Chris Shula was awestruck.

When former Rams defensive coordinator Wade Phillips addressed the coaching staff ahead of Shula's first season in Los Angeles, he was in the presence of greatness in a professional capacity.

Sure, the winningest head coach in NFL history, his grandfather Don Shula, bounced Shula on his knee as a baby. He even scampered around the Bengals' practice field when his dad was the head coach. But this was a room he earned the right to be in, not one he was born into. It was a different feeling.

In that meeting, Phillips said something that has stuck with Shula to this day:

"You don't work for me, you work with me."

Suddenly, Shula remembered this was a man who bleeds and sweats and makes mistakes, just like anyone else. Phillips commanded some of the greatest NFL defenses of all-time, but there he was, standing in front of a young coaching staff, asking for their help.

Some of his other one-liners resonated with Shula as well: "Listening is a skill," and "Mistakes are mine" have both become staples of Shula's coaching identity, as he's drawn inspiration from his impressive collection of mentors and put his own spin on their teachings.

Digest. Instruct. Adapt.

That sequence has defined Shula's ascent – absorbing information, translating it for his players and tailoring his approach to the circumstance.

Shula's path was uniquely comprehensive. He coached all three levels of the defense, under different leaders and in various schemes, with each experience providing insight that would shape his perspective as the Rams' defensive coordinator.

Over the past two years, Shula has orchestrated one of the most complex – yet somehow still player-friendly – defenses in the league. In a way, it's a tribute to the mentors who helped shape it, and him.

Giff Smith

Shula interviewed for his first NFL job with the Chargers in 2015 but initially withheld his last name from then-head coach Mike McCoy. Shula is not his father, or his grandfather, or his uncle (all of whom coached in the NFL), and he wanted to make that clear.

As a quality control coach in San Diego, Shula wasn't assigned a specific position group, until an older defensive line coach took him under his wing. That was Giff Smith, who now holds the same title for the Rams.

Smith clocked Shula's intelligence immediately and recruited him to be his assistant of sorts.

Shula took diligent notes on everything, but especially Smith's install packages. He used repetitive, common language to teach plays and assignments to his defensive linemen so that his instructions would imprint in their brains. When it came time to study the tape, Smith had hammered his points home so well that players knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth.

"For me as a young coach, never being in the D-line room, that really opened my eyes to what D-line play was and really what good coaching was in general," Shula said.

"You can make it complicated if you want to, and I think when you can give players clarity, you can play fast," Smith said. "I want cleats in the ground, clarity of what they're anticipating by formation, tendencies and then go cut it loose and go play fast."

Shula helped Smith with drills, noting the simplicity with which he explained their objectives. Smith described him as a "sponge" who soaked up knowledge of concepts and Smith's own beliefs.

When Shula was named the Rams' defensive coordinator in 2024, he brought Smith in to coach the defensive line. Shortly after he arrived, Shula called him into his office and pulled out a booklet. It was filled with notes on Smith's teachings from their time in San Diego nearly a decade prior.

"It's a complex game that you've got to teach in simple terms," Shula said. "And I think (Smith is) the best I've ever been around in doing that, and I try to just apply it to the whole defense."

Shula never forgot those lessons, but his installations and explanations evolved a bit. The game had changed, as had the players.

Smith has a saying: "Change before you have to." Shula did that, and he's still doing it.

"He probably has as much influence on me as I have on him," Smith said.

Wade Phillips

In 2017, Sean McVay took over as the Rams' head coach and brought Shula in as an assistant linebackers coach, where he learned under Phillips.

"The genius was in the simplicity," Shula said of the defensive guru, and that applied to both his relationship building and concise explanations of elaborate concepts.

"There's no way you can have a defense in the National Football League and play defense without a pretty complicated scheme, but it's the way you teach it," Phillips said.

As Shula switched from position group to position group – coaching outside linebackers for two years starting in 2019, then moving into the secondary after one year back with the inside linebackers – he learned the subtleties of positions he had never played nor coached.

During his three seasons under Phillips, Shula constantly pick his brain and never backed down from sharing his opinion. Doing so while coaching multiple positions taught him the power of simplicity, which paid off as a defensive coordinator.

The Rams had typically deployed one defensive play call with multiple layers. But the unit was struggling early in Shula's first season at the helm, so he made a bold change.

Instead of one call with multiple layers, they sent in multiple calls with fewer layers. Plays had been loaded with checks and adjustments that changed based on the offense's look, but Shula started relaying a few simpler plays that the defense could audible between, featuring fewer individual directives.

