Nobody is kicking sand in LA Rams Brian Allen’s face anymore

Find your way back

Well, LA Rams offensive center Brian Allen is not a 98-pound NFL weakling anymore. He is not a punching bag. In fact, quite the opposite. He’s punching back. If there was any question about his preparedness for starting in 2021, they are no more.

In the past two years, Brian Allen got stronger. He got smarter. And folks, thanks to all of the derision he was subjected to on social media, Brian Allen got a bit pissed off. He may have been a nice young man when he arrived at the NFL. But he’s grown a nasty mean streak that is obvious on the football field. It’s that nastiness that may be one of the key reasons that he has earned his starting role back.

Ironically, several unrelated events took place to make it all happen. The Rams low-balled Austin Blythe in their effort to re-sign him. Instead, he took a similarly low offer to play for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Meanwhile, the team failed to draft an offensive center. Instead, the team decided to move Austin Corbett to center and promote Bobby Evans to right guard. But when the pads went on, the LA Rams backtracked quickly, restoring Corbett to right guard, and restoring Allen to the starting center position he held two years ago.

That surprising change of plans did not come without its own set of risks. Because the Rams had practiced Corbett as the starting center almost exclusively, Brian Allen was at square one in terms of hiking the snap to quarterback Matthew Stafford. Since Stafford has newly arrived, that created a bit of urgency for the center quarterback exchange to get a lot of attention in the little remaining time in training camp.