Rams coach Sean McVay may have told the truth to Adam Schefter of ESPN, but McVay surely didn’t tell the whole truth.
Yes, McVay is staying with the Rams and he will not be pursuing television opportunities. That’s all McVay said. But there’s so much more to the story. Either Schefter didn’t ask, or McVay didn’t tell.
The reality is, most likely, that Schefter caught wind of the rumor making the round late Friday that McVay has gotten paid huge money to stay with the Rams, and that McVay was willing to provided implicit, backhanded confirmation of that fact. Coupled with the report from Andrew Marchand of the New York Post that McVay was due to meet with Amazon next week, it’s obvious that something happened to make that meeting moot.
Something surely involving Rams owner Stan Kroenke giving McVay a huge raise to stay put.
So how much? One source with knowledge of the market for head-coaching salaries estimates that, if a new deal was done, it’s between $15 million and $18 million per year. With Marchand reporting that Amazon was willing to go up to $100 million for five years, maybe McVay got even more.
For the highest-paid coaches, pegging their full compensation becomes a tricky proposition. Many get extra pay from entities other than the team. For example, Bill Belichick’s official salary with the Patriots is far less than the full extent of his overall package, which is believed to be in excess of $20 million per year.
Will McVay get $20 million or more per year? Unless McVay is willing to thump his chest and tell the world how much he makes (and some are), we’ll never know. Given that he chose not to tell Schefter about the new contract McVay undoubtedly has gotten from Kroenke, chances are we’ll never know.