As is the case every year, the Los Angeles Rams have had to make changes to their coaching staff.
Key members like Kevin O’Connell and Wes Phillips departed for the Minnesota Vikings, leaving a couple vacancies on head coach Sean McVay’s staff. McVay ended up hiring Liam Coen to replace O’Connell as his offensive coordinator, but the Rams made the interesting decision to move former running backs coach Thomas Brown to tight ends coach.
While Brown could have easily turned down the offer, he instead embraced it and believes it is going to benefit him long term, via Cameron DaSilva of USA Today:
“It’s going to be very beneficial for me as a coach and be able to challenge me, force me to grow, which is what I’ve always asked for and prayed for is to be in an opportunity where I have access to knowledge,” he said Wednesday. “But also, I think places of comfort are great, but you never grow in places of comfort. Being able to get outside my comfort zone and force myself to grow and have some more involvement and keep rollin’ here with the Rams.”
This is going to be a new experience for Brown, but he sounds confident he will be able to have an impact because how he views the offense as a whole:
“From a challenge standpoint, to me, it’s just being able to be in a different environment, different coaching techniques when it comes to my role and responsibility,” Brown said. “But I’ve always viewed things from an all-11 perspective anyway. I’ve always tried to take a big-picture role when it comes to what we do. I never got locked in to just running backs only. It was always kind of just seeing the entire big picture, just being able to have now an opportunity to get my hands involved in the coaching is going to be a big part of it.”
Brown is well-regarded around the league and seemed close to promotions on other teams before ultimately deciding to stay with Los Angeles. It may look like a curious decision on paper, but McVay has a knack for scouting coaching talent so he must feel confident in Brown making the switch.
