Bedard: Wade Phillips got him in '15, Sean McVay succeeded where he 'failed' - time for Josh McDaniels to shine

ATLANTA — When it comes to Super Bowl LIII, there are plenty of storylines and narratives.

Sean McVay against Bill Belichick. Tom Brady against time and Wade Phillips. The possible retirements of Rob Gronkowski and Devin McCourty. Aaron Donald and Ndamukong Suh vs. the Patriots offensive line. Former Patriots Brandin Cooks and Aqib Talib against their old teammates and coaches. The final games with the Patriots for Brian Flores and Chad O'Shea. The list goes on and on.

But there's little mention of Josh McDaniels, outside of the fact that a year ago he was all but signed to become the next head coach of the Indianapolis. And then ... he wasn't.

There's plenty at stake for McDaniels in this game, too. There's the fact Phillips got the best of McDaniels, Brady and the Patriots in the 2015 AFC Championship Game, when the Patriots were three-point road favorites.

And then there's this:

McVay, 33, is the NFL's offensive wunderkind, and has taken the Rams to the Super Bowl in just his second season.

Less than a decade ago, McDaniels was McVay. After directing the Patriots' offense to dizzying heights, he was hired as the next-great-thing by the Broncos in 2009. He was 8-4 to start his tenure, and then a 3-13 mark got him fired after a Week 13 loss to the Chiefs in his second season.

Now, eight years later, McDaniels will look across the field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday night and see in McVay would could have been.

So, yeah, you could say McDaniels has a lot at stake when the Patriots face the Rams.

In an exclusive conversation with BostonSportsJournal.com, McDaniels talked about anticipating a "tweak" from Phillips. And he also admitted that, yes, he sees what everyone else sees when they view McVay — that McDaniels was supposed to be the trailblazer for the next wave of offensive young guns.

"Yeah, I mean, sure, I’m a human being ... I would think it would be crazy if I didn’t, you know?" McDaniels said. "I had an opportunity to experience that at a young age, similar to Sean. And, look, those opportunities can go multiple directions. You can learn a lot from failing through them, and that’s basically what I think happened with me. And/or maybe you’re a little bit ahead of the game in terms of the things he’s done to put people around him — I think that has been brilliant. You know, getting Wade and getting his special teams coordinator — (John Fassel) has really done a good job for him — and Sean’s just a really mature guy."

McDaniels, now 42, put together a similarly strong coaching staff with the Broncos. Like Phillips, defensive coordinator Mike Nolan was a veteran coach and former head coach. Special teams coordinator Mike Priefer was held in high regard. Offensive coordinator Mike McCoy and receivers coach Adam Gase would become head coaches. Rick Dennison was one of the best offensive line coaches in the league. Linebackers coach Don Martindale is now the Ravens' respected defensive coordinator. Secondary coach Ed Donatell was a former coordinator.

The lessons learned by McDaniels, and one of the reasons why he's so impressed with McVay — and thinks other young coaches should take heed — came in the area of delegation. McDaniels, who was also given personnel control in Denver (Les Snead is the Rams' general manager), tried to control everything. There's a fine line between controlling an organization and leading it. McDaniels sees that wisdom in McVay beyond his years.

"I’ll tell you this: I’m really a big fan of his," McDaniels said. "The thing I’m most impressed with, with Sean is not schematically on offense — I mean, he does a great job, there’s no question about that. It’s his maturity, it’s his leadership, it’s his accountability and it’s his maturity to delegate responsibility. To me, anybody can learn from that.

"He does a great job at a young age, and you can tell that he was raised the right way in that regard. And I’ve told him that. He’s really a bright spot in the young world of coaching. And if any young coach isn’t paying attention, then they’re crazy, because this guy is demonstrating a lot of the things off the field that you need to do right in order to be able to hold that position and be able to do it well."

While the sight of McVay being lavished with praise during this season certainly makes McDaniels think about what could have been, McDaniels is more focused on what he can and has learned for when he gets his next head coaching opportunity.

