NFL coach Sean McVay will blow your mind with his incredible memory
At 32 years old, Sean McVay is the youngest head coach in the NFL. And the wunderkind showed off an incredible talent on “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” in a recent interview.
Specifically, McVay has a near-eidetic memory when it comes to the action on the field, his brain a film room with camera at the ready and the recall of a solid-state hard drive.
Gumbel asked McVay if he has a photographic memory, addressing that very point.
And McVay, ever humble, simply replied, “I think the more accurate thing is that I just don’t have any balance. I remember plays, but it’s something where you’re constantly going through it.”
So, in essence, he’s got the Tetris Effect. He’s seen and coached so much football with a single-minded determination that he’s replaying games in his head almost involuntarily, and with that level of repetition comes familiarity.
Gumbel decided it was time for a pop quiz.
He asked McVay about a game against the Tennessee Titans in Week 16.
“You got the ball second-and-11 at your own 20, [and there’s] 4:24 left in the second quarter. Do you remember what happened?”
McVay hardly stopped a second before he came up with the answer.
“I can probably say when we are going in, we flipped the field,” McVay said. “That was when we hit [Todd] Gurley on the 80-yard screen. On the first play, we went negative one. And the series before that, they recovered a fumble for a touchdown when our guard went the wrong way.”
A look at the videotape reveals McVay was correct.
https://twitter.com/AthleticDesires/status/945010841199394816
OK, that was a touchdown of significance, so perhaps it’s not surprising he remembered it. So Gumbel tried again, shifting his focus to a play from Week 9.
“There’s 2:40 remaining in the second quarter. Giants got the ball third-and-10 at the 14-yard line. Do you remember what happened?”
And McVay, slick as Ken Jennings on Jeopardy, said “2:40 left in the second quarter, Trumaine Johnson had an interception.”
Time to point to the big board. Survey says: Johnson with the pick.
Terrible decision by Eli Manning but also a great play by Trumaine Johnson. Read it the whole way. pic.twitter.com/hxk8nKahor
— Cameron DaSilva (@camdasilva) November 6, 2017
My goodness, that is uncanny.
And because not everything is going to be sunshine and rainbows in this guessing game, Gumbel brought up a less pleasant memory from last season for round three of the quiz show.
Against the Seahawks in Week 5: “56 seconds left in the the third quarter. The Rams got the ball on third-and-20 at the Seattle’s 25. Remember what happened?”
McVay, ever the elephant memory-wise, said “Yeah, we called a screen and it got picked.”
Gumbel, giving McVay a shot at extra credit, asked if the fault lay with the coach or with quarterback Jared Goff.
“It was an unfortunate deal where he tipped it off, but we have to give a better location,” McVay said. “That was a heck of a play by Sheldon Richardson. That was a killer right there.”
And while we probably don’t need to roll the clip for even the slowest among you to figure out what happens next, let’s roll the clip:
Sheldon Richardson with the interception!https://t.co/pGIhy5HOW5
— Def Pen Sports (@DefPenSports) October 8, 2017
The moral of the story is simple.
If you’re on the Rams and you screw up, don’t try to argue with the coach about what happened.
Because he’s going to remember the play better than you do.
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