Thirteen years before he was handed the reins of an NFL franchise in the final weeks of a failed season, John Fassel was given his first and only other chance as a head coach. It was decidedly less glamorous.

New Mexico Highlands University sits in the dusty foothills of the Rockies, in the small, ironically named town of Las Vegas, New Mexico. The campus is “basically out in the boondocks,” Fassel recalls, the polar opposite of its glitzy Nevada counterpart. But when Fassel was hired as head coach in 2003, he didn’t mind. He was wide-eyed, 30-year-old, just beginning his ascent up the coaching ladder.

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Bonsignore: Rams coach Sean McVay makes the right call to rest starters against 49ers Right away, the climb proved steep. The football team had lost 24 straight games, the nation’s longest losing streak. With no other choice, the Cowboys practiced in the outfield of the campus softball diamond. Coaches drove the team buses to road games and slept four to a room at whatever Motel 6 was closest. Fassel arranged travel and team meals and even did the laundry. Every week, they cleaned the entire team’s uniforms in a single washer and dryer, filing large trash cans with detergent to let the stained pants soak overnight.

Sleep was a luxury. When his football responsibilities were fulfilled, Fassel taught three classes, including two master’s level kinesiology courses. For nine months, when duty called, he served as interim athletic director. That same year, he was named grand marshal of the town’s Electric Light parade.

Perhaps that sounds like too much for one man to handle. But for John Fassel, the boundlessly energetic and beloved special teams coordinator of the playoff-bound Rams, “it was the best thing that could’ve happened to me.”

“I was required to do a lot that I wasn’t honestly prepared for,” Fassel says. “But I had to find a way to get it done. People were counting on me. I didn’t know how to wash stains out of game pants. But I had to figure it out anyway.”

Truth is John Fassel has always found comfort in the chaos. His rise from Las Vegas, New Mexico to Los Angeles, California has been a product of this endless state of flux. It’s a constant, ever-present part of him, from his training for more than 40 triathlons to his reputation for pulling pranks on his own players. Fassel is always in motion. It’s why a one-time quarterback and receiver gravitated to coaching special teams, where nothing is constant but chaos itself.

When Jeff Fisher was fired last December and Fassel was named interim coach, his steadying hand kept the Rams afloat. The team lost its last three, but it hardly mattered. A month later, Sean McVay was hired, and while putting together his new staff, he was struck by what he heard of Fassel from those three weeks. Even as the Rams fell apart, he held the locker room together.

“You really find out about people when they go through adversity,” McVay says. “Watching the way he consistently led, consistently brought it every single day in spite of things not going the way that you’d liked, watching the way that the guys responded to him. … He was a really special coach.”

Only two assistants from last year’s Rams staff were asked back. Fassel was one, and that decision has so far paid serious dividends. The Rams boast one of the best special teams units in the NFL, ranking third in the league in special teams DVOA, according to Football Outsiders, with a punter (Johnny Hekker), kicker (Greg Zuerlein), and kick returner (Pharoh Cooper), all bound for the Pro Bowl.

Again, Fassel has proven to be one of the best special teams minds in the NFL. And that success has some, including Fassel himself, wondering if he might be capable of more.

**

Every year, John Fassel enters a season with a plan for his special teams units, based on film study and league-wide trends. Every year, within the first few days of camp, it changes entirely.

This is the nature of coaching special teams. There is no focus on drafting specific personnel for the punt team. Free agents are not signed to block on kickoff return. You get what you’re given, and you adapt.

“It’s about making something out of pure craziness,” Fassel says. “You have a plan, but then, hell just breaks loose.”

Fassel never planned to specialize in special teams. But everywhere he went, he gravitated towards it. In his brief few months in the NFL, as an undrafted free agent with the Colts, he volunteered for kickoffs, punts, anything he could. When he was hired for his first job at Bucknell, he found he enjoyed most working with freshmen and sophomores who just wanted to “run and hit and tackle and block and not have to worry about much else.”

After leaving New Mexico Highlands, he landed a quality control assistant role on the Ravens staff. He was third in command on special teams, but when the coordinator was forced to get knee surgery before the first preseason game, Fassel was thrust into relaying playcalls on the sideline.

