Sean McVay joined the Los Angeles Rams this offseason as the youngest head coach in NFL history. He was tasked with turning around a franchise that’s been stuck in neutral for years, as well as making Jared Goff a franchise quarterback after a disastrous rookie season.

To make matters even more difficult, his best player, Aaron Donald, wasn’t on the field once in training camp or the preseason.

Talk about a way to start your head coaching career. Yet, McVay handled all of it perfectly, especially Donald’s highly publicized holdout. He took it all in stride, maintaining positivity and poise in the face of daily questions about when his defensive tackle would be back with the team.

It took until Saturday for that to happen with Donald finally reporting to the Rams, and McVay played a huge role in making that happen. Before the team’s final preseason game, he flew to Atlanta with Rams brass to meet with Donald’s agents – a move that one would expect an established, respected head coach to make.

On Monday, McVay confirmed the report was true and explained why he decided to make the trip.

“I think it was more just trying to show how important this situation is to our football team,” he said. “Let them know that while I’m not going to be involved in terms of the money and the negotiations, but I just wanted them to be able to hear how important Aaron is for the overall dynamic, everything that we’re trying to get done and accomplished, how much respect his teammates have for him and I thought it was something where you feel like, ‘What can you do to be a part of the solution?’ And we thought that was a good decision.”

The two sides still haven’t come to a “solution,” per se, with Donald still playing on his rookie contract. However, the first step was to get him back in the building and ready to play football again.

There’s no way to tell if Donald would have reported to the team had McVay not gone to meet with his representatives, but it’s clear he and Aaron have a great relationship.

“That’s the one thing that I mentioned that you respect so much about Aaron is, he wants to just come back in here,” McVay said. “He doesn’t want to be a distraction at all. That’s why he wasn’t at the game yesterday. That was the first thing that he mentioned himself because he realized how important it was for us to kind of try take a step in the right direction and come away with a win. That’s what he wanted for his team and I think that’s what you like about Aaron is, he’s all about football.”

The Rams expect Donald to be back on the field this Sunday against the Redskins, which would give the defense a huge boost after a dominant win in Week 1.