The Rams and Packers will play in the divisional round on Saturday, which means good friends Sean McVay and Matt LaFleur will be on opposite sidelines for the first time as head coaches.
The two men first worked together in Washington on Mike Shanahan’s staff from 2010-2013. When Los Angeles hired McVay in 2017, he brought LaFleur on to be the club’s offensive coordinator. The Rams went from worst to first in scoring that season, winning the NFC West for the first time since 2003.
LaFleur got hired to call plays as the Titans offensive coordinator in 2018 and became the Packers head coach a year later. Now the Packers are the No. 1 seed taking on the No. 6 Rams.
On Sunday, McVay said he follows Green Bay closely because of his friendship with LaFleur. But he’s not sure that relationship provides any advantage or disadvantage for either side.
“It gives you a perspective of why they’ve done such a good job. You’re not surprised,” McVay said during his press conference. “I think it’s just when Matt got the opportunity to go there, the last thing I was surprised by was the success that he had. He’s a great coach. He’s a great friend of mine. You’re so happy to see that success. It’s pretty crazy that we’re getting an opportunity to play against one another — really, our teams our getting to play each other in the divisional round. That’s going to be the most important thing, is the Rams versus the Packers and we’ll see if we can go and get after Matt a little bit. It’ll be fun.”
McVay also admitted he’s taken a play or two from LaFleur’s Packers film, though that goes both ways.
“I joke with him about running plays that we rant previous week the next week. And I’ll steal from him, too. So, we definitely give each other a good time,” McVay said. “But there’s a handful of plays that I think each of us have run over the last couple years that we’ve copied from one another.”
McVay vs. LaFleur should be a fun matchup to keep an eye on throughout the rest of the week.