Sean McVay never planned to coach in the NFL until his hair turned white and his legs grew tired. Even when the Los Angeles Rams drafted quarterback Ty Simpson in the 2026 NFL Draft, he reassured that he is as good as gone in some years. More importantly, he knew what type of coach he wanted to be – or not be – like the ones who go: “Do as I say, not what I did.” He was always the lead-by-example kind of a leader, after all.

But just one year removed from the Super Bowl LVI win, the team collapsed into a 5-12 season, and McVay could no longer remember his own ways. Yet, bouncing back with three winning seasons alongside one of the league’s strongest teams, the head coach reveals what truly happened and how his wife helped him through a great anecdote.

“It took that 5-12 year where you’re really getting broken down, and I almost quit coaching,” McVay said during his recent appearance on the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast. “You could use the narrative that I was going to go to media or whatever, but the truth would have been: I was quitting because I couldn’t handle the losing.

“It was almost like a scarlet letter. There was moments you think about – it’s so crazy to me – I was counting down the days for that season to be over. Like, what a fraud.”

That feeling is understandable. Ever since he entered the Rams, McVay has had many confrontations with playoff football. In fact, he led the team to the wild card in his first season there with QB Jared Goff. While they couldn’t win a single game that season, he took them all the way to Super Bowl LIII, eventually losing to Tom Brady’s New England Patriots.

After another hunt that came to an end at the divisional conference championship, the team traded Goff for Stafford, and McVay brought the Rams their second Super Bowl ever.

Call it luck or pure brilliance, McVay’s run has been exemplary with the team. And just then, the NFL’s ugly truth hit him.

The team kept losing, and McVay was being broken down by any and every analyst. But it wasn’t the head coach’s fault. The Rams were plagued by injuries to cornerstone players who helped McVay win his first Super Bowl as a head coach:

• Quarterback Matthew Stafford was already dealing with elbow issues even before the 2022 season officially began. And once the year kicked off, things only spiraled further for the veteran signal-caller. Midway through the season, Stafford suffered a concussion before later going down with a spinal cord contusion that ultimately ended the remainder of his year.
• Receiver Cooper Kupp, fresh off winning Super Bowl MVP, also suffered a high ankle sprain that eventually required surgery. The Rams later placed Kupp on injured reserve, ending his season during the second half of the year.
• Los Angeles’ offensive line became a complete revolving door throughout the season, with the Rams using 11 different offensive line combinations across their first 11 games alone.
• The Rams’ defense revolved heavily around Aaron Donald, but the veteran defensive tackle ended up missing six games because of injuries during the second-to-last season of his career.

It’s easy to understand why Los Angeles finished 5-12 and why McVay mentally reached a breaking point. But even after the disastrous season ended, the problems were still far from over because the ghosts of the past were waiting for McVay.

Behind the curtains of what almost pushed McVay away from the Rams

For years, the Rams aggressively built a Super Bowl-caliber roster by trading draft picks for established stars, handing out massive veteran contracts, restructuring deals repeatedly, and continuously pushing salary-cap hits into future years. Huge contracts existed everywhere across the roster, including Stafford, Donald, Kupp, Jalen Ramsey, Allen Robinson, Leonard Floyd, and several others.

By the 2023 offseason, though, the entire situation caught up with Los Angeles.

The Rams entered the previous season expecting another playoff run, but instead found themselves stuck with an aging and expensive roster, poor depth, injured stars, limited draft capital, and massive future salary-cap obligations. Per reports, Los Angeles entered the 2023 offseason carrying roughly $75 million in dead cap money. As that reality fully kicked in, the Rams immediately began moving on from veterans across the roster.

• Los Angeles had signed Ramsey to a five-year, $100 million contract extension worth $71.2 million guaranteed back in 2020 after trading for him just one year earlier. But by 2023, the Rams were forced to trade him to the Miami Dolphins despite everything he had contributed to the franchise.
• The same thing happened with Floyd. The Rams signed him to a four-year, $64 million deal just one season after acquiring him. Los Angeles also moved on from him because of salary-cap pressure.
• Bobby Wagner arrived in Los Angeles on a massive five-year contract worth up to $65 million, only to last one season before the Rams released him ahead of the 2023 offseason because of cap-related reasons.
• Robinson eventually turned into one of the Rams’ biggest financial mistakes during that era. Los Angeles signed him to a three-year, $46.5 million contract in 2022 after losing Odell Beckham Jr., hoping Robinson could become the WR2 behind Kupp. Instead, he never truly fit McVay’s offensive system and struggled statistically. By 2023, he was no longer part of the roster either.

So after years of pushing draft capital and massive veteran contracts into building a championship roster, McVay had to pivot towards rookies and second-year players instead. But that’s exactly what saved the Rams and turned them into contenders. However, McVay’s realization didn’t come from a roster change, but from something that his wife, Veronika Khomyn, told him.

Sean McVay’s wife reminded him of what he always wanted to be

While battling through the mental exhaustion of a 5-12 season, Sean McVay leaned heavily on the people closest to him. One of those people was his wife, Veronika Khomyn. But after McVay finally opened up to her about everything he was feeling, the Rams head coach received a reality check. One he badly needed at that moment.

“I’ll never forget, I was explaining the situation to my wife,” McVay revealed in the same podcast. “Basically, I was trying to rationalize and justify why I should do it. It’s like ‘OK, let’s step away, maybe even come back to coaching. We’re going to have a lot of tough decisions to make.’ And it coincided with her being pregnant with our oldest, Jordan.

“And I remember I was explaining it, and she just kind of looked at me, and it was very loving and supportive, but it was like it is only coming from your wife where it really landed the punch and she’s like, ‘You know, that never really sounded like the kind of leader you wanted to be.’ And I was like, ‘boom!’ It landed the punch.

“I remember in that moment, it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I also remember thinking to myself that the most important thing I’ve always wanted to do was be a father and be a husband. And I’ll never be able to look at my little boy when he grows up and goes through adversity and say, ‘Do as I say, not as I did.’ And that was when immediately, you’re like, ‘I’ll never be able to live with myself if I did this.’ But it took a lot of work.”

McVay was carrying significant emotional exhaustion throughout the 2022 season and the difficult 2023 offseason. But at the same time, the Rams coach also realized he did not want quitting during adversity to become the example he set for his sons.

And that is exactly where Veronika’s words ended up helping him push through one of the toughest stretches of his coaching career. And it is fair to say that the decision eventually paid off.

McVay has not won another Super Bowl, yes. But he has guided the Rams to three straight playoff appearances while also reaching another NFC Championship Game just last season. Because of his close connection to Stafford, the latter was able to win his first NFL MVP season last year as well.

Now, McVay is preparing to enter his tenth season as the Rams’ head coach. And with Matthew Stafford widely expected to be entering the final season of his NFL career, it is safe to say the longtime coach-quarterback duo will do everything possible to try making one more Super Bowl run together this season.