"For me, I still have aspirations that I’m going to get that done. It’s just when is that or where (and) what year that’s going to be?" McDaniels said. "I don’t know. I’m praying it happens. I’m praying that I get a great opportunity and it’s going to come down to me proving that I have learned a tremendous amount from the things that I failed at and all of the years that I’ve learned since then. And I can’t wait for that opportunity. But I also can’t force anything to happen that’s not really the right thing."

McDaniels wouldn't admit it, but a big step towards him getting that chance again sooner rather than later could be triumphing over McVay on Sunday night. To do that, he will have to get the best of an old adversary in Phillips.

The last time the Patriots faced a Phillips' defense in the postseason was in the 2015 AFC title game in Denver when Brady was pressured 39 times, including 17 hits on the quarterback.

"I’ve competed against him a number of times, and we’ve won some, we’ve lost some," McDaniels said. "Sometimes we’ve done well, sometimes it’s been hard. I just know it’s going to be competitive. But I don’t think this is about trying to right a wrong or anything like that because, to me, the two teams … our team is decidedly different than the one we had in ’15. Not better or worse; just different. And the team he’s on has different strengths and weaknesses. I think this year is probably going to be a different game in many regards and we’ll just see how it goes. It’s not the same type of matchup.

"We were pretty banged up. (Julian) Edelman was banged up, (Rob) Gronkowski was banged up. Our backfield situation was not great. We had Steven Jackson, we got him later in the season and he was at the end of his career. It was just one of those years.

"With the way the game unfolded, it did not lend itself to us being in control of the game. We fell behind, we couldn’t really run it very well at all the entire game, which made it a pass game. On the road against an extremely good pass rush, I don’t think that’s what you want to do. But at some point, you have to do what you need to do to win. And for us, our strength was in the passing game that year and it wasn’t necessarily to do everything we could to stay balanced. But the problem is, you’re dealing with a great pass rush and crowd noise and a group up front that was just a young group and we try to do our best we can. I’ll say this: at the end of the day, we were a two-point conversion away from sending it into overtime. When you look back on it, as crazy as that game was, it wasn’t that far out of reach."

In the game, Phillips tossed aside his normal Cover 1 and blitz-heavy scheme and opted for more players in short zone coverage and very few blitzes. That seemed to catch the Patriots off guard, and that lesson will be applied Sunday night.

"I guess the answer is no (they weren't unprepared) but I definitely acknowledge that was a change for him," McDaniels said. "I would just say playing him the number of times that I’ve played him, going back to '07 in Dallas when he kind of threw a different curveball at us that we had really never seen.

In that one, a matchup of 5-0 teams, Phillips played off coverage and dropped linebackers and linemen into coverage. Dallas took a rare second-half lead, but lost 48-27.

"In 2012 against them with the Texans, twice in that year, it was a good defense — that was the letterman jacket game — they had some good players then and his strengths were different than what he had in Dallas," recalled McDaniels. "So we played them in ’13, in ’15 … we’ve played him a lot."

Phillips also headed the Broncos defense in 2016 when the Patriots won 16-3. So in the past two games against Brady and McDaniels, Phillips has more than held his own — the Patriots have averaged 17 points per game. In those games, Brady has completed just 48.9 percent of his passes, thrown one touchdown and two interceptions, and posted a passer rating of 60.7.

"I’ll just say that I’ve learned that in a lot of those games ... I don’t think I’m going to be surprised by anything that’s going to happen relative to him making a subtle tweak like that, because he’s done it before," McDaniels said. "Even though when you look at the scouting report, you say, ‘What is this team all about?’ It’s rather simple, but you know you’re going to get something tweaked just for you. That’s what you know. You know there’s going to be something in there that’s a little different than what you saw in the scouting report and that’s because he’s going to do it based on the fact that he thinks he needs to do it to you in order to win."

When the game starts on Sunday night, McDaniels will see the man (Phillips) who bested him in the AFC Championship Game and the ghost of his head coaching past (McVay).

If you're Josh McDaniels, it's time for some redemption.