Very well deserved, love this guy as a player.

Login to view embedded media View: https://twitter.com/markbermanfox26/status/1302251848393535489?s=21

By NATHAN FENNO, SAM FARMER
SEP. 4, 20206 AM
The low-slung stadium in Inglewood shimmers amid palm trees and parking lots and a six-acre artificial lake, an artist’s rendering finally brought to life.

Rams owner Stan Kroenke poured six years and at least $5 billion into the 3.1-million-square-foot building that looks as if it arrived from another world.

SoFi Stadium’s swooping lines are an homage to the curves of California’s coast. Much of the asymmetrical roof is transparent, using ETFE panels that are as clear as a windshield and strong enough to support an auto.

Perforated aluminum triangles — the pattern on each is unique — form the skin of roof, bordering the transparent portion and changing colors with the sun.

The sides of the stadium are open to the elements, allowing breezes to flow past 38 massive blade columns that support the building. The field is sunk nearly 100 feet into the ground.

Everything seems to be on an amplified scale. There’s the 120-yard halo-shaped video board suspended above the field, the 2 1/2-acre open-air plaza and 6,000-seat performance venue that share the same roof as the stadium, the canyons where patrons descend into the structure that are themed with indigenous flora and fauna from different regions of California.

“It’s iconic,” said Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys owner and Los Angeles native who played a key role in pushing the ambitious project forward. “I’ve tried to run from the word. But this stadium, there was no way Stan was going to cut costs in any way that would compromise the overall, long-term sense of quality or value. It needs to be like Mt. Rushmore.”

The privately financed stadium is the centerpiece of a 298-acre development that’s three times the size of Disneyland. Plans call for the site where the Hollywood Park racetrack operated for 75 years to eventually be filled with millions of square feet of retail, restaurants, office space, residences and parks.

Everything revolves around the 70,240-seat stadium, the most expensive built in the U.S., if not the world, and the biggest created for football.

But the sweeping grace of the edifice stands stark in contrast to the difficulty in transforming the vision into concrete-and-steel reality.

“For all the twists and turns over the past five years, SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park are exactly the vision laid out in 2016,” said Kevin Demoff, chief operating officer of the Rams.

There was the sharp-elbowed competition between the Rams and Chargers, who will share the stadium, for the right to return the NFL to Los Angeles after the league’s two-decade absence. The record rainfall that delayed the building’s opening by a year. The ballooning price tag. The deaths of two construction workers. The novel coronavirus outbreak that infected dozens of workers and wiped out carefully orchestrated opening plans. Until further notice, the public will be able to see SoFi Stadium only from a distance.

Building a stadium isn’t easy.

As a developer, Stan Kroenke gets some of his most productive thinking done before sunrise. It was on one of those mornings, behind the wheel of an SUV in summer 2013, that he took his first long look at Hollywood Park.

“That’s the best time because the traffic isn’t out, so you can get around quickly,” Kroenke told The Times in 2016. “I started looking at different sites to make sure I had them in my head. What do they look like? What could be done? How does the long term look for the areas? And when you drive up to Hollywood Park, it’s a great site.”

He knew the lay of the land in Inglewood, and he knew about the Hollywood Park site, which the NFL already had approved in the early 1990s when legendary Raiders owner Al Davis wanted to build there. But Kroenke wanted to get a better look at the place that was still a racetrack, and wouldn’t be demolished for two more years.

Excited about the potential of the location, Kroenke called his top Rams executive at team headquarters in St. Louis that morning.

“There are moments in your life you’ll never forget,” Demoff said in 2016. “I was standing by the window in my office and Stan called. ... I remember he said, ‘This is an unbelievable site.’”

Would you take 3,449,990,800% return on investment? Welcome to the NFL owners club

July 17, 2020

Seven months later, just before the Super Bowl between the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos, Kroenke announced his purchase of 60 acres in Inglewood for about $100 million. The land was next to the Forum and wasn’t big enough for a stadium and parking. But it proved to be the gateway to the much larger Hollywood Park site, which was earmarked to become a mixed-use development.

Jones could see the bigger picture coming into focus. In August 2014, the Cowboys owner sat behind his desk, and across from a reporter, in his makeshift office — a converted room at the Courtyard hotel in Oxnard — as his players ran through training camp drills at the neighboring field complex.

For several years, Jones kept close tabs on the various stadium proposals and possibilities of the league reentering the L.A. market. Not only did Jones recognize the potential of the NFL’s return, but also he felt a deep connection to Southern California. He was born in L.A. in 1942, and his first home was on 112th Street, about 4 1/2 miles from what is now SoFi Stadium.

In this case, Jones understood the cast-iron will, steely nerves and financial means of Kroenke, listed last year by Forbes as the NFL’s second-richest owner, with an estimated net worth of $9.7 billion.

“I said, ‘Get your eyeballs attentive to this; this thing has got a lot of special parts to it,’” Jones recalled recently of the conversation with the reporter that took place six years earlier. “For the NFL, Stan was manna from heaven. I was convicted about that. I said it to the ownership: ‘Guys, we’ve got to look upstairs and thank Stan Kroenke for wanting to do this project for Los Angeles.’”

So many before Kroenke had tried. Dozens of billionaires, politicians, celebrities and power brokers had attempted to solve the L.A. riddle. No one was successful.

It defied logic, the nation’s No. 2 market without its most popular sport. Between 1995, when the Rams and Raiders left, and 2016, when the Rams returned, two franchises relocated and two more were formed.

