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Power of the Press: What are the Rams Getting By Following NFL Trend of Hiring Media? cover image

Power of the Press: What are the Rams Getting By Following NFL Trend of Hiring Media?

Richie Whitt
Aug 3, 2021
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Rams' head coach Sean McVay's new personal assistant is a former sportswriter

At the risk of throwing a stick into the spokes of America's rolling "don't trust the mainstream media" narrative, the Los Angeles Rams have hired a former sportswriter. Of all roles, to be head coach Sean McVay's personal assistant.

McVay actually hand-picked Andy Benoit, who for years worked for legendary writer Peter King at Sports Illustrated, NBC and on the popular column, Football Morning in America.

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Under McVay, Benoit will start on the ground floor as a personal assistant, learning the basic stuff like how to do a practice script. His office will be adjacent to McVay’s so he can learn everything straight from the boss, and at training camp practices Benoit will be the coach's shadow.

The long-term goal for Benoit is to become a sort of Ernie Adams, the long-time, deep-thinking attache of Bill Belichick who has served in the NFL almost 40 years and earned six Super Bowl rings with the New England Patriots.

Wrote King of Benoit in this week's FMIA column ...

I saw Andy on Saturday when I was at Rams camp, and he is thrilled with the development, and McVay told me he’s happy to have Andy on staff. It’s such a cool thing to see Andy pursue his dreams. When he was writing, he was such a great student of the game — studying tape of every game, and using his contact with 50, 75, 100 coaches to ask, “Am I seeing this right? What are you doing in this formation?” He’d urge me to approve expense money so he could travel to places like Mobile for the Senior Bowl and Indy for the Combine so he could spend sessions with assistant coaches league-wide to study his craft.

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The Rams' hiring of Benoit continues a small resurgence of respect for NFL sportswriters.

Belichick gave long-time NFL columnist Rick Gosselin a shout-out at Super Bowl LIII for helping the Patriots "discover" MVP Julian Edelman from his days at Kent State. And long-time writer and NFL Network contributor Michael Silver was recently hired to cover the Washington Football Team for its website and help produce its podcasts.