Sean McVay is the reason the Rams are falling apart — and the only man who can fix them

Sean McVay has spent the better part of a decade building a reputation as one of football’s brightest minds. Six weeks into the 2026 NFL Season, and the Los Angeles Rams’ head coach is getting outsmarted by the one person who should know his offense better than anyone. 

Himself. 

The Rams are currently 2-4, dead last in the NFC West, and watching their Super Bowl dreams unravel one self-inflicted wound at a time. 

And while McVay deserves enormous credit for transforming this franchise into a perennial contender, he deserves an equally large share of the blame for its current predicament. 

Let’s start with special teams, an annual problem McVay has allowed to fester like an untreated infection. 

For years, the Rams have tried to get by with bargain-bin kickers, questionable personnel decisions and a reluctance to expose starters on special teams. The revolving door at kicker has become almost comical, except nobody in Los Angeles is laughing anymore.

Harrison Mevis missed four field goals before being released, including a blocked 48-yard attempt in overtime against Buffalo that helped seal another heartbreaking defeat.

But why was Mevis attempting a 48-yarder in the first place?

With Matthew Stafford carving up Buffalo’s defense, McVay inexplicably called a run on third-and-5 that gained nothing, settling for a long field goal instead of trusting his reigning MVP to move the chains.

Afterward, McVay admitted he regretted the decision.

“I wish I would have had a better play call and gone forward, got it a lot tighter. I’m sick right now with myself,” he said.

He should be.

Then there’s the lack of discipline on display by his team week in and week out. 

The Rams entered this season accustomed to being among the NFL’s least-penalized teams. Instead, false starts, holding calls and other mental mistakes have repeatedly sabotaged promising drives.

“I can’t deny that because we had some critical moments in critical situations,” said McVay when asked if his team is undisciplined this season compared to last. “We had a couple key and critical ones where you jump offsides on fourth-and-three…then you jump offsides on the first play of their two-minute drive when you’re trying to sustain the lead and win the game. We have to do a better job and it starts with me.”

“It starts with me,” has become a weekly catchphrase for McVay during this tumultuous season and his accountability has been admirable. Unfortunately, we can’t say the same about his play-calling a lot of the time.

Against Arizona, McVay called a fourth-and-1 handoff to tight end Davis Allen, who had never carried the football in an NFL game. Later, facing fourth-and-8, he dialed up another predictable screen pass that was blown up.

The result? Another embarrassing loss, 18-16, to a Cardinals team that entered as a 12.5-point underdog.

McVay’s offense has become maddeningly predictable until desperation strikes.

Give Stafford the football with two minutes remaining and suddenly the Rams look unstoppable. For the other 55 minutes, they’re frequently stuck in neutral, squandering opportunities to build comfortable leads and allowing opponents to hang around.

It’s why four consecutive games have come down to the final play, with Los Angeles losing three.

McVay keeps turning games that should be decided by execution over four quarters into coin flips. Lately, the coin keeps landing on the wrong side.

Even the season-opening debacle in Australia falls at his feet. McVay chose to arrive in Melbourne barely a day before kickoff, while San Francisco arrived nearly a week earlier. The Rams looked sluggish in a 27-7 loss.

“Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn and sometimes you have a dumbass coach that makes travel plans that put you in a bad spot,” McVay later admitted.

At least he owned it.

To be fair, McVay cannot control the avalanche of injuries that has devastated his roster. Poona Ford, Kobie Turner, Davante Adams, Puka Nacua, Myles Garrett and several other key contributors have been sidelined. Nor can he control Alaric Jackson throwing a postgame punch and getting suspended, or questionable officiating decisions against Josh Wallace that cost them victories in Denver and last week against Arizona.

But injuries don’t explain everything, and bad calls don’t excuse bad coaching.

McVay himself acknowledged the uncomfortable truth after Sunday’s loss.

“We won’t win a game unless we figure out how not to beat ourselves,” he said.

He’s right. And as McVay likes to say, that starts with the man on the headset holding the play sheet.

To be clear, nobody is suggesting McVay should be fired. That would be ridiculous. He’s the youngest head coach in NFL history ever to win a Super Bowl. He’s still one of the NFL’s premier coaches, and the Rams would struggle to find anyone better. If McVay was fired tomorrow, 30 other NFL teams would quickly fire their current head coach to hire him.

But greatness doesn’t grant immunity from criticism.

The good news? The same coach responsible for many of these problems is uniquely qualified to solve them.

With 11 games remaining, McVay still has time to rediscover the creativity, discipline and killer instinct that made the Rams champions in 2021 and got them one play from winning the Super Bowl again in 2025. 

That turnaround must begin Sunday against the Las Vegas Raiders. McVay has an opportunity to finally shine when everyone around him is doubting him. For six weeks, he failed to live up to the postseason hype and expectations that come with being the preseason Super Bowl favorites. 

Now those expectations have vanished like the players in his starting lineup and McVay has the chance to exceed them. Something he’s excelled at throughout his career. 

On Sunday, the Rams don’t need another postgame press conference that begins with “it starts with me.” They need the wunderkind coach who made everyone else in the league look a step behind.

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