able to get the most from players on his team.
McVay hasn’t quite had a chance to do that yet, but the early returns are positive. After three seasons as the offensive coordinator for Washington, McVay became the youngest coach in NFL history. It took him one year to turn one of the worst offenses ever into one of the best offenses in the NFL. His Rams offense thrives on creating big plays and on variation, although in a different way than Belichick’s. McVay uses the same 11 personnel package most of the time, but that’s the only predictable part of his offense. Opposing defenses never exactly know what he’s going to throw at them from there.
The Rams remade their roster over the last two offseasons, going all-in on a Super Bowl run with big-name additions. So far, it’s paid off. Factor in players like Gurley, Donald, Brandin Cooks, and Robert Woods locked up for the future and the idea of sustained success becomes more plausible. For now, McVay’s initial success — 24-8 over the past two seasons and the 2017 NFL Coach of the Year Award — has the NFL buzzing that he’s the next great head coach.
Teams are already trying to find the next McVay just like teams have been trying to find the next Belichick for the last 20 years. Cincinnati (Zac Taylor) and Green Bay (Matt LaFleur) have already hired McVay disciples for head coaching gigs. The Cardinals even referred to Kliff Kingsbury — a creative offensive mind who was fired at Texas Tech and has never coached in the NFL— as a friend of McVay’s when they hired him.
Belichick’s coaching tree has mostly been a dud, while it’s too soon to know how McVay’s former coaches will do. But the impact McVay has had on the NFL is already felt.
McVay has his share of appreciators, and one of them is Belichick himself. Before the Super Bowl, McVay revealed to Peter King that Belichick sent him a text after a win earlier this year:
“This season, he has basically texted me after every one of our games. After we beat Minnesota in September, he texted, ‘Man, you guys are really explosive and impressive and fun to watch. Congratulations—keep it rolling.’ For him to even take the time to say congrats, it’s pretty cool.”
Now McVay’s got a chance to beat Belichick on the biggest stage of all — which would only put him and Goff four Super Bowl trophies and eight Super Bowl appearances behind Brady and Belichick.
Of course, what Brady and Belichick were able to do after their first two years together is unparalleled. They got better. They won four more Super Bowls with a chance at a fifth. As of this season, they’ve made eight straight AFC Championship games and have a record 10 consecutive division titles. They are, without much room for debate, the greatest of all time.
McVay understands this.
As he said at Super Bowl Opening Night, “When you look at these guys and what they’ve done in terms of consistency, where that’s really the truest measurement of performance, and nobody’s done it better than they have over the last handful of years. And that’s why you have so much respect and appreciation for them.”
McVay and Goff don’t need to match the legacy that Brady and Belichick have built. No one may ever be able to reach those heights. It’s more about what a Super Bowl win would mean for the NFL: that for the first time in almost two decades, there’s a new quarterback-coach duo that everyone else is chasing.