The problem with L.A. was — unlike other cities around the country — there was no public money for a stadium nor any appetite to change that. Any venue would have to be paid for privately, and the deal wasn’t attractive enough for developers unless they had at least a piece of a team.

With luxury suites and club seats increasingly popular around the league, the aging Coliseum and Rose Bowl became increasingly outdated and unattractive, particularly without major renovations. Newer NFL stadiums are vertical, with the vast majority of seats located between the goal lines. Those gradual, contiguous bowls, with a large percentage of seats in the end zones, do not generate the kind of revenue that attracts NFL owners.

What’s more, during the period when L.A. was without a team, the widespread advent of the internet, NFL Network and DirecTV’s “Sunday Ticket,” which allows fans to follow their favorite team from afar, made consuming football from the couch much easier.

Still, there were ongoing efforts to develop a stadium, and reams of renderings of never-built, fantastical venues. From Irwindale to Irvine, the futuristic Farmers Field downtown to “The Hacienda” in Carson, a reimagined Rose Bowl, a doctored Dodger Stadium, the Platinum Triangle of Anaheim to the City of Industry ... all ran out of steam or money, or both.


Sep. 2, 2020

During the period when L.A. was without a team, 27 NFL stadiums were either built or underwent at least $400 million in renovations. In many ways, L.A. was more valuable to the NFL without a team than with one. When a franchise was angling for money from its hometown or state to build a new stadium, it could use the threat of relocating to L.A. to change people’s minds and open their coffers. L.A. was the boogeyman.

===

In early January 2015, Kroenke publicly unveiled what had been in the works behind the scenes for at least a year and a half. He joined forces with the Stockbridge Capital Group, which planned a massive mixed-use development at Hollywood Park, to expand the project to include his 60 acres, a stadium and a performance venue. Kroenke eventually bought out Stockbridge’s share of the development.

“It’s something that’s going to be in place and in his family long after he’s gone,” Terry Fancher, the executive managing director of Stockbridge, said at the time. “He’s really looking at the long term. I’ve rarely run across someone whose main concern is, ‘I want the best we can have.’”

The path forward was bruising. A report by former secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge on behalf of AEG, which was still pursuing Farmers Field, suggested the Inglewood stadium’s proximity to L.A. International Airport created a “significant risk profile.” The report speculated that terrorists could try to shoot down a plane over the stadium or crash one into it as part of a “terrorist event ‘twofer.’”

(A subsequent risk analysis the NFL commissioned by Michael Chertoff, who followed Ridge as secretary of Homeland Security, found no unusual security risks for the venue.)

Six weeks after Kroenke’s announcement, the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders revealed their joint pursuit of a stadium in Carson on 168 acres atop an old landfill.

The competing projects offered starkly different visions for football in L.A.: an open-air stadium, natural grass and immediate access to the 405 Freeway in Carson against the covered, artificial turf option in Inglewood that would be the engine of an enormous development.

The three-team race gathered speed. Inglewood’s City Council unanimously approved a ballot initiative to greenlight the stadium and bypass lengthy environmental review less than a week after the Carson plan was announced. AEG scuttled Farmers Field.

The Carson stadium design was revamped, including the addition of a cauldron where simulated lighting bolts would swirl when the Chargers played and a flame would burn in honor of the late Al Davis for their games. The signature elements were scrubbed from renderings presented to NFL owners four months later and a variety of features, such as a farmers market, were added.

Behind the scenes, Carson backers questioned the Inglewood stadium’s amount of parking, use of artificial turf, proximity to freeways and how the city would handle the influx of traffic on game days. Though civil in public, the competition played out through a series of presentations to NFL owners and executives, updated renderings, community outreach events and frequent media leaks.

“As great of a guy as [Chargers owner] Dean [Spanos] is, and as good a partner as he is, they have zero killer instinct,” one person involved in the saga wrote in an email in August 2015.

The Federal Aviation Administration raised concerns the Inglewood stadium could interfere with the radar directing air traffic at LAX. Kroenke eventually resolved them by paying $29 million to install a secondary radar system. The Chargers and Raiders hired then-Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger to oversee their stadium effort. Ridge sent a letter to Jerry Richardson — then owner of the Carolina Panthers and chairman of the NFL’s six-owner Committee on L.A. Opportunities — again raising safety concerns about the Inglewood stadium. Spanos rebuffed Kroenke’s overture to share the stadium.

Site preparation work continued at Hollywood Park in December 2015. A small yellow pipe stuck out of the dirt to mark the future site of the 50-yard line, amid heavy machinery and mountains of crushed concrete.

“This isn’t a small aspiration,” Chris Meany, development manager for the Hollywood Park Land Co., said at the time. “We are trying to do something that is grand and is appropriate for an international stage.”

===

NFL owners gathered Jan. 12, 2016, at the Westin Houston, Memorial City hotel. The league was determined at long last to decide how and where to return to L.A.

Although the NFL had reserved space for a two-day meeting, the owners were impatient. Four of the six owners on the L.A. committee had teams in the playoffs, and another was in the middle of a coaching search.

The meeting started with the Rams winning a coin flip, allowing them to present first. In the secured ballroom, Demoff pitched owners on Inglewood and a stadium that would be a crown jewel for the entire league.

He began the 25-minute talk with 30 renderings that showed the stadium and ended with excerpts from two columns by Bill Plaschke of The Times, pleading for the Rams to return.

“Together we make football,” Demoff said at the end of the pitch. “Together we make Los Angeles.”

Next up was Iger, among the world’s most powerful entertainment executives. He already knew most, if not all, of the owners. He extolled the virtues of the Carson plan, praising the location as ideal because it was next to the freeway and convenient to both L.A. and Orange County.


