Sep 27, 2026; Denver, Colorado, USA; Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay looks on during the first half against the Denver Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High. Mandatory Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Images Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Images
By Sam Neumann on

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Sean McVay wanted to get out of Dodge.

That, of course, is one way to interpret the Los Angeles Rams head coach abruptly cutting short his postgame press conference after a  30-26 loss to the Denver Broncos on Sunday Night Football. The more charitable reading, per Rams VP of communications Artis Twyman, is that the reporters who cover the team simply didn’t show up in time.

Rams beat reporter Nate Atkins first flagged the situation on X shortly after the game, noting that McVay left the podium just 10 minutes after the final whistle, before much of the beat had a chance to settle in and start asking questions.

According to Atkins, McVay fielded a handful of questions from Rams.com and others before the team’s YouTube live stream began, then answered only the first question from the beat, posed by ESPN’s Sarah Barshop, before promptly walking off.

Twyman countered that media members in the press box are specifically instructed to depart at the five-minute mark of the fourth quarter if they intend to attend the postgame press conference, and that Atkins — and his colleagues — had instead opted to stay in their seats for the game’s frantic finish.

In other words, they were guilty of doing their jobs.

Atkins pushed back, calling the process standard across every game he’s covered, and added that he’d never seen a coach leave that quickly across four different NFL beats. Twyman responded that McVay had been waiting and left as reporters were arriving, asking how long McVay should have been expected to wait. Atkins countered that two or five minutes would have sufficed, and that reporters didn’t even realize the press conference had started because McVay wasn’t speaking when they walked in, assuming he was waiting for them to be seated. The final whistle-to-exit gap, Atkins said, was exactly 10 minutes, which the beat had time-stamped.

That raises an obvious question: should reporters be expected to miss the end of a game in order to make a press conference?

Sunday night’s finish was about as strong an argument as there is for staying in the press box. The Rams were nursing a 19-16 lead at the five-minute mark, right when reporters would have been told to head downstairs, and every play that decided the game happened after that.

A postgame press conference exists so the people who just watched the game can question the coach about what they saw, and on a night like this, following the aforementioned policy would have meant missing every one of those decisive plays above and then asking McVay about them secondhand. And while teams have every right to keep postgame availability moving, it’s hard to argue a few extra minutes would have been an unreasonable burden, especially when the alternative is this easily avoidable outcome.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann