LA Rams: We aren’t surprised so many surprised by Terrell Burgess Day 1

Safeties of a feather, play together

His rookie teammate, Terrell Burgess needed a bit of time to warm up to the NFL. But by the time he fell to injury against the Chicago Bears (playing for an injured Jordan Fuller), he was peaking well enough to flash future starter as well.  So the LA Rams had conceivably found not one, but two potential starters on day three of the 2020 NFL Draft. Seriously? No wonder safety coach Ejiro Evero was promoted to secondary coach this year.

Los Angeles Rams

That appeared to set up a huge training camp showdown between the heavy-hitting Taylor Rapp against the savvy pass-defense of Terrell Burgess.  On one side, Rapp is the veteran who has been with the Rams secondary longer, and he had already had plenty of starting experience filling in for the injured John Johnson III in 2019.  Rapp had a John Johnson ferocity, and his play compared to veteran Eric Weddle seemed to put Rapp in a better light.

But Burgess had a lot of positives going for him too. For starters, he was a hybrid cornerback/safety in college. That background was ideal for what the LA Rams and many NFL teams, look for in terms of secondary help. Burgess was brought to the Rams specifically to use that duality to amp up pass coverage in an NFL that continues to lean more and more heavily into the passing game.

Of course, with almost no training camp, no preseason games, and entering the NFL as a rookie, those hybrid type players were even more handicapped than usual because their roles and responsibilities were twice that of a normal player, and they had less than half the time to learn everything. Burgess was one such player who was forced into a sink or swim indoctrination in the NFL. He swam, of course, but came up sputtering at times early in the season. While not a pretty mastery, he did get his arms around everything. That allowed him to play in both a safety and cornerback role, as needed against the respective offensive formation.