Sam Farmer gives an update on the stadium’s construction in December 2015.

Iger, who in his Disney role oversaw ESPN, spoke of his love of the NFL and his marketing expertise. He reminded the owners he had paid them plenty of money over the years.

When Iger finished and stepped out, Jones pushed away from the table in his swivel chair, stood and made an observation that drew chuckles from fellow owners.

“He said he paid us,” Jones said. “Last time I checked, that money is coming from Disney shareholders, not him.”

Clarity didn’t come quickly during the 11-hour meeting. Early on, the L.A. committee voted 5-1 to back the Carson plan, with Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt the lone dissenter. Word of that endorsement filtered from the secured fourth-floor ballroom to the third floor, where at least 200 media members were stationed to document the day.

In truth, the majority of owners were squarely behind the Inglewood plan, some reasoning the competition wasn’t close. Still, it was uncomfortable to give a fellow owner a public thumbs down, especially with the stakes so high. So it was a pivotal moment when owners voted 19-13 that L.A. should be decided by secret ballot.

A false narrative had taken root in some circles that Carson would win easily. But with the people who actually had a vote, the opposite was true. Among them, a consensus had solidified to pair the Rams and Chargers in Inglewood, and leave the Raiders in Oakland.

On the first ballot, owners voted 21-11 in favor of the Inglewood proposal, three votes shy of the 24 needed to pass. Strangely, the owners took a step backward in the second try, voting 20-12 for Inglewood. More discussions ensued. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell ushered the three owners seeking relocation into a separate room for a private negotiation that lasted an hour.

“As costs went up as dramatically as they did, the fact that Stan didn’t cut corners or reduce the scope of the project engendered a tremendous amount of goodwill from owners and league executives.”

With a resolution within reach, Jones ordered beer and wine to be delivered to the ballroom. The hotel set up temporary bars.

When Goodell returned to the ballroom with the three owners, the Raiders announced they were withdrawing their bid to move. The new proposal was the Rams in Inglewood, with a team to be determined. That vote passed 30-2.

The Rams were heading back to L.A., and the Chargers had a one-year option to join them. If the Chargers were to decline, the Raiders would get the same offer.

Jones turned to his son, Stephen, the Cowboys’ top executive, and asked: “What did you learn today after seeing the process?”

“I learned one thing,” Stephen said. “If you’re going to get in the race, make sure you’re riding Secretariat.”
At an 8 p.m. news conference at the hotel, Goodell announced the decision while flanked by the three owners involved. The trio looked subdued and fatigued. Spanos read a short statement saying he would continue looking for solutions, then left the stage as Kroenke was making his comments.

“You know, I’m going to try to take a day off,” the dejected Chargers owner told reporters. “This has been really excruciating for everyone. I’m going to look at all our options. ... It’s very difficult to say right now, I’m going to do this or I’m going to do that.”

Both Joneses, along with Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula, had a celebratory dinner that night with Kroenke, Demoff and the rest of the Rams contingent. They ate at an upscale steakhouse next to the hotel, and Jerry Jones raised a glass of bourbon to toast the occasion.

To this day, Demoff has his room key from the hotel, a memento of that landmark meeting.

The next morning, the first day of a new era in the NFL, Kroenke stopped by Starbucks on his way to a private airport and picked up his breakfast: an egg sandwich and turkey bacon. He ate it on his jet, wiping away tears of joy as L.A. drew close. When the wheels touched down in Van Nuys, a new chapter was underway.

===

They broke ground 10 months later, Kroenke and Goodell and Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. wearing white hard hats as they plunged silver-tipped shovels with red bows into the soil at Hollywood Park the week before Thanksgiving.

“I don’t think people really understand the scale of this,” Kroenke said at the time.

But trouble lurked in an unexpected place. Millions of cubic yards of dirt needed to be excavated to create the giant bowl for the stadium. Between November 2016 and February 2017, however, the LAX area received 15.4 inches of rain. The frequent downpours left water 12 to 15 feet deep in the excavation site that at times resembled a lake. The water had to be pumped out each time and the area dried before work could resume.

“It was a very unforgiving two months for the project. And speaking from a building perspective, it really couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

In the midst of the rain, the Chargers exercised their option to relocate to L.A. and join the Rams in Inglewood in January 2017. During a welcome rally at the Forum a few days later, Goodell lauded the future stadium.

“It’s all about the vision of Stan Kroenke,” Goodell said.

The commissioner twice referenced the Rams owner — who wasn’t there — before mentioning Spanos or the Chargers.

Concern spread through NFL circles that the stadium project — already facing an aggressive schedule with little wriggle room to finish in time for the 2019 season — was falling behind. Developers finally announced in May 2017 that the stadium’s opening would be delayed by a year.

“It was a very unforgiving two months for the project,” Bob Aylesworth, the principal in charge for the joint venture overseeing the project, Turner-AECOM Hunt, said at the time. “And speaking from a building perspective, it really couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

The rain delay contributed to spiraling construction costs. Though the exact price tag for the stadium isn’t clear because the venture is private and infrastructure costs for the surrounding development are folded into totals, public estimates have increased from $1.86 billion to $2.6 billion to $5 billion. That includes the cost of acquiring land, debt service, design, building the NFL Media headquarters adjacent to the stadium — scheduled to open next year — and a host of other items.

The actual cost might be higher.

“There’s huge, huge risk, still, because you’re doing something at a cost no one has ever done before,” Kroenke said the week before the Rams played in the Super Bowl in February 2019. “We try to take the risk out of it, so we had independent cost estimates all along the way as we developed the stadium. The problem was ... those cost estimates by two independent people who worked with our architects on the costing were way off. They were just way off.

“So it takes a lot more investment, so that’s more risk. But we’re long term. ... We don’t get involved in things unless we think we’re going to be there for a long time.”

Stadium-related building permits filed with Inglewood through September 2019 are valued at about $2 billion, though the permits represent only a fraction of the project’s construction costs.

NFL owners in May approved the Rams borrowing an additional $500 million — believed to be a combination of a private loan to Kroenke and an increased debt limit for the franchise — to help finance the stadium.

“As costs went up as dramatically as they did, the fact that Stan didn’t cut corners or reduce the scope of the project engendered a tremendous amount of goodwill from owners and league executives,” said Marc Ganis, president and founder of the Chicago-based sports consulting firm SportsCorp. “Very few people in the country could have handled the additional debt without it being a strain. Stan is one of the few.”

The Chargers are $1-per-year tenants at the stadium and whose contribution to the construction costs are a $200-million G4 loan from the NFL, as well as revenue generated from the sale of seat licenses and 125 joint Rams-Chargers suites.

They also are paying a $650-million relocation fee to the league, as are the Rams.

In fall 2018, the Chargers announced their new home would feature more than 26,000 seats priced between $50 and $90 per ticket, plus a one-time personal seat license fee of $100.

By comparison, the least expensive Rams seat license is 10 times that. That pricing heightened tensions because it established an eyebrow-raising contrast between the clubs, and offered Kroenke little relief to offset construction costs. At the outset, both teams aimed to sell $400 million in seat licenses.

If the Chargers were to sell one-third of their seat licenses at $100, they would generate $2.6 million, a drop in the bucket for a $5-billion project, and leave Kroenke to shoulder more of the expense.

The novel coronavirus outbreak added another complication. A series of safety measures were put in place to protect construction workers, including additional bathrooms, mandatory temperature checks, social distancing, face coverings and requiring nonessential personnel to work from home. Eighty-one workers have tested positive for COVID-19 out of an estimated 4,000 on site since late March. None of the workers who tested positive has been hospitalized or died, according to the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

On June 5, an ironworker named Juan Becerra died after falling an estimated 110 feet from the stadium’s roof through a hole created by the removal of a panel for maintenance.

His wife and three young children sued Stadco LA, the company behind the stadium, Turner-AECOM Hunt and others in L.A. County Superior Court, blaming the fall on work being “unnecessarily and unsafely hurried” because of the pandemic.

Another ironworker, Simon Fite, died on the roof July 8 after the joint venture said he showed “signs of a health issue.” The L.A. County Medical Examiner-Coroner hasn’t released a cause of death pending additional investigation.
The plan to open the stadium with big-name concerts — starting with Taylor Swift in late July — evaporated because of the pandemic.

The NFL canceled its preseason too. The Rams, who open the stadium with a regular-season game against the Dallas Cowboys on Sept. 13, and Chargers announced fans won’t be allowed at the stadium until further notice. Among other marquee events, the stadium is scheduled to play host to the 2022 Super Bowl and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2028 Summer Olympics.

When fans ultimately arrive, the ones with the most-expensive tickets will be able to stand at the bar in the SoFi Stadium Social Club and watch the news conferences through a glass wall that defrosts after the game.

At the top of the stadium, on Level 8, spectators can roam the massive indoor-outdoor concourses and, on a clear day, enjoy a vista that spans from the Hollywood sign and Santa Monica Mountains to Catalina Island.

“Every place in terms of your visual is unique in this building, because of the curvature of the roofline,” said Jason Gannon, managing director of SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park. “That’s what’s really special about this, how Stan has been able to design something that does embrace Southern California.”

The scope of the project is staggering — 17.8 miles of cable, 144,000 cubic yards of concrete, a 2.2-million-pound videoboard (largest created), 12.5 miles of pipe ... all built through 12 million worker hours.

Some people appreciate the small details.

On his first visit to the stadium earlier this summer, Rams quarterback Jared Goff noticed that if he looked through the man-made canyon behind an end zone, he could see palm trees swaying in the breeze, a rendering turned reality.

With today being the day NFL Teams have to make some really tough decisions to make to get to their final Roster who are some of your biggest surprises? So far the only somewhat surprise to me was that the Rams released Kicker Lirim Hajrullahu (I really hope that I did not butcher his name!). While, This was not a major surprise (I didn’t get the impression that any of the three Kickers really stood out that much?) but it seemed to me that Hajrullahu was getting a little more press than the others (But, I guess a lot of that could be due to his name?!). It should be a very interesting day to see not only who the Rams release but who they put on their Practice Squad and who they sign from other Teams releases!

Can’t believe that the Season starts this coming week!!!

And, What Better way to start a Season than by BEATING THE DREADED DALLAS COWBOYS (Well, Maybe by Starting the Season by beating the even more Dreaded San Francisco 49’s!!!)!

Taylor Rapp well-prepared for second NFL season

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – Rams safety Taylor Rapp feels as prepared as he possibly can be for his second NFL season, and he has a strenuous test of mental and physical fortitude from the offseason as well as lessons learned from his rookie season to thank for that.

As it turns out, playing in a football game and completing a challenge of burning 10,000 calories in a single day this summer share more than just kicking an athlete's metabolism into high gear.

