Sean McVay Talking About How Belichick Outcoached Him 'Like an Amateur' is Bourbon for the Soul

Jerry Thornton8/11/2022 3:00 PM

There's a lot to appreciate, like, and admire about Sean McVay. He's smart. Successful. Good looking. Personable. He's one of football's true innovators.

He's just got everything going for him. He just won his first Super Bowl, possibly of many. He got married.

And he just quietly signed a massive contract extension. He's riding a gravy train with biscuit wheels.

But I think the thing I respect most about McVay, is that he knows how to give respect. And I'm not just talking about this over-the-top display of fanboying during Super Bowl LIII:

Though if we're being honest, I didn't much care for that. Shamelessly fawn over Bill Belichick in front of the world and you're working my side of the street, buster. I was here first. Back off and go find your own legend to grovel before.

No, I'm talking about McVay's comments in this latest ESPN profile of him.

Source - After losing Super Bowl LIII to New England in 2019, he had sat with Veronika in a near-catatonic state. "I can't believe it," he kept saying, mostly to himself. He told his family not to worry; they worried anyway. The game itself was a blur, a schooling by Bill Belichick so thorough and traumatic that to this day, McVay hasn't watched it in full. He felt he coached "like an amateur … so in over my head," and he swore that it would never happen again. …
He's gotten beers with Belichick, and is floored by his staggering football knowledge attained by singular devotion and ethic. The templates from those men reinforce McVay's own cadences and obsession and "competitive stamina," he says. The more he learns about football, the more he has to learn.

What's not to admire about that? Here McVay is, on top of the world looking down on creation. But he still recognizes he's the Beta in the coaching herd. He knows who has the biggest antlers with the most velvet on them, and so he strikes the submissive pose, head and tail down, front haunches bent when in the Alpha's presence. He's Bull-ichick, getting to mate with all the fertile females until he says otherwise, and no rival with just one ring can challenge him.

So learn a lesson from Sean McVay, everybody. Especially those who dare to question the way he's set up his coaching staff or think the game is passing him by or any of that nonsense. McVay is the hottest commodity in his chosen field, and yet even he understands he's not in Belichick's league. So bend the knee.