For Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator Nate Scheelhaase, learning to reach a locker room started with learning to reach teenagers at church.
“From a ministry standpoint, just being around people from all different walks of life, different journeys, being able to meet them where they’re at — that’s also a football locker room,” he said of the connection in a recent NBC News interview.
His route to professional football wasn’t the one he initially imagined. After four seasons as Illinois’ starting quarterback, Scheelhaase worried about the instability of coaching and what frequent moves might mean for a family. In early 2014, he instead joined Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, to work with teenagers.
That work took him well beyond Sunday services. He visited students at high schools around the area and volunteered as chaplain for two high school football teams, building relationships with young people whose lives and backgrounds differed from his own.
One visit helped change his mind about coaching. Speaking to Eastern High School football players in 2014, Scheelhaase thought he had delivered a relatable chapel message, drawing on his own experiences as an athlete. The response fell flat, he recalled, but the players snapped to attention when their head coach spoke.
“Everybody was on the edge of their seat,” Scheelhaase recalled, describing the response to the coach. Watching that connection made him consider how he might influence young people through coaching, too.
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By the 2015 season, he was coaching running backs at Illinois. His official Rams biography traces the next steps: three seasons on Illinois’ staff, six at Iowa State and a move to Los Angeles in 2024. He worked as an offensive assistant and passing game specialist, then pass game coordinator, before becoming offensive coordinator for 2026.
The responsibilities changed, but Scheelhaase told NBC that earning trust remained central. Coaches ask players to do difficult, sometimes counterintuitive things, from taking a hit in the pocket to blocking instead of catching a pass. He wants those players to know he understands the assignment and cares about the person carrying it out.
His faith was part of that outlook long before he joined an NFL staff. In a 2013 ESPN profile, the then-Illinois quarterback described relying on God during the ups and downs of his college career, including a difficult 2012 season.
“If I didn’t have God, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like going through difficulties like there have been,” he said as a college senior.
Louisville also gave him examples of the kind of husband and father he hoped to become. Scheelhaase told NBC that watching church leaders and fellow congregants shaped his family life as well as his professional direction.
He still describes coaching in terms of relationships, not simply a bigger title. In a June interview reported by the Rams, he credited lessons learned from coaches at Iowa State and Los Angeles while explaining how he would approach his new role.
“Relationships and hard work, those are my calling cards of what I got and being able to do it in a place like this, you feel like you get to lead out of your true self in that way,” he said.
For Scheelhaase, the connection between youth ministry and coaching comes down to knowing people before asking something of them. The setting has changed from Louisville high schools to an NFL locker room, but he still sees meeting people where they are as part of the job.
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