When the Rams opened training camp last month, coach Sean McVay said he has yet to sign a new contract with the team, in the aftermath of his Super Bowl win and a $20-million-per-year courtship from Amazon. We politely raised the possibility that the Rams and McVay have opted to conceal the fact that McVay already has his new contract, based on the fact that the Rams have a recent history of hiding new deals giving to head coaches.
McVay's contract hasn't come up during a press conference since then, even though he talks to reporters several times per week. It undoubtedly will be one of the major topics of his next media session, given things McVay said to a reporter who authored a lengthy new profile of the 36-year-old coach.
The article from Seth Wickersham of ESPN.com begins by focusing on the swanky McMansion into which McVay and his wife moved earlier this year. And the article strongly suggests that McVay's financial reward for winning a championship and spurning Jeff Bezos isn't merely pending. McVay has already gotten it.
Here's the money paragraph, regarding McVay's new money: "Months after that morning, as he sits at a table and describes it, McVay is certain of one thing: If they had lost to the Bengals, he definitely wouldn't have this new house. Would Amazon have courted a two-time Super Bowl loser, offering a booth job for $20 million a year, after word on the street was that he had finally burned himself out coaching? McVay isn't convinced. Either way, he wasn't ready to leave his job, and he received a raise." (Emphasis added.)
Elsewhere in the article, Wickersham notes that McVay has seen "his wealth exponentially increase" this year. That doesn't happen absent a new contract from the Rams.
It's very odd that the Rams would conceal that fact. Maybe they're just congenital liars. (Folks in St. Louis would agree.) Or maybe there's a strategic reason for it. As we surmised when last addressing the subject, it's entirely possible that Rams owner Stan Kroenke and the rest of the oligarchs desperately want to avoid creating the impression that Amazon's offer squeezed Kroenke to blow the salary curve for McVay.
"So Kroenke and Demoff commit to a gigantic raise in order to get McVay to reject Amazon, and then they all agree the deal will be announced much later, in order to make it look like Amazon had nothing to do with forcing Kroenke to pay up," we wrote at the time.
Maybe the plan was to just never announce it. To just keep going, hopeful that reporters won't circle back around to whether McVay already is cashing much larger checks.
They'll be asking now. The ESPN.com profile gives them a clear and obvious reason to do so.
ESPN profile of Sean McVay suggests that he got a new contract, months ago originally appeared on Pro Football Talk