How the grandson of NFL royalty made his own way

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — It’s not that he was embarrassed. He wasn’t trying to hide who he was. This was just … easier.

The more he started to pour himself into the sport, first as a player, then as a young coach, the more he started to notice he was introducing himself differently. “Hi, I’m Chris Shula,” became “Hi, I’m Chris.”

“I almost didn’t want to tell anybody,” he admits now. “I wouldn’t necessarily lie about it, but I wouldn’t be open about it, either.”

He knew the looks he’d get when they figured it out; how heads would tilt back and eyebrows would jump and conversations would change.

Shula, as in …?

They’d see him differently. Treat him differently. They’d assume his path was already paved, that he wouldn’t have to earn it, same as everybody else. He resented that. He wanted to earn it, same as everybody else.

But that surname carried something with it, especially in the city where he grew up, where the Dolphins still drive to work every day on Don Shula Dr.

Imagine playing high school football 12 miles from where your grandfather retired as the winningest coach in NFL history. Imagine trying to climb the coaching ladder without everyone assuming you’d had every job handed to you because your grandpa knew so and so.

“I never wanted to break into this business because of my last name,” the 38-year-old insists.

So he didn’t. He started out in Muncie, Ind., then coached Division III in Northeast Ohio. He worked as a grunt in quality control then learned to coach every position on defense. And when he got the phone call last winter telling him he’d landed the biggest promotion of his career — defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams — he couldn’t help but smile at the irony.

He was standing in Concourse D at Miami International Airport, looking for a bite to eat, right in front of a Shula’s Steakhouse.

He went in. Sat down. Ordered a burger and a beer. He’d earned his shot, he told himself, without skipping any steps along the way. Now it was time to see if he deserved it.

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“Oh my gosh,” Shula thought to himself, jogging off the field in Arizona after a 31-point loss in Week 2, “What just happened?”

His unit had been gashed. Embarrassed. It was an early lesson for Shula and a humbling one at that: one game does not carry over to the next.

Seven days earlier in Detroit, the Rams’ untested young defense — in the first game of the post-Aaron Donald era — held its own for four quarters against a Super Bowl contender before fading in overtime. Shula left encouraged. It was a solid first step.

Then they went to the desert and got shellacked.

“You don’t think you have the ability to play that bad,” he says.

They had. And while he steamed over the performance — primarily the 231 rushing yards allowed — it hit him: this could get bad, and quickly. “You look up and you’ve got the 49ers coming in the next week, and you’re already o-2,” he says.

It was nearly 0-3, but the Rams ripped off 13 straight in the fourth quarter to steal a 27-24 win over San Francisco. Then came losses to Chicago and Green Bay, dropping L.A. to 1-4. Suddenly the Rams were among the biggest disappointments in the league, and their first-year coordinator was off to a stumbling start.

A week later Shula stood on the field before a game against the Raiders, making small talk with a few Las Vegas assistants. “They were 2-4 and we were 1-4,” he says. “So it’s, ‘How you doing?’ ‘Good?’ ‘Good.’ But what we’re all thinking is, we have to win this one.”

The Rams did, 20-15. Shula got a game ball afterward. His players mobbed him in the locker room.

“Every streak starts at one!” he shouted.

The streak now stands at three. The Rams intercepted Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith three times last Sunday, then in overtime stuffed Kenneth Walker on fourth-and-1 from L.A.’s 16-yard-line. Matthew Stafford and the offense handled the rest.

Suddenly — and somewhat improbably — the Rams are surging. The humbling moments of the season’s first month have hardened a team that’s very much in the thick of it in the NFC West.

And Shula’s starting to show he’s not in over his head.

“Dive full on into the preparation,” his boss and old college teammate, Sean McVay, always tells him. “And don’t be afraid to get your heart broken.”

Coach scared at this level and you won’t last.

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Dave Shula always knew. He knew his son might fight it, might even run from it. But he always knew Chris was going to end up being a coach.

At 5 years old, Chris was peppering his grandpa for stories about Johnny Unitas. During backyard football games, Chris was the one picking the teams and enforcing the rules. Once, during a grade school basketball game, he ran over to his dad in tears, irate at something the coach had just told him.

“They’re not keeping score!” Chris fumed. “How can you not keep score?”

Dad coached too. Chris would tag along with him to training camp every summer. Miami. Dallas. Cincinnati. He’d clean the locker room and set cones on the field and hang with the players after practice. “I was best friends with the long snapper,” Chris says proudly.

“I’m telling you, he pretty much learned to read by going through the sports pages of the Miami Herald and Cincinnati Enquirer,” Dave says.

Football was life. He was a Shula.

It started with the patriarch: Don Shula was a head coach at 33, at the time the youngest in NFL history. Thirty-two years later he retired as the gold standard: three championships and more wins — 374 — than anyone in history.

Dave worked for his dad in Miami, was Jimmy Johnson’s first offensive coordinator with the Cowboys, then was the Bengals’ head coach from 1992-96. Don’s youngest son, Mike, has been at it 36 years, bouncing between college and the pros.

Chris was asking his grandpa for pointers at age 8.

“Practice it until it’s perfect,” he remembers hearing. “And remember, the game doesn’t change. You always gotta block. You always gotta tackle.”

Chris grew into a star linebacker in high school, good enough to land a scholarship to Miami (OH), where he met a fiery wide receiver with a tuft of blonde hair who became one of his best friends. McVay was different, even then: when their group of friends would drive down to Florida for spring break each year and stay with the Shula’s, McVay would ask for his own room, then borrow Mrs. Shula’s ironing board to prep his shirts for their nights out.

“Did I know he was going to be an NFL head coach at 30? Probably not,” Dave Shula says, laughing. “But he was the leader of the group, even then.”

