LOS ANGELES — Every day, Rams receiver Jordan Whittington takes the practice field 30 minutes early for a 25-minute date with the JUGS machine.
It’s a habit he got into last training camp and carried into his rookie season. He’s continued the ritual back at Loyola Marymount University, the equipment’s spinning wheels spitting the ball out at him, over and over again. Over his head, at his chest, by his cleats, over and over again.
“I try to get every single angle because I’m a firm believer in good hands is just reps,” Whittington said. “So if you do enough reps, you’ll have great hands. I get in every possible position I can catch the ball, that way it’s not foreign to me when it happens in a game.”
Whittington is trying to use that approach, rep after rep after rep, to propel himself to increased success in his second season.
A sixth-round draft pick out of Texas in 2024, the former Longhorn caught 22 passes for 293 yards as a rookie. But 23 of his 28 targets came in the first five weeks of the season, when Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua were out with injuries. A shoulder injury cost Whittington two games and he fell out of the regular rotation at receiver, though he found other ways to contribute on special teams and at fullback.
He spent part of the offseason working out with Nacua and Kupp, even after the latter’s release and subsequent signing with the Seattle Seahawks. These sessions helped Whittington feel ready for the physical toll of training camp.
“The big part of it was really getting in shape, and getting in shape the right way, like, football shape. Cooper’s really good at doing that as far as the training,” Whittington said. “We had some workouts where I was like, augh, but it was totally worth it. Knowing how great Cooper has been with this process, you’re going to trust what he puts you through.”
Whittington also focused on some of the finer details of what it means to be a receiver in the Rams’ offense. He worked on his technique and paid greater attention to the finer details of spacing, timing and how routes are run against different coverages.
“Year One was mastering what to do and this offseason has been mastering how to do that, because there’s little details in every single play,” Whittington explained. “If I can just know exactly what to do with those details, it makes it so much easier and you’re more likely to make plays.”
This involved a lot of film study at the Rams’ facility, but the work has caught others’ attention. Nacua spoke Wednesday about how Whittington is asking the right questions in team meetings.
After those film sessions, Whittington would go out to the practice field and run routes against air, visualizing on the grass what he had just seen on the screen.
“When you run it through your mind a lot, repetition,” Whittington said, “just like the JUGS, it carries over to the field.”