"It involves a lot of mental toughness," Rapp said during a video conference with local media Wednesday. "A lot of the reason that I wanted to take part in it, (is) because I wanted to stretch my mental toughness and see if I could push through it. It was a great thing, so I can see that it definitely correlates to the game and even life, really."

That exercise, of course, has not been the first time he's been mentally tested in the last year.

Six months before he biked 125 miles, swam 1.25 miles, ran three miles and hiked four miles in a day, he was in coverage against then-49ers wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders during the Rams' Week 16 matchup at San Francisco when Sanders hauled in a 46-yard pass on 3rd down to set up a game-winning field goal for the Niners.

Asked about the play by reporters at his locker postgame that late-December night, Rapp took responsibility for it and owned it. Asked about the play by reporters on Wednesday, his response and approach was no different.

"Obviously, that's not how anyone wants to end the game or anything like that," Rapp said. "I definitely could have played better technique and stuff like that. It is what it is, it happened. All you can really do is you can't worry about it, it's in the past. Don't let it happen again and stuff like that. You don't let it hurt you, but you use it for motivation and fuel and positive going forward."

Rapp's strength in vulnerability and ownership in that moment as a young player resonated with Rams head coach Sean McVay.

"I loved his response," McVay said during a video conference with local media this week. "He's the kind of guy that represents exactly what we want in our locker room and I would expect from all of our players though. When we talk about accountability and coachability, I think both those situations represented exactly what we want with our football character that he embodied there."

More recently, a minor knee issue came up during the second week of the Rams' acclimation period in training camp which started Aug. 3.

The setback sidelined Rapp for a few weeks, and while Los Angeles' third-leading tackler in 2019 remained engaged by attending meetings and watching practices to accumulate mental reps, the lack of live action had him eager to get back on the practice field. He finally made his return this week, albeit in a phased approach.

"It's tough (learning the defense without physical reps," Rapp said. "Going back to when you guys asked me how it felt being out there, I was so eager to get on the field because before I had to shut it down for a few weeks, we never really got into live practice. So, I never really put on the helmet or even went against our offense. We were doing jog-thrus and walk-thrus or whatever, but I never really got to strap on my pads or my helmet. It felt great being out there, definitely."

McVay said Rapp will be ready to go for next week's season-opener against the Dallas Cowboys. And as Rapp prepares for that game, he'll have a solid foundation of mental toughness to build upon.

The best Punter of all time, Johnny Hekker.
Login to view embedded media View: https://youtu.be/xz6gmbIrNkE

Report: Rams turned down trade offers for Gerald Everett

Rams tight end Gerald Everett will apparently stay in Los Angeles despite some interest from other teams.

The Rams have received calls from teams wanting to know if Everett trade would be available in a trade, but the Rams said no, according to Jordan Rodrigue of TheAthletic.com.

Login to view embedded media
View: https://twitter.com/jourdanrodrigue/status/1301992977959587840?s=21

The Rams selected Everett with the 44th overall pick in the 2017 NFL draft, and he’s currently heading into the fourth and final year on his rookie contract. He had a career-high 37 catches for 408 yards last season.

Everett is due a $1.3 million base salary this season.

Broncos cut ILB Todd Davis
Login to view embedded media


Jets cut ILB James Burgess
Login to view embedded media


Both would be upgrades for us at ILB over Kenny Young. Not sure what the contract situations are but maybe we look into signing one of these two?

The Rams have found their new kicker.

Sam Sloman, a seventh-round rookie out of Miami of Ohio, has won the team’s kicking competition, Tom Pelissero of NFL Network reports.

Sloman had been competing in camp with former XFL kicker Austin MacGinnis and former CFL kicker Lirim Hajrullahu. None of the three kickers in Rams camp has ever kicked in a regular-season NFL game.

The Rams have had stability at kicker since drafting Greg Zuerlein in the sixth round of the 2012 NFL draft, but with Zuerlein now in Dallas, they needed a new kicker, and now they have him.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2020/09/04/rookie-sam-sloman-wins-rams-kicker-competition/

Me: ?????????

The practice squad may be the best way to keep the competition open into mid-september

By Kenneth Arthur@KennethArthuRS Sep 1, 2020, 12:11pm CDT
7 Comments



Not many teams are going through what the LA Rams are going through with their kicking competition right now, but they aren’t completely alone — and that also serves as a reminder that whatever decision the Rams do make, there will be teams waiting to sort through the leftovers.

On Tuesday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers signed kicker Ryan Succop, a veteran who had made 86.6-percent of his attempts with the Tennessee Titans in the five years prior to him going 1-of-6 in 2019. He will compete with Matt Gay in the final days of training camp because that’s what you can do in a kicker competition; you can add and remove players from it at the flick of a Bic.

Bucs head coach Bruce Arians said he’s looking for a kicker who won’t miss “the ‘gimmes’.” After waiving Elliott Fry to make room for Succop, the Bucs will make either the veteran or the second-year Gay — who missed five extra points and two field goal tries that were under 40 yards in 2019 — available again on Saturday.

And the Rams will have more options to sort through once they’re done sorting through the three that they currently have on hand.

Austin MacGinnis


The least considered of the three, MacGinnis has AAF and XFL experience but this has been his first go around with an NFL team after leaving Kentucky in 2018. At times he seemed like he could be in second place in the competition (the truth is we don’t know the true rankings for Sean McVay at this point though) but hasn’t stood out and wasn’t drafted.

Sam Sloman


Sloman was drafted, but barely. Only seven more players went after him before everyone shutdown their laptops on the virtual draft. Sloman proved to have a strong leg after making both of his 53-yard attempts in the most recent scrimmage, but he seems to be inconsistent on the “gimme” kicks from what we’ve heard out of camp and the warm up to the season.

Lirim Hajrullahu



Maybe the favorite going into camp and certainly the favorite a week ago, Hajrullahu has six years of CFL experience and was twice named an All-Star. So he’s got something to draw back on in terms of knowing what it’s like to be paid money for critical kicks with a bunch of people watching; which may or may not matter because plenty of good kickers didn’t have six years of experience in the CFL.


If Hajrullahu didn’t make the Rams though, he does seem the most likely to be picked up for a trial with another team. And that should impact how McVay decides the competition both this week and if he has to re-evaluate the winner of that job after a couple of games.

This year’s unusual circumstances mean that teams can keep 16 players on the practice squad and it would not be surprising to see Los Angeles hold onto two placekickers until further notice. Maybe that is overkill but if McVay has liked all three enough to keep them until now, would he want to keep testing out the two who don’t make the final 53?

What other options will he have and what other options will the teams searching for kickers have?

The Bucs are surely a candidate to keep their kicker competition open even after the season begins. The Titans are holding a competition between Greg Joseph and Tucker McCann that is apparently “neck and neck,” but Tennessee also brought in veteran Stephen Hauschka recently and they’re next trying out Stephen Gostkowski. This also serves as a great opportunity to remind people that even a kicker tryout means waiting five days until you can actually sign that player and have him in-house because of COVID-19 testing protocols.

So having a kicker on the practice squad already will give the Rams an advantage to not have to wait five days to bring in someone new.

The Indianapolis Colts could be leaning towards Rodrigo Blankenship over Chase McLaughlin, the New England Patriots drafted Justin Rohrwasser but then signed Nick Folk and he’s done much better during training camp, potentially opening up another intriguing young option if the veteran wins the job. And the Chicago Bears created a kicking competition by signing Cairo Santos in late August and he may have beaten out incumbent Eddy Pineiro.

All of which is to say that there are a few kicking competitions out there and there will be a number of notable names available to Los Angeles should they need it, including veterans Hauschka and Gostkowski for the moment. Hauschka has gone 22-of-28 on kicks in each of the last two seasons, but missed a few “gimmes” including two extra points in 2019, as well as 1-of-5 on kicks over 50. Gostkowski went 2-of-5 from 50+ in his last full season with the Patriots and was only 11-of-15 on extra points in 2019.

The Rams will continue to evaluate the three kickers they have in-house now, as well as the many kickers who will be available both this upcoming weekend and after a few weeks of the season has transpired. It may best suit them to keep the kicking competition open into mid-September with the practice squad, assuming nobody comes and steals any away, which is another thing they’ll have to be aware of —

As well as if there’s any kickers they want to steal from another team.

10 Observations from the Rams' final 2020 training camp practice

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – After each practice of Rams Training Camp presented by UNIFY Financial Credit Union, Rams staff writer Stu Jackson will share 10 observations from the session. Here are his notes from Thursday, Sept. 3 – the team's final training camp practice.

1) Wide receiver Cooper Kupp returned to practice today and went full-speed. McVay told local media after practice that Kupp "feels great" and that he was never concerned about Kupp's availability for next week's season-opener against the Dallas Cowboys.

2) If McVay's words to reporters weren't strong enough of an indication, Kupp had a spectacular over-the-shoulder catch in the back corner of the endzone during 1-on-1 drills.

Login to view embedded media
View: https://twitter.com/ramsnfl/status/1301609193644765190?s=21

3) While cornerback Troy Hill was in coverage on the aforementioned Kupp catch, he deserves credit for nearly coming away with an interception later in 1-on-1s on a Jared Goff pass intended for tight end Tyler Higbee.

4) Today was a veteran rest day for left tackle Andrew Whitworth.

5) No practice for running back Darrell Henderson Jr. today. Henderson participated during the team's stretching warm-up period, then did some rehab work off to the side. McVay said after today's practice that "we're optimistic" about Henderson's Week 1 status, "but until he truly gets out there and is able to really open up and let it go full speed, (it would) be hard for me to say."

6) For proper contact context for the Kupp catch and remaining observations, players wore helmets but no pads today.

7) Wide receiver Josh Reynolds also had an outstanding over-the-shoulder, back-corner-of-the-endzone catch during 1-on-1 drills today.

8) As successful as Reynolds and Kupp were during one-on-one drills, wide receiver Robert Woods arguably looked the sharpest, corralling three straight touchdown catches at one point in the segment.

9) Rookie safety Jordan Fuller had a nice pass breakup on a Goff attempt intended for tight end Gerald Everett. Fuller has also created multiple takeaways in camp, so combined with his performance today, it wasn't surprising to see McVay mention him as one of the rookies who has "continued to shine" in camp.

10) Practice ended with various phases of special teams getting work in, including the field goal unit and practicing onside kicks.

I came across this breakdown of the three RB drafted in round 2 of this year's draft. Entitled fantasy but, don't let that stop you. It's a good watch.

Login to view embedded media View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xxLdJ_1bV4

This is funny!

Login to view embedded media View: https://twitter.com/nflfilms/status/1301588692331573248?s=21

Rob Havenstein happy to be back on field

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. –– Asked about the progression of the offensive line earlier in Rams Training Camp presented by UNIFY Financial Credit Union, head coach Sean McVay went through each of the five players working with the first team offense. When he arrived at right tackle Rob Havenstein, he said Havenstein "has been outstanding."

To hear that four days into camp was a promising and positive development for a key piece to the unit. Havenstein worked hard to get to this point, of course, and feels like his return to the practice field has been "going well" so far.