“It was right then I was like, ‘This is friggin’ awesome,’” Fassel says.

The Raiders hired him to his first coordinator job in 2008, and right away, he proved a natural. When he was fired with the rest of Hue Jackson’s staff after the 2011 season, three of his special teams players made the Pro Bowl. The Rams hired him a few months later, and that spring, the team drafted Zuerlein and signed Hekker, two more Pro Bowl players, on Fassel’s recommendation.

At Oregon State’s Pro Day, Fassel made an immediate impression on Hekker, who would later smash NFL punting records under Fassel’s watch. “He was just so upbeat,” Hekker recalls. “He had this energy to him.”

In the years since his hiring, that energy has been infectious. Fassel — more often called “Bones” for his long, slender frame — has become a locker room favorite. He is so popular that players who don’t contribute on special teams often show up in his meeting room, anyway. He’ll do magic tricks and has held Jeopardy-style contests. “They just want to see what Bones is going to do that week,” Hekker says.

But his coaching prowess goes beyond card tricks and enthusiasm. He is a master of managing personalities. With younger players, he is an encouraging teacher who welcomes questions. With kickers and punters, who often operate more independently than other plays, Fassel understands just as well “where to draw himself back” and trust his players’ judgment, longtime Rams long snapper Jake McQuaide says.

Sam Ficken could sense that from the start. When Zuerlein was ruled out for the rest of the season, Ficken won the competition to replace him. Soon after he was signed, Fassel approached him.

“He told me, ‘We don’t need you to be Greg.’ We need you to be you,’” Ficken recalls. “That really gave me confidence.”

Ficken’s NFL debut last week didn’t quite go as planned. He missed his lone field goal and an extra point. “It wasn’t up to my standard,” Ficken said.

But Fassel was ready to adapt, as usual. Coach and kicker watched film together and made the necessary corrections. A few days later, Fassel took the blame and praised Ficken’s “ability to recover.” It was a similar strategy the coach who hired him has often taken this season.

“You meet the guy and you can tell, ‘This guy is special,’” McQuaide says. “It’s the same way with Sean. You realize right away that these guys aren’t faking it.”

**

Last December, Fassel took his place at the front of a media room stuffed with reporters and TV cameras. It had been an emotional day. The coach that hired him had just been fired. Behind the podium, he looked nervous and overwhelmed.

“Are you surprised they came to you?” one reporter asked.

“Yeah,” Fassel said. A beat passed in awkward silence.

Being a head coach, he later admitted, had never really been on his radar. His entire career, he’d focused only on what was in front of him. For the last decade, that’d been primarily special teams.

When asked if he thought the team would consider removing his interim tag, he considered the question. “You know,” he said, pausing for a moment. “No.”

But as he took the reins last season, the experience offered a new perspective that he wasn’t expecting. He proved something to himself, something he’d underestimated. Since, his feelings about being a head coach one day have changed somewhat.

“Having that chance,” Fassel says, “it was like, ‘Well, maybe there’s a chance I could do this.”

“If the opportunity came up, I would jump at it. No doubt about it.”

As Black Monday approaches in the NFL, Fassel’s name has appeared on a few speculative head coaching lists. A vacancy with the Giants, where his father once coached and he was once a ball boy, could be an especially intriguing match.

Whether he’ll get an opportunity soon remains to be seen. Fassel insists he’s perfectly happy as the Rams special teams coach. But Hekker, McQuaide, and others who work with him closely are convinced that, one day, he deserves a shot at something more.

If not him, Fassel believes special teams coaches, in general, should be given more serious consideration for head coaching jobs.

“You’re dealing with the whole team, clock management, changing situations,” Fassel says. “It’s fantastic training because you’re constantly looking at the game from a head coach’s perspective. What could possibly happen next?”

As the Rams head to the playoffs for the first time in his tenure, he isn’t sure just yet how to answer that question. But for a coach used to constant change, who has found comfort in chaos from New Mexico Highlands all the way to the NFL, John Fassel wouldn’t have it any other way.