Removing some layers helped facilitate faster, freer play. It cut out all the ambiguity surrounding assignments and made everything revolve around reaction.

Defensive end Kobie Turner and safety Kam Curl both said they felt a significant change in their own confidence and play speed and sensed that shift throughout the entire defense.

Shula also started to filter his player-specific instructions, giving each person "just enough information to play great" in their specific role.

The Rams' defensive signal caller, inside linebacker Nate Landman, can handle hearing all his different play opportunities out of various looks. Others can't, and don't need to. "Some guys just got to go out and play fast and I think especially up front, if you're trying to see too much, you're going to play slow," Shula said.

"Every position has some unique problems to it based on certain calls, and you really only understand that if you're the position coach of that group. And I've been in a lot of those shoes, so I can understand what stresses them and what I can take off their plates as coordinator as far as some of the adjustments where I can kind of be ahead of it for them."

Great defenses are catered to players' strengths, but so are great coaching points.

"It's not what we can think of, it's what the players can do," Phillips said, "and you have to teach individually and team-wise, the skills that your players can do the best."

Brandon Staley

Phillips retired before the 2020 season, and Brandon Staley replaced him, ushering in a new era of defense in Los Angeles.

He increased the number of personnel groupings and coverage systems. They played a zone scheme that after the snap would match routes as if it were man coverage, known as a pattern-match defense, and built the pressure package around defensive lineman Aaron Donald even more so than it had been.

The COVID-19 pandemic derailed any chance for a normal transition, and Staley was trying to teach a different scheme not just to the players, but to the coaches as well. He said Shula was one of the first people to truly believe in what he was trying to build, and with that faith came more responsibility.

Coaching outside linebackers, Shula's position group was integral to both the rush and coverage phase. "Chris was essentially coaching two positions at once," Staley said.

That elevated Shula's influence in the game planning sessions, extending his reach beyond the outside linebackers and into the entire defense.

"I think the deep level of trust that we had together is about as much as anybody I've coached with," Staley said. "... You got to have elite trust and you got to have elite connection, and that's just what I felt with Chris. And what I felt throughout the whole season was just that his group was going to perform at a high level."

Shula coaxed career years out of largely unheralded players in 2020. Leonard Floyd reached new heights with 10.5 sacks. Samson Ebukam earned a lucrative free agent contract with the 49ers after a breakout season. Others like Sebastian Joseph-Day, Michael Brockers, Troy Hill and Darious Williams benefitted from Shula's contributions, even though they weren't directly coached by him.

That year set the foundation for the Rams' current defense under Shula. It, too, features a variety of coverages and personnel groupings, utilizing much of the same concepts and language that Staley implemented. Shula, however, has put his own spin on what was the NFL's best defense in 2020.

Staley gushed about the Rams' two-deep safety variation, where it looks like one pre-snap and then morphs into a two-deep zone. They also make it "very tough" to run the ball with an 8-man front and dominant defensive linemen who are deployed in creative ways, Staley explained. Plus, Shula's innovative third- and fourth-down pressure packages never disappoint.

According to a metric created by defensive expert Cody Alexander, the Rams had the fifth-highest scheme diversity in the league entering Week 18. Shula has also played the highest rate of dime defense (32.4%) to highlight L.A.'s depth on the backend, catering his scheme to the Rams' personnel.

"I feel like he's really called as good a game as anyone I've been around, surprises us sometimes with some cool, really aggressive stuff, and then pulls back," said veteran inside linebacker Troy Reeder. "... We've been able to see his personality come to life as a play caller while still being Chris Shula, the guy that everybody likes to hang out with, super approachable.

"He's one of the best coaches I've ever had."

Staley is far from surprised by Shula's success. Six years before they joined forces in L.A., Shula took over for Staley as the John Carroll defensive coordinator.

Staley knew from the moment they met that Shula would emerge as an elite play caller and leader in the league because of the intelligence and authenticity he displayed in their transition meeting. That impression only deepened when Shula led John Carroll to the No. 10 scoring defense in all of Division III during the 2014 season.

"I just think you know it when you see it," Staley said – Shula had "it" from the jump.

Raheem Morris

In 2021, another coordinator change led to the third shift in title for Shula over a five-year span. Staley left for the Chargers' head coaching job, replaced by Raheem Morris, and Shula went back to his first position with the Rams, this time dropping the "assistant" and taking over as linebackers coach. That was fitting, as he soon became Morris' "right-hand man."