"I think, me personally, got a lot of good work in," Havenstein said during a video conference with local media this week. "I feel good. I put my best foot forward, but it is definitely good to be back out there."

Last season, Havenstein sustained a knee injury in Week 10 against the Steelers, though McVay said the Wisconsin product was also " working through some different things."

The setback resulted in a career-low nine games played for Havenstein in 2019 – atypical for one of the Rams' most durable offensive linemen. He played all 16 games in 2018, and missed only seven games combined from 2015-17.

When asked why he didn't play in Weeks 16 and 17 after coming off the injured list, Havenstein said he tried to play through the same injury but was unable to play as well as he wanted to, so he made the decision to get surgery to fix it.

"Then it's getting as healthy as possible, getting strong, and getting my body back right," Havenstein said.

The COVID-19 pandemic nearly threw a wrench in those plans, but Havenstein got an assist from teammate and left tackle Andrew Whitworth. Though gyms and team facilities across the country temporarily closed earlier this offseason, Havenstein was able to stay on top of his rehab and offseason workouts by working out with Whitworth in Whitworth's garage-turned-home gym.

"(It's beneficial) anytime you get to really work with the guys that you're going to be playing with, especially as an offensive line, to see and kind of push each other and to know like, 'Hey, I know he's put the work in and he knows I've put my work in,'" Havenstein said. "I'm not at home half-assing a workout, halfway between chips and the couch. I'm getting out there and putting my best foot forward, I'm getting after it. 'Whit' is pushing guys, I'm trying to push guys, they're pushing me. It was a really good environment and the work had to get done. You wouldn't want to do it with anyone else."

Having a front-row seat to the work Havenstein put in this offseason, Whitworth couldn't be happier to see Havenstein perform as well as he has.

"He was working here, he was working in my house, he's doing extra all the time," Whitworth said. "It meant something to him to come back healthy and over the injury and you know what, I couldn't be happier to see him having some success and seeing some good things going and feeling good about his knee."

A healthy Havenstein will prove pivotal for the Rams' offense, especially its running game.

During that 2018 season when he played in all 16 games, he had the highest run-block success percentage of any offensive tackle according to PFF. Los Angeles finished with the No. 3 rushing offense in the NFL that same year, averaging 139.4 rushing yards per game.

Based on McVay's comments, Havenstein is looking like his old self.

"Here is what I feel great about – I know that he attacked the offseason the right way, he's feeling healthy, he looks like the guy that has been a top-tier, starting tackle in this league," McVay said Monday. "He's got a great way about himself and I've been very pleased with Rob."

I absolutely hate those fucking cheaters.

Pretty much the only player I could use for this number. Bob Waterfield.
Login to view embedded media View: https://youtu.be/fXHnRRgwxFM

Good luck to the Rams this year....enjoy the show....hope to be here at some point when this settles down....

take care
eric

Rams’ Taylor Rapp ready to build on highs and lows of rookie year

THOUSAND OAKS — It was his worst moment. It was his finest hour.

It’s one of the memories from Taylor Rapp’s rookie year that make the Rams so happy to have him fit and ready for the start of his second year, a status confirmed this week with his return to practice after a knee problem.

Late in the 2019 season, the safety made a glaring mistake in coverage that let the San Francisco 49ers’ Jimmy Garoppolo and Emmanuel Sanders connect on a 46-yard third-down pass, setting up the field goal that ended the Rams’ playoff hopes.

A player can try to forget an error like that. A player can try to remember and grow from it. Rapp, who was a day short of his 22nd birthday, set out to do both.

“Obviously, that’s not how anyone wants to end a game,” Rapp said Wednesday in a short video conference with reporters. “I definitely could have played better technique and stuff like that.

“It is what it is. It happened. You can’t worry about (what’s) in the past. You can just use it as fuel going forward to motivate you, (so you) don’t let it happen again.”

Rapp’s first reaction that night was to stand up to questions in the locker room and take responsibility for his mistake — biting on a 49er receiver’s short route and failing to help cornerback Jalen Ramsey cover Sanders deep. That impressed Eric Weddle, the now-retired fellow safety who praised Rapp’s character the next day. It also impressed Rams coach Sean McVay, who praised Rapp on Wednesday.

“For you to be able to have the strength and being vulnerable and having that extreme ownership, that’s something we want all of our players to embody,” McVay said in a Zoom chat with reporters, saying great players turn a setback into “a learning opportunity.”

“That’s exactly what Taylor does. I loved his response.”

A week after his screwup in Santa Clara, Rapp intercepted a pass from the Arizona Cardinals’ Kyler Murray 30 yards downfield after having earlier recovered a Murray fumble in the backfield.

That performance at the Coliseum capped a rookie season in which the second-round draft pick from Washington took over as a starter from the injured John Johnson in October and was second on the Rams in tackles behind Cory Littleton over the last 10 games.

His solid debut made him a sure thing to replace Weddle and start beside Johnson this season in a safety tandem that Johnson says can be the best in the league.

Rapp missed more than two weeks of training camp with a minor knee injury, but returned to practice Tuesday and Wednesday, wearing a compression sleeve on his left leg.

Saying Rapp is fit for the Sept. 13 season opener against the Dallas Cowboys at SoFi Stadium might be an understatement.

In May, Rapp conquered a “10,000 calorie challenge,” theoretically burning that many calories in one day by biking 125 miles, swimming 1.25, hiking 4, running 3 and mixing in a “short workout.”

He said the endurance test was inspired by his older brother Austin, a cyclist.

