From Youth Pastor to Rams Play Caller: Nate Scheelhaase's Unlikely Path

When Nate Scheelhaase was promoted to offensive coordinator of the Los Angeles Rams last winter, he landed one of the NFL's most coveted jobs, with a Super Bowl contender no less. His route there was far from typical: he spent time as a youth pastor.

Scheelhaase, 35, moved to Louisville, Kentucky, in 2014, soon after finishing his career as a four-year starting quarterback at Illinois. He joined Southeast Christian Church, one of the largest megachurches in the country, to work with teenagers. He visited a few dozen high schools and volunteered as a chaplain for two football teams. The work centered on building trust, finding common ground and encouraging students to work toward something bigger than themselves. He called it "an impactful year."

Coaching was not on his mind at first. He had married a few months before his playing days ended, and he had watched enough coaches get fired and hired to doubt that the profession suited a young family. Meetings with Illinois alumni in corporate jobs in Chicago did not inspire him either. He called Jason Epperson, the Illinois football team chaplain, who had just taken a job at Southeast and knew of an opening for a youth pastor.

Those who watched him in Louisville saw a natural fit. Chris Burke, an ESPN baseball analyst who lived nearby, noticed Scheelhaase's athleticism in pickup games and said he "looked perfectly suited for that job." When a local mother asked for help for her eighth-grade son, whose father had recently died, Scheelhaase gave the boy rides and attended his practices. That son was Nate Hobbs, now a San Francisco 49ers defensive back and, in Scheelhaase's words, one of his closest friends.

Andrew Coverdale, then the offensive coordinator at Trinity High School and now passing game coordinator at Kentucky, said Scheelhaase arrived with "confident humility" and did not expect students to listen simply because he had played quarterback in college. Coverdale stressed how much teenagers need positive adult mentors.

A turning point came in 2014 at a chapel service for Eastern High School football players. Scheelhaase gave a speech he thought was relatable, and it drew little response. Then the head coach stood to deliver a pregame talk, and "everybody was on the edge of their seat." That moment made him consider the influence a coach could have.

By the 2015 season he was coaching running backs at Illinois. Recruiting and developing players, he said, felt much like the trust-building he had done in Louisville. "Connection, fortunately for me, it's how I'm wired," he said. He became a coordinator at Iowa State in 2023, then left a year later to join Sean McVay's Rams staff as an offensive assistant, a job that involved using software to draw the plays McVay wanted called. The move may have looked like a step back, but the last four Rams offensive coordinators are now head coaches. In 2025, McVay called Scheelhaase "a special coach" and "a rising star, without a doubt."

Faith and football have long overlapped in American sports. Basketball inventor James Naismith is said to have felt sports let him embody Christianity better than the pulpit could, and Amos Alonzo Stagg, who studied divinity at Yale, helped introduce football conventions such as the huddle and numbered jerseys. Rocky Seto, a longtime assistant under Pete Carroll who later became a pastor at Evergreen Baptist Church near Los Angeles, and Frank Reich, a former NFL quarterback and head coach who attended seminary, have followed similar paths between the two worlds.

Last winter, while interviewing for NFL head coaching jobs, Scheelhaase called interim Stanford coach Frank Reich to ask about that school's opening. He says his time in Louisville paid off in ways he never expected. Back then, his life revolved around Sundays. In ways he could not have predicted, it still does.