Rams OTA Recap: May 23

Rams head coach Jeff Fisher met with the media after Wednesday’s practice, and he discussed the team’s progress thus far. It sounds like Fisher likes how everything is going, although this early in the process I wouldn’t expect him to say any different. In an added bonus, Sam Bradford and Steven Jackson also met with media members, so here is a little of what all three had to say.

Fisher: “We got a lot done (Wednesday), a lot of different situations and scenarios, end of the game scenarios. Backed up, we wanted to make sure that sometimes it gets loud. You need to be able to communicate and execute in the huddle, so we had a fairly good rookie class voice-wise. I could have got some more out of them, but we got a lot done the last two days. Things have gone well.”

(On the mix the Rams have at tight end)
“We’ve got them all shapes and sizes and Coach (Rob Boras) is doing a great job with them. It’s a very important position in our offense. You need flexibility and they need to be able to be interchanged, sometimes at the fullback position, sometimes you spread them open. It’s an important position, like I said, so we’re pleased so far.”

(On how much Quick and Givens missed last week)
“They’re up to speed. We have to watch their legs, but they both were in the book and coaches spoke with them at night, so they’re fine. By the end of the week, it will be almost as if they never left, but still when they’re gone, you miss them. You miss some valuable opportunity.”

Bradford: (On his comfort level with the offense)
“It’s getting better every day. I’ve gone through this process a couple times now. I kind of know how to handle it. We come out, we put in a bunch of new stuff today. It seems like we do that every day. Just try to get better with it. When we come back to review it, hopefully we’ve had a couple looks at it by then and we’re able to handle all the looks that a defense could show us. It’s just nice to have an offseason to be able to come out here and make mistakes. You learn from your mistakes. Coaches have been great about that. They’re not pressing. They’re not screaming. As long as we learn from it, I think we’re doing the right thing. It’s just good to be out here going through those things.”

(On if he picks things up quicker as he approaches his third season)
“I think it does. Just being comfortable with the league now and how these days are going to go. I just feel better. Even though we’re not running the same offense, I’ve seen things. I feel more comfortable making calls, speaking up. I think it definitely has gotten easier as far as that goes, but it’s back to square one learning this offense, so a lot of hard work to put in, a lot of time.”

SJ39: (On how OTAs have been going)
“We just wrapped our fifth OTA. Everything is coming along…not only with our individual coaches, but today we had a lot of scenarios: backed-up, four-minute offense, we did a little two minute yesterday. We’re getting a wide range of work in a short amount of time.”

(On if this coaching staff has been a different experience than the past five years)
“It’s quite a difference. It’s ran in a way that, Coach Fisher has a really lax kind of…on Thursdays, like tomorrow for instance, we’ll have one day off between our third OTA for the week. We have something, sorry I forget the name of the game, but we play a game after team which is more for conditioning but it’s really lax where you can still compete and have fun and just enjoy each other. Things like that, that change the monotony of things going around, but still getting the job done. Those little subtle things help form camaraderie and guys getting to know each other.”