It's not even training camp, but Rams proving that they know key to success

Teamwork is not something that is easily forged or found in the NFL, or even on an NFL team's roster. While everyone on the team wants the team to win, every player on the Los Angeles Rams roster must surpass his teammates and colleagues to win the right to compete for the team. Healthy competition leads to 'may the best man win.' But how can this team ensure that competition remains healthy?

Well, if they have not discovered the key to success in 2025, they absolutely are on the right track.

When the Los Angeles Rams opted to relocate their minicamp to Maui, the team elected to push teamwork to the top of the objectives. This was admittedly not the right location to get much football accomplished. But with a very young Rams roster, it became the perfect setting to set the bar for players to find the right work-life balance that can quickly be skewed as they focus intensively on becoming better football players.

Football camp is typically synonymous with sacrifice. Not just for the grueling grind of players, but for every family member as well. So it's entirely surprising that the Rams have taken a difficult span out of players' lives, and replaced it with a period of making lifetime memories.

Why is this so important?

When former All-Pro defensive lineman Aaron Donald asked the team to make sure players care, he unlocked the secret to success in the NFL. Until then, projecting the likelihood of players finding successful careers in professional football was steeped in measurables and data plotting. But in the simplest terms, Donald revealed one of the greatest mysteries of the NFL. How passionate are players?

The Rams learned in the 2023 NFL Draft that the rapidly developed friendship between rookie OLB Byron Young and NT Kobie Turner allowