The Los Angeles Rams’ roster has undergone significant turnover the last couple offseasons as they went from one of the oldest rosters in the league to one of the youngest.
Veteran leaders like Aaron Donald and Ernest Jones are no longer around, which means some young guys will have the opportunity to step up in leadership roles.
That was reflected when the Rams selected their captains for the 2024 season. Every year, the players vote on captains and this year there will be five. Three of them are returning captains in Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp and Rob Havenstein while the other two are first-timers in Kobie Turner and Quentin Lake:
Oh captain our captains.
pic.twitter.com/bhrGDhoCva
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) August 28, 2024
Rams head coach Sean McVay spoke on his captains and how deservimg they are of the honor.
“It’ll be the consistent cast of characters,” McVay said. “It’ll be Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp and Rob Havenstein on offense so five total captains for our team. That’ll give us an opportunity to represent and recognize guys throughout the year. Those five were well-regarded in terms of the votes from their peers. There was a gap between those five and everybody else. There were a lot of guys that got recognition that were certainly well-deserving of that.”
The Rams offense still has a ton of veteran presence with Stafford, Kupp and Havenstein leading the way.
It is the defense that is young and inexperienced, which means Turner and Lake will have to be vocal leaders despite only having three years of NFL experience between them.
Leadership typically is not an issue for this Rams team with McVay leading the way though. Even though the Rams are young, they are still hoping to make noise in the NFC this season as McVa has made the playoffs in five of his seven seasons at the helm.
Sean McVay: Rams trading Ernest Jones was ‘football decision’
Ernest Jones was one of the Rams’ captains last season and likely would have been this year as well if he were not traded to the Tennessee Titans.
The deal came together quickly and Sean McVay explained why they felt trading their middle linebacker was the right decision.
“Football decision, what we felt like was best for the football team,” cVay said of the trade that sent Jones to the Titans. “He’s a great guy, was amazing for us for a few years but we felt like this was best for our football team.”
McVay confirmed that he spoke to Jones before the trade went down and praised him for his understanding of the situation. “Of course. Yeah. There were multiple conversations,” McVay said.
“He couldn’t have been more of a pro, like I mentioned to you guys yesterday. Feel really good about the five inside [linebackers] ‘backers’ that we do have on our team.”
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