Rams coach Sean McVay, left, finishes up a news conference at training camp on the campus of UCI in Irvine on Thursday, July 27, 2017. (Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Rams coach Sean McVay, right, answers a question from the media during a news conference at training camp on the campus of UCI in Irvine on Thursday, July 27, 2017. (Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Rams coach Sean McVay, right, members of the media as he arrives for a news conference at training camp on the campus of UCI in Irvine on Thursday, July 27, 2017. (Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Rams coach Sean McVay, right, reacts to a question from the media during a news conference at training camp on the campus of UCI in Irvine on Thursday, July 27, 2017. (Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Rams coach Sean McVay listens to a question from the media during a news conference at training camp on the campus of UCI in Irvine on Thursday, July 27, 2017. (Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Orange County Register/SCNG)



Rams general manager Les Snead, right, answers a question during Thursday’s news conference at training camp on the campus of UCI in Irvine on Thursday, July 27, 2017. (Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Rams general manager Les Snead, center, arrives for a news conference at the Rams’ training camp on the campus of UCI in Irvine on Thursday, July 27, 2017. (Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Rams general manager Les Snead, right, answers a question during Thursday’s news conference at training camp on the campus of UCI in Irvine on Thursday, July 27, 2017. (Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Rams general manager Les Snead listens to a question during Thursday’s news conference at training camp on the campus of UCI in Irvine on Thursday, July 27, 2017. (Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Orange County Register/SCNG)

IRVINE – He was vacationing with his girlfriend in Europe.

Barcelona, specifically, and then Paris.

Along the way, according to Sean McVay, he pulled out his Rams playbook.

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After hitting reset button, a changed Rams team is ready to open a new training camp Remember, he was with his girlfriend. On vacation. In Paris. A place where X’s and O’s are supposed to mean hugs and kisses, for starters.

The City of Lights probably flickered at the very sight. McVay’s girlfriend must have blinked. Then she asked him to please put away the NFL long enough for a little TLC.

“We’ve joked that, you know, we’ve got no life skills,” Rams general manager Les Snead said Thursday when asked about his rookie head coach. “But we can do football.”

Let’s hope so, because this franchise, which most recently made the playoffs in 2004, has spit out 13 consecutive non-winning seasons, spit them out like anything that tastes especially sour.

Now Snead has handed over the tattered reins to the youngest head coach in modern NFL history, entrusting with his own tenuous future a man who never before has been a head coach at any level, a man still at an age – 31 – where it doesn’t sound strange to have a girlfriend.

Aren’t NFL head coaches supposed to be advanced far enough in life to be married? Or divorced? Or divorced and then married again?

Aren’t they supposed to be closer to Wade Phillips, the Rams’ new 70-year-old defensive coordinator who began working in this league a decade before McVay was born?

“Coach Wade” they call him around here because “Coach Phillips” sounds too formal. Yeah, “Coach Wade,” which comes off the tongue quite comfortably, not unlike “Grandpa Wade.”

But here the Rams are, their veterans scheduled to report to training camp at UC Irvine on Friday, ready to start down the path to making everyone forget about 4-12 and Jeff Fisher and “Hard Knocks,” being led from the tunnel by a kid coach.

“We’re optimistic,” McVay said, “that we’ll put a product out there that the fans can be proud of.”

It won’t be easy or anything that looks remotely easy, pride – at least outside the organization – just one of the many things the Rams misplaced en route to their miserable finish last season.

They also have this sobering reality: Their youth at head coach is matched by their youth at quarterback, meaning they lack experience only at the sport’s two most significant positions.

The Rams moved up 14 spots in the spring of 2016 to draft Jared Goff. This season, his progress, more than any other factor, will determine if the Rams move up again.

They have a rebuilt offensive line and a reshuffled group of receivers and, as McVay was speaking with great anticipation and excitement about both, ESPN released a list that projected the Rams as having the NFL’s 29th worst “offensive weapons.”

“A weird stack of skill-position talent” is not a description normally attached to teams expected to contend for anything other than the distinction of division doormat.

Sobering, as well, is the prospect that the veterans reporting Friday won’t include the Rams’ best player, defensive tackle Aaron Donald, who wants his contract reworked.

So, the new coach with all the enthusiasm, energy and drive already faces a draining second-and-long before the first official groin tweak of training camp, the business of football in this league never far from the football itself.

“We have to be ready to handle different situations,” McVay explained, “and not flinch.”

Early Friday night, the 2017 Rams will gather as one for the first time, McVay prepared to address the group to “set the foundation” and “talk about what we want to embody.”

The players will look down – literally, in nearly every case – on their sparkling, fresh leader, who stands barely 5-foot-8 and won’t turn 32 until after the season.

What they don’t see in stature, however, they’ll hear in desire, McVay the sort of coach who could probably speak with frenzied emotion about a blocking sled.

“Passion for football,” Snead said when listing his coach’s finest qualities. “Eats, sleeps, breathes football. It’s all about football. … I think every decision he makes is all about how do you help the Rams.”

This week, the team announced a business partnership with the Laugh Factory comedy club, a venture that opened up the possibility of a million jokes.

For example, two Rams walk into a bar … and each is tackled for a 1-yard loss. And, what do you get when you cross one Ram with another Ram? I’m not sure, but, if it doesn’t work out, I do know Jeff Fisher would have an excuse for it.

McVay is now charged with stopping the punchlines, a daunting job but one he’ll no doubt attack with the devotion and intensity of the warmest of embraces.

Or, to be more accurate in this case, the most sizzling of French kisses.