LOS ANGELES – Maybe this is one of the keys to a football team’s success: Full disclosure.
Internally, anyway.
As the Rams’ offensive line and its defensive front have gone against each other during training camp practices, these players are talking to each other. It likely will continue into the regular season, and it’s not all bravado or trash talk but informational.
“I think we’re really tied in with our D-line, and we talk to them so much that we see our deficiencies,” veteran guard Kevin Dotson said following Sunday evening’s final training camp session at Loyola Marymount.
“We ask them, ‘How would you game plan me?’ Or, ‘What do you do if we’re going against each other in a real game? How do you see me?’ That’s the thing that we really like to do with our defensive line and our linebackers. Do they see any cues that we are giving off? Do they see a weakness of ours that they like to go at? We just kind of go off that, throwing ideas off of each other.”
That takes place at the line of scrimmage, in between plays in practice, as well as in the meeting and locker rooms.
“We do it any time,” Dotson said. “Any time that we feel like, ‘Hey, that felt kind of weird. I feel like you got me on something.’ We’re not going to hold that information as a secret because we want the whole team to be good. I could’ve just got beaten with something and (said), ‘Hey, did you see something right here? Did I overset you? Am I showing something that I’m leaning?’
“That’s what we do.”
It works both ways. Defensive end Braden Fiske has made strides, playing like “a grown man for a second-year player” in the words of head coach Sean McVay.
And, said Dotson, “He’s one of the guys that you give him that information of what he’s doing. He changes it the next play. It’s not going to happen again.
“He likes to transform himself. Even from last year, he was more of a wild guy in his rush. Now he has more tempo [and he’s] thinking about what he’s going to do before he does it. He’s just a smart guy. He just keeps building on top of what he did last year, and you can feel it.”
Earlier in camp, Fiske was asked about how the locker room area is organized, and his answer provided a hint that there was thought given to those assignments, as opposed to just putting the offense on one side of the room and the defense on the other, lockers grouped by position.
“I liked it because I think about that too, of just how lucky I was to be in that part of the locker room,” Fiske said of that area, and the players who surrounded him last year as a rookie defensive end. “We called it ‘The Suburbs’ over there.”
The veterans he lockered near included veteran offensive lineman Rob Havenstein, quarterback Matthew Stafford, wide receivers Cooper Kupp (who is now with Seattle) and Puka Nacua and tight end Tyler Higbee, as well as Dotson.
“To have that veteran presence and be able to talk to those guys whenever I needed to … having those guys that have been in the league for a while, to see how they go about their day-to-day,” was huge, Fiske said.
“Cooper was a big one last year that I would talk to. How did he make that jump in year two of his career? What was something that elevated his game? And a lot of that was the diet. That’s a lot of what I implemented into my offseason. I was super fortunate to have those guys in my area of the locker room.”
It’s about improvement as a group. And it’s interesting that McVay has changed the team’s motivational slogan from “We not me” to “We then me.” In other words, team first, but the individual does matter.
(The copy editor buried in this columnist’s psyche notes that there’s a comma missing after “We,” but I’ll let someone else tell McVay.)
“I got too much time to think” about such things, McVay said early in camp, before explaining that while it’s still about the team first and foremost, “what is your role and responsibility as a teammate? What do we want that to be about? What are those values and principles that we want to subscribe to that’s authentic to guys’ personalities? And then what is my individual responsibility within the framework of, hey, my mindset, my energy, how I move my one-eleventh on each snap if I’m out there on the field competing.
“And so I think it’s just having the words mean something and continuously being able to say, ‘Hey, how do you adjust, adapt? How do you make things better?’”
The offensive line is a point of emphasis, and there’s already been uncertainty with Aleric Jackson diagnosed earlier this summer with blood clots in his lower leg for the second time in his career. McVay said Sunday he’s been “able to get some good work, even though it’s not in some of these team settings that’ll be a benefit.”
But his status is still a question until it isn’t.
The Rams used nine offensive linemen last season, and McVay said Sunday that they figured they’d “probably end up” using nine again this year, adding: “Last year was a good eye-opener for us. … We better do a good job of building depth. You can’t have enough guys that have played meaningful football and that are smart, tough, competitive and communicate with each other.”
McVay specifically singled out Havenstein, center Coleman Shelton, starting guards Dotson and Steve Avila and backup Justin Dedich, tackles D.J. Humphries, David Quessenberry and Warren McClendon Jr., and veteran Beaux Limmer, who has played all three interior spots.
Why all of this matters? Last season, according to Pro Football Focus, Stafford completed 72.2 percent of his passes and had a 20-2 touchdown-to-interception ratio, for a 108.8 passer rating, when he had time to throw. When he was pressured, he had a 59.1 passer rating, completing 47.9 percent of his passes with four touchdowns and six picks.
So the task is simple: Protect Stafford (or Jimmy Garoppolo, should Stafford’s back become more of an issue), give Kyren Williams room to roam, and watch this offense go.
jalexander@scng.com