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Rams tight ends Terrance Ferguson, left, and Anthony Torres go through drills during an OTA practice on Tuesday, June 3, 2025, in Woodland Hills. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
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Rams tight ends Terrance Ferguson, left, and Anthony Torres go through drills during an OTA practice on Tuesday, June 3, 2025, in Woodland Hills. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
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The Rams may have drafted Terrance Ferguson for his receiving ability, but there was a time back in middle school when the rookie tight end was incapable of catching a football.
Back then, it didn’t matter much on the field, as Ferguson played center and defensive end. But his dad, his head coach since his peewee days, didn’t like the idea that his son couldn’t make a catch.
So as they had done so many times in his childhood, and as they would do for years to come, Ferguson and his father, Cody, went outside after they got home. In the backyard, his father threw passes at Ferguson until he could catch the ball.
“Not very far,” Ferguson said when asked the distance between the two during these sessions. “He’s sitting there, he’s a grown man, he’s a big dude, he’s 6-6 pushing 400 pounds. So he’s throwing that thing, too. Kind of like, ‘You don’t want to get hit with the football. Go out there and catch the ball.’ That and we didn’t stop until I learned how to catch. A lot of balls hitting my face, bullet passes. We worked on it for hours, days, weeks.”
By the time it was over, Cody had inadvertently derailed his dream of his son being an offensive lineman. Instead, Ferguson had become something of a hybrid, a tight end tasked with blocking but focused on turning passes into receptions, first downs and scores.
But the extra sessions with his father never ended. Instead of linemen drills, they’d go to the backyard or the park and run routes, or throw colored rings at each other and try to catch specific colors. When the Colorado winters made the grass inaccessible, they’d trade that for freshly-swept streets.
And through those sessions with his father, Ferguson developed a callous. Hard coaching and criticism no longer bothered him. He could hear whatever a coach had to tell him without shelling up, without getting defensive. And it’s a skill he believes will serve him well in his professional career.
“He was the one person that pushed me, he was my training partner my entire life. He gets loud, he gets aggressive, so being able to hear those coaching parts has helped me be coachable,” Ferguson explained. “Not hearing the tone but hearing the actual coaching aspects because everybody has something. It doesn’t matter if it’s your grandma, she might have something that could help you.”
No rest for the weary
Ferguson had the opportunity to come out for the NFL draft following the 2023 season. But he decided to stay at Oregon for his senior year. Partly to compete for a national championship, partly because his name wasn’t being bandied about by draft analysts. An extra year in school, and maybe he could improve his standing.
The Ducks came close to accomplishing Ferguson’s overall goal, earning the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff before losing to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.
His season over earlier than hoped, Ferguson found himself with a decision he hadn’t hoped to make. Stay home and rest his body after a long year, or get ready for the Senior Bowl later that month. But he’d taken care of himself enough that he felt ready for more work.
“He has just an inner drive to be great. He wants coaching, he wants to get better, he wants to be told he can do better,” said Steve Caric, Ferguson’s agent and senior vice president at Wasserman. “All the college players say the right things, that they want to work hard. But when it comes down to it, are they going to do it? Are they going to put in the extra time? And Terrance, you don’t have to tell him to do extra, he’s already doing it.”
Caric set up Ferguson with a week of private training with his former client and NFL tight end Logan Paulsen. The goal was for the pair to fine-tune Ferguson’s run blocking — one area of concern for interested teams — ahead of the Senior Bowl. Given that this was the last event where Ferguson would play real football before the draft, it was his last chance to show improvement at this area in a full-speed setting.
Prior to Ferguson’s arrival in Virginia, Paulsen poured over his film from his senior season at Oregon.
“There are times where there’s just a general lack of urgency, specifically in the run game,” Paulsen said. “So I think the thing that I wanted to make sure that he did was, first, I wanted to make sure and see if he could do it, if he was wired right to do it. Because again, not everyone can stick their face on somebody and sustain a block. It’s just not in everyone’s DNA.”
When Ferguson first visited Paulsen’s house, they went through the tape. Paulsen told him in no uncertain terms that some of these clips were not good enough for the NFL level. He expected some level of pushback, but Ferguson just nodded, ready to learn.
Their days would start at 10 a.m. on the field, practicing what they had studied the previous day for 2-3 hours. After lunch, Ferguson would return to Paulsen’s house and they’d watch film until it was time for Paulsen to pick up his kids from school.
Ferguson would return to his hotel, but did not call it a day. He continued watching film, texting Paulsen questions throughout the evening.
“He was a sponge and he had great questions and he was just in it. There were times that I thought I was maybe being overly critical of him and he didn’t shy away from that at all,” Paulsen said. “People say that, but they don’t live it. But when he came here, I felt like he lived it 100%. So that was really cool for me to see and it was something I wasn’t really expecting from him, for a guy just coming out of college to have that level of professionalism.”
They worked on some route-running concepts, but mostly the focus was run blocking. Paulsen taught Ferguson the new wave approach. Instead of taking short, balanced steps into your man so that you maintain balance, Paulsen emphasized sprinting into the block, then coming into a base like a basketball player boxing out.
That approach clicked for Ferguson, a former basketball player himself. And he found the work they did on Ferguson’s stance and release at the line of scrimmage helped him engage with his man faster and sustain the block longer.
After that week of work, Ferguson impressed NFL personnel at the Senior Bowl.
“They came to talk to me about, ‘Man, that was a different player in the run game. Different attitude, stronger, nastier, more technique sound, people mover,’” Caric said. “I think to me that really was the turning point where his draft stock really started skyrocketing.”
New home
For the Rams, the front office noticed a difference in Ferguson at the Senior Bowl, but not one that changed their evaluation of him. The personnel department had already noted that Ferguson was a willing run blocker at Oregon, even if it was not a strength of his. And for the Rams, that was good enough. As long as there’s a will, they know they can help a player improve once he arrives in Woodland Hills.
But the undeniable part of Ferguson’s game, the part that made him the unanimous decision in the Rams’ draft room in April when on the clock in the second round, was his pass catching. His ability to stay grounded through the catch, which allowed him to pick up additional yards. His sense for spacing on the field, particularly on third and fourth down.
As training camp ramped up last week, many observers were focused on Ferguson at the Loyola Marymount field. How much of a role was he ready for as a rookie? How would head coach Sean McVay utilize him after praising his versatility in April? Does his presence allow the Rams to play in 12-personnel more frequently when paired with a deep tight end room?
But the one question that doesn’t need answering is how Ferguson will respond to a mistake, to hard feedback after a bad rep or a bad day.
“He’s willing, he’s receptive, he wants to,” veteran tight end Tyler Higbee said. “He’s definitely willing to learn. Sometimes you get some guys that don’t necessarily feel like they want to be coached. Every time he’s in there, it seems like he does. Sometimes you don’t see that from rookies, but he’s got it.”
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