Shula went from coaching inside linebackers to defensive backs in 2022, then back to inside linebackers in 2023. He also added defensive pass game and pass rush coordinator to his resume in successive seasons.

Shula never coached the same position group in the same scheme for two-straight years. By the time he took over the defense, he knew the intricacies of every position on the field and could translate that knowledge into detailed coaching points.

"I couldn't think of a better person on the field, a better person off the field, a smarter guy, a guy that was really my right-hand man in coaching, and that's going way back to when I was a young coach," Morris said. "As much as he got from me, I got from him."

Being in that position, much of Shula's current routine is inspired by Morris'. He finishes the baseline work early in the week so his staff can "dive into the details," because that helped him during the previous regime.

Morris delegated game planning strategy in specific situations (be it run downs, passing downs, red zone, third downs, etc.) to his assistants, who then gave him relevant information to help form the call sheet. Shula has continued that.

In addition to his share of those responsibilities, which shifted throughout Morris' tenure, Shula scripted practices for the second-team defense along with some two-minute drills. Morris would often take his ideas and implement them with the starters.

The totality of Shula's experience within the Rams' defense meant that he would think of things they needed to do that Morris didn't. Sometimes, that was in service of their own growth, and other times it helped prepare the offense for tactics that would later be used against them.

Eventually, Morris wanted Shula in the room with him while breaking down practice film. Afterwards, they would script the next day's practice together. He called a few preseason games as well, gaining hands-on experience with the headset.

"I don't want to be the smartest person in the room," Morris said. "And when you have someone like Chris who's got such a high capacity, a cerebral thinker, you want to be able to utilize their capabilities."

That evolved into Shula reviewing the call sheet before every game. Many play callers are guarded with such privileged information, Morris said, but he relied on Shula to poke holes and make suggestions that could optimize the game plan.

His intimate knowledge of the script made Shula's tip sheet, detailing keys for his players, almost a glimpse into the future.

"I always felt like Chris was calling a game with me as I'm reading his call sheet," Morris said, "because he's telling those guys the scenarios, the things that were gonna happen, when to come up, why they're gonna come up, what was our adjustment, if we're gonna go this way, how we're gonna adjust, when we're gonna adjust, at what time, it became so seamless on the grass for us."

Shula could activate those in-game adjustments at any level of the defense. He was especially adept with the front, making timely suggesting on the alignment of linemen or when to call alternative rush packages, to name a few.

Against Green Bay one year (Morris couldn't recall when), Shula saw an opportunity to blow up a run play. He told Morris to call a three-man stunt toward the tight end side, and it worked to perfection. That was one of hundreds of examples, Morris said, and Shula continues to apply those modifications in his current role, often anticipating the necessary changes and building them into the game plan.

"I always prepped my routine through the week, almost like I was a coordinator, even if it wasn't my own specific part of the game plan," Shula said. "I would still prep that way just because I saw (Morris) doing it and that's just what I believed in."

Now that Shula is the coordinator, he's even more inclusive with the game plan than his predecessor was. Shula makes the final call sheet, but all the assistants who helped have the opportunity to be as prepared for game day as Shula was under Morris. Assistant head coach/pass game coordinator Aubrey Pleasant said Shula is in "non-stop" communication with assistants during the week and in the heat of battle.

Who knows? Maybe that collective approach will one day grow into a coaching tree of Shula's own, similar to the one his grandpa built.

"You go certain places and the higher up a person is, the more control they take over, whether it's meetings or scripting or game planning," Reeder said. "But I think he does a really good job of letting our coaches coach."

But even with that many voices in his ear, Shula still heeds Phillips' words from years earlier. The mistakes are his, not the players', and certainly not the other coaches'.

Shula's process is as intricate as the defense he commands, a scheme that has earned respect from others around the league.

Last summer, Morris was watching film on opposing defenses to get ideas for his own. Midway through picking apart Shula's pressure packages, he received a call from Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, who was also reviewing Shula's defense. One of the most forward-thinking defensive minds in football, Tomlin always seeks out inspiration, and Shula gave him some.

"'He's doing some good stuff,'" Morris recalled Tomlin saying. "I thought that was just the ultimate compliment, when your friend is watching your other friend and they're getting ideas from each other."

Shula may have come from coaching royalty, but that's not what made him great.

He's the sum of his experiences, a product of the mentors that poured into him throughout the last decade. His unique defense reflects his own identity, and it honors each of theirs.