LOS ANGELES — At Rams training camp, this year and in years past, position groups split up after special teams practice. The defense took over one field, the offense another as the team went about individual drills. Then both units congregated back onto the main field for scrimmage periods.
In years past, this meant a lot of first-team offense vs. second-team defense, and vice versa, with the exception of a few “Mamba” periods – first team vs. first team competitive periods that borrowed from Kobe Byrant’s “Black Mamba” nickname shortly after his 2020 death.
But this summer, head coach Sean McVay and his staff changed up the approach, with a significant increase in these Mamba periods.
“That’s the only thing we do at practice now,” McVay said in August.
McVay has long declined to play his starters in the preseason, an uncontrolled environment with full contact and tackling risks injuries before the games even start to count. The Rams previously have relied on joint practices with other teams – with strict rules about contact in place – to prepare for the regular season.
But by increasing the amount of “good on good” reps at practice this summer, McVay hoped to increase his team’s readiness for the rigors of the 17-game slate ahead of them.
“I think it’s a good way to be able to create that good stress. We really talk about growth demands discomfort when we get our guys really pushing one another,” McVay said. “I’ve been really pleased with it and I think it’s good to be able to create that callus that’s necessary for us. … What’s the closest thing that we can get to creating some of those good nerves that you feel when you’re in competition that I think that’s healthy and lets you know you’re alive?”
You could understand why the Rams wanted to examine their preparation for the season. The team opened 1-4 in 2024 and has gone 2-5 in September the past two years. And looking at the 2025 schedule, with a stretch of four road games in five weeks looming in November and December, there was a sense that this team couldn’t afford another lethargic September and still make the playoffs.
McVay says past slow starts weren’t the reason for this change, instead focusing on what was best for his team. His coordinators emphasized in August that this approach would prepare the Rams for the season ahead.
“The better the competition, the more you compete and the better you’re just going to be,” offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur said. “That should just help us get prepared for that first week.”
“You’re going against an elite offense every day and you’ve got to be on your stuff,” defensive coordinator Chris Shula added. “I definitely think that the players realize it and it gets you ready for the season.”
The players in fact have noticed a difference through the first two games of the season as the team has started 2-0 for the first time since 2021.
“You don’t get nearly as tired because we spent the whole OTAs and camp, basically one-on-ones and good on good,” outside linebacker Jared Verse said. “We’re going probably 30-40 plays in practice, it feels like a game. It didn’t faze anybody.”
Some of the reason for the better start is, as defensive tackle Kobie Turner pointed out while frantically searching for wood to knock on, simply a matter of health. The 2024 season in particular was marred by injuries to some of the offense’s top players in the first two weeks of the season. So far, aside from left guard Steve Avila’s ankle sprain, that has not been the case in 2025.
Another factor is a clearer sense of this team’s identity. In 2023 and 2024, the Rams were among the youngest teams in the NFL. The early parts of the season were spent trying to figure out who the team was and how good it was as a collective.
This fall, there’s a quiet confidence that can be felt throughout the team’s Woodland Hills facility. The Rams know they’re a good football team and they show it, from the ease with which players are conducting themselves to McVay ending practice early regularly, something the last two years he’s reserved for the end of the season when trying to get his worn-out players some rest.
And that confidence and identity have carried over into the first two weeks of the season, from putting away a good Texans team in the opener to pulling away from the Titans this past weekend after trailing late in the third quarter.
“I think it’s pretty cool that in both the first two games there’s been kind of a no-flinch, just go-get-it mentality,” said center Coleman Shelton, who spent 2024 in Chicago after starting on the 2023 Rams. “Like, adversity comes, but it’s not going to affect us. We’re going to keep putting our head down and go to work.”
But some of that resilience was built in training camp, going up against the best that each side of the ball had to offer and developing that “callus” that McVay hoped for.
“I think it’s huge to be able to come into the season and feel ready, to be able to go against the caliber of O-line that we have and for them to be able to callus themselves against our D-line,” Turner said.
The Texans and Titans are one thing, though. And the Philadelphia Eagles (2-0) are another.
The reigning Super Bowl champs. The team that ended the Rams’ season in January. The team that embarrassed the Rams in SoFi Stadium in November. The only team that has beaten the Rams with all their starters playing since Nov. 11.
This is the opportunity for the Rams to show how much they’ve grown from a year ago, and to see how deep those training camp calluses went toward preparing this team for the brightest lights and toughest challenges the NFL has to offer.
“I think we are a resilient team. We’ve faced adversity,” McVay said. “I think we lean into those hard moments knowing that if we can continue to develop those calluses and continue to be resilient and be mentally tough in the midst of those moments, that’s going to serve us well as we continue to accumulate experience and come together as a team.”
