The Los Angeles Rams under head coach Sean McVay and general manager Les Snead have augmented their core homegrown stars Jared Goff, Todd Gurley and Aaron Donald primarily with proven veterans, swinging trades to bring in the likes of Brandin Cooks, Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib.
However, the Rams have still received major contributions from fairly recent draft picks like Cooper Kupp and John Johnson III. 2018 fifth-round pick Ogbonnia Okoronkwo was robbed of his chance to make a similar impact in his rookie season thanks to a foot injury that kept him out the entire year.
Until Saturday’s preseason contest in Hawaii against the Dallas Cowboys, Okoronkwo had not seen any game action since the end of his collegiate career at the University of Oklahoma, when the Sooners lost to the Georgia Bulldogs in the 2018 Rose Bowl.
While losing his entire first year in the NFL could obviously be devastating, the linebacker believes being around the Rams kept him in a good mindset, per Stu Jackson of TheRams.com:
“I mean, if you are around this team, these coaches, the training staff, everybody’s just very uplifting, very positive,” Okoronkwo said. “It’s really easy to stay (upbeat) and keep your head above water when they hear you’re going through something like that, because everybody’s going to give you some uplifting words.”
With the Rams still sitting virtually all of their first-stringers this early in the preseason, Okoronkwo got plenty of opportunities against the Cowboys. He entered in the second quarter and recorded one tackle, one pass defensed and one quarterback hit each.
However, Okoronkwo was disappointed with his performance in what eventually became a 14-10 loss to Dallas:
“I didn’t feel like I did too well,” Okoronkwo said. “I’m going to go back to practice and keep working, but honestly, I’m just happy I got to play. I’m grateful that we have the great training staff that we do.”
That same training staff has drawn praise from the most notable Rams linebacker this season. Clay Matthews, in his first season back in Southern California after a decade with the Green Bay Packers, recently praised the team for how it has handled its veterans during training camp.
Since McVay took over as head coach in 2017, and especially during the 2018 season, the Rams have developed a reputation for liberally resting players in an attempt to keep them fresh.
With the Rams making back-to-back postseason appearances that snapped a playoff drought over a decade long, the strategy seems to be paying off.