After graduation, the group scattered. Dead set on breaking into the coaching business, McVay latched on as a low-level assistant on Jon Gruden’s staff in Tampa. Chris wavered. Coaching had always intrigued him, but part of him resisted — he knew what people would say. He didn’t want any handouts. He didn’t want to follow some pre-ordained path.

He was going to do his own thing. So he landed at the University of Oklahoma, where he started work on his Master’s degree. The plan was to become an athletic director.

But Saturdays stung. During Sooners games, he’d be up in the suites, schmoozing with season-ticket holders. “It wasn’t me,” he says.

He missed the grass. Missed the competition. He realized he belonged on the field, and he didn’t care about the assumptions that would come his way, the cries of nepotism.

Chris Shula was going to coach.

“I dealt with the same thing,” Dave Shula says. “Because of your last name, you get more attention one way or another. More attention if you win, more attention if you lose.”

Dave remembers a conversation with a young Brian Schottenheimer, whose father, Marty, is the seventh-winningest coach in NFL history. Brian was waffling on following in his father’s footsteps. “If coaching is your passion, then do it,” Dave recalls telling him. “People are going to criticize you either way. You might as well chase your passion.”

He told his son the same thing. Chris started out as an assistant linebackers coach at Ball State, a job he got after his own defensive coordinator at Miami asked him to interview. Three years later he was the defensive coordinator at Division III John Carroll when his phone buzzed on a recruiting trip. It was Craig Aukerman, his position coach in college, who was now with the San Diego Chargers. They had a quality control job open, the lowest-level spot on the staff. Was he interested?

Shula was on a flight the next day.

Two years later, McVay became the youngest head coach in modern NFL history and asked his old college teammate to join his staff. Shula spent the next seven seasons bouncing between roles, soaking in the schemes of Wade Phillips, Brandon Staley and Raheem Morris, the Rams’ previous defensive coordinators under McVay.

“Total opposites, all three of them,” Shula says.

He coached the linebackers, then the defensive backs. He was the passing game coordinator one year, then the pass rush coordinator the next. It was as if McVay wanted him to build expertise at every level of the defense.

Then, in January, Morris landed the Falcons’ head-coaching job. Shula waited. He was in Miami, visiting his parents, waiting for word from McVay. The call didn’t come for a few hours.

Finally: “We’re going to interview you.”

“Sean never told me, ‘You’re it.’ Or, ‘This is it,’” Shula says. “Nothing like that.”

Shula had interviewed for the Eagles’ defensive coordinator job the year before; he had a PowerPoint handy. But he needed to prep for the sit-down, so Dave spent 12 hours across two days playing the role of Rams’ brass, grilling his son.

A few days later Chris exited the interview confident. He hadn’t been perfect, but he’d laid out his vision. He felt ready.

He interviewed with the Dolphins for their DC post a well — a job he admits would’ve come with its own set of challenges. But a few days later, while he waited for his flight at Miami’s airport, McVay called. The job was his. Chris celebrated alone at the bar inside Shula’s.

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The worst kept secret in building last season was that Donald was retiring at year’s end. Long before he took the job, Shula knew there’d be no easy way to replace one of the best defensive players in league history, the lynchpin of everything the Rams had done on that side of the ball for a decade.

It hits Shula every Sunday while he coaches from the sideline.

“Life’s a lot different without A.D.,” he says, “even more than we expected.”

General manager Les Snead stockpiled his defensive front with young talent, then tasked Shula with coaching them up: six members of the Rams’ front-seven are either rookies or in their second year. The early returns were disastrous. Five weeks into the season the Rams were last against the run, last in yards per play and last in defensive EPA.

Shula kept working, kept teaching. Dive full on into the preparation, and don’t be afraid to get your heart broken. He sought out his unit’s deficiencies, then attacked them in practice. “He understands the conflicts every position has,” fourth-year linebacker Michael Hoecht says. “He understands where the stresses are.”

He’s also unafraid to seek out a player’s perspective and alter his game plan. He knew from the outset it was going to take time for the defense to gel this season, especially without Donald there to cover up so many holes. Growth would come slowly, for both the unit and its new coordinator.

“He’s really, really good about taking feedback from us,” Hoecht continues. “If something we see doesn’t feel right, or if we play something wrong and we tell him, ‘Hey, they’re gonna come back to this,’ I think he’s really, really good at taking input and taking information …. and being able to look at his game plan and adjust and call and anticipate how the offense is going to attack.”

The defensive front that was worked over in Arizona has become the backbone behind the Rams’ turnaround. Second-round pick Braden Fiske had two sacks in last week’s win. Second-year starter Kobie Turner had another. First-round pick Jared Verse added another — and is emerging as one of the best young pass rushers in the league.

During their three-game win streak, the Rams’ defense ranks first on third down, second in the red zone and third in EPA.

“It seemed like you guys were in the (expletive) backfield all day!” McVay shouted inside a raucous locker room in Seattle.

Shula, meanwhile, isn’t shying away from his aspirations. “I think it’s every coach’s goal to become a head coach one day,” he says. “But it’s not something I think about often. When the time comes, the time comes.”

For now, the aim is another NFC West title and another trip to the playoffs. After a dreadful start for the Rams’ young defense — a unit still trying to move on from one of the greatest game-wreckers in NFL history — a third-generation coach carrying on one of the league’s weightiest legacies has started to prove his mettle. On his own terms.

“You know,” Snead said, standing on the sideline late in training camp, weighing his new coordinator’s path to this point, “I never think of him as a Shula.”

Which is how Chris always wanted it.

— The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue contributed to this report.

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Steph Chambers, Bettmann Archive, Brooke Sutton / Getty Images)