“Obviously it involves a lot of mental toughness,” Rapp said. “I wanted to test my mental toughness and see if I could push through it. It definitely correlates to playing in a game. Or life, really.”

It had to be asked: Might all of that exertion have caused the knee problem?

He said no.

While frustrated that he couldn’t practice, Rapp made sure he didn’t fall too far behind in learning the defensive scheme of new Rams defensive coordinator Brandon Staley.

“Taylor’s really smart, he loves football, he’s instinctual, he’s stayed engaged in the meetings, he’s been involved on the field at practice,” McVay said in August, when the coach still worried that Rapp might not be ready for the opener.

“That was one of the reasons why you love him so much coming out of Washington, is the instincts, the football acumen and all that stuff.”

Including the stuff about growing from mistakes.

Notes

Rookie outside linebacker Terrell Lewis missed practice Tuesday and Wednesday and was having tests on a knee, McVay said. Lewis, a third-round draft pick from Alabama, has been in line to back up Leonard Floyd at the beginning of the season, while Samson Ebukam starts on the opposite edge. Other outside linebackers on the roster are Ogbonnia Okoronkwo, Natrez Patrick, Jachai Polite, Justin Lawler and Greg Reaves. …

Gerald Everett said he looks forward to “more extended roles” for himself, Tyler Higbee, Johnny Mundt and rookie Brycen Hopkins with more two tight end sets in 2020. Everett, whose four-year rookie contract expires after this season, said he’s not dwelling on the prospect of an extension. “You know, we started off as kids playing this game for free, and as we’ve been blessed to keep playing over college and professionally now,” he said. “Everything will happen when it’s time.” …

Everett cleared up the meaning of a July 16 tweet saying he was “waiting on a decision that’s already been made.” Some took it to refer to the Rams’ plans for his future, but he said Tuesday it was about whether the NFL would have a season: “Everyone was waiting around to see if the season was going to happen, but with the resources that the NFL has, I feel like the answer was already made.”

10 Observations from the Rams' Sept. 2 training camp practice

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – After each practice of Rams Training Camp presented by UNIFY Financial Credit Union, Rams staff writer Stu Jackson will share 10 observations from the session. Here are his notes from Wednesday, Sept. 2:

1) Leonard Floyd back at practice: After a rest day on Tuesday, Floyd was back at practice today. He was active, too, registering a pass breakup on an attempt by quarterback Jared Goff during 11-on-11 work.

2) Elsewhere at outside linebacker, rookie Terrell Lewis did not participate in practice for the second straight day. McVay provided an update on Lewis' status prior to today's practice, telling local media the team is "working through some things, trying to figure out what's going on with his knee." The team is doing additional tests, and McVay said he wanted to wait until those results come back before providing further details.

3) With Lewis out, Jachai Polite got more opportunities in practice. Getting some work against the first team offense, he pressured Goff into an incompletion that ended a drive during 11-on-11 work.

4) Inside linebacker Troy Reeder recorded his second takeaway of the week, making a one-handed interception off a tipped John Wolford pass. Yesterday, he had a fumble recovery.

5) We saw flashbacks to last Saturday's scrimmage, with Goff connecting with rookie wide receiver Van Jefferson for a deep completion, though this time it was deep down the right sideline instead of the left. This one also went for a touchdown.

6) Really liked inside linebacker Micah Kiser's energy today. It's not the first time this series has drawn attention to his instincts, but that's what stood out today. Anytime he made contact, you could hear the pads pop. He had a near interception during 7-on-7 drills, and during 11-on-11 work, he had back-to-back run stops against rookie running back Cam Akers inside the five to prevent the offense from scoring.

7) While Goff's completion to Jefferson was impressive, he also connected with wide receiver Robert Woods twice for touchdowns during 11-on-11 work. One of those completions included a one-handed grab over the middle by Woods for a catch-and-run score.

8) After kickers were excluded from team drills yesterday, they came on for end-of-drive field goal attempts during situational 11-on-11 work.

9) Creating competition: These remaining practices are all about maximizing competitive situations to evaluate the back-end of the roster ahead of Saturday's 53-man deadline, and once again there was a good mix of first-team offense vs. second-team defense, second-team offense vs. first-team defense, etc.

10) Speaking of the practice environment, there remains a continued emphasis on keeping players on their feet when tackling/making contact. The goal is obviously to keep players as healthy as possible while retaining an element of physicality heading into next week.

Just thought that I'd get an early start on the "fuck the" threads.

C’mon Man!!!!!!!!!!

In the spirit of threads beginning with "F the ____", and since time is running slower than a paraplegic turtle, I see no reason to wait to start the hate, so:
Fuck the Cowboys!!!

and f endzones without team names and logos in them.....

Before I ask this question, I just want to say, I have been a Robert woods fan since we signed him.
I mean the guy is a hell of a receiver.

The thing that I don't understand is ... Why does he not score more TD's. He has good open field running ability. I've seen him do some awesome stuff running jet sweeps, reverses, screens and after the catch.
I mean there is, at least in my mind, no reason he shouldn't be putting up 7-10 TD's a year.

I'm just curious as to you guys's thoughts, because I can't for the life of me figure out how he can catch 90 balls yet only score 2 rec TD's.
He has never put up good TD numbers throughout his career. His highest TD total was in 2018 with 6 TD's from 86 rec.
In my mind, if he pulls in 80+ balls, he should have at minimum of 7td's


Again this is not about me knocking him. It's just that Woods is a better than average athlete with running talent.
I'm just kind of stumped about it. Anybody?