The Tennessee Titans have hired Matt LaFleur as offensive coordinator under Mike Vrabel.

LaFleur, who interviewed for the heading coaching job before Vrabel was hired earlier this month, joins the Titans after spending one year as the offensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams, who ranked first in the NFL in scoring and 10th in total offense in 2017.

“Matt brings an energy and an offensive diversity to our team," said Vrabel. "He is going to develop an offense that puts our players in position to have success. Matt has worked with some great offensive minds, helped game plan on those staffs and I am looking forward to seeing him take that next step as a play-caller.”

Prior to joining the Rams, LaFleur served as quarterback Matt Ryan’s QBs coach for two seasons with the Falcons.

The Pro Football Writers of America have named Sean McVay the Coach of the Year for this season.

McVay is the youngest head coach in modern NFL history.

The Los Angeles Rams finished 11-5 in McVay's first season, winning their first division title since 2003 and becoming the first team in the Super Bowl era to go from last to first in scoring in consecutive years.

The Pro Football Writers also named Howie Roseman, the Philadelphia Eagles' executive vice president of football operations, as Executive of the Year and Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur as Assistant Coach of the Year.

Six of the top-10 spenders during the 2017 NFL free agency period (Patriots, Titans, Rams, Vikings, Panthers, Jaguars) made the playoffs.

Over the past six years, the cap has jumped from $120 million to $167 million and it has climbed by at least $10 million year over year during the past four seasons. 

After the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, rookie salaries also became significantly cheaper which opened up even more cap space.

The competitive balance changed dramatically as teams had to figure out how to use the new cap space.

“It’s the biggest untold story in football,” said former Philadelphia Eagles and Cleveland Browns president Joe Banner. “With the excessive amount of available cap space, close to a billion dollars—some teams can’t mentally keep up with that.”

The common wisdom just a few years ago that free agency was a bad investment for teams.

Sports Illustrated wrote just three years ago that some big-spending teams had learned that “shelling out cash to players who are nearing their 30s can end up backfiring in spectacular fashion.”

Multiple league executives, coaches, and experts told The Ringer that it is changing the way teams are built at an unprecedented pace and turned free agency from a last resort into a legitimate team-building strategy.

“I can distinctly remember the days when it was almost every year, you had to let people go because of money,” Los Angeles Rams general manager Les Snead said. “Nowadays, I don’t ever remember thinking, ‘Uh-oh, we’re up against the books here.’ Now, it’s more of a strategy. ‘If we keep this guy, what does it keep us from doing?’ It’s not, ‘Hey, we’ve gotta do some things just to get legal.’ I think that’s what has allowed you to make, let’s call it ‘strategic football decisions.’”

The NFL has five teams ranking in the top-10 in DVOA on both Offense and Defense at the end of the regular season in the Vikings, Rams, Saints, Steelers and Eagles.

The Chiefs, Cowboys, Chargers, Falcons and Patriots also rank in the top-10 on offense, while the Jaguars, Broncos, Panthers, Ravens and Cardinals rank in the top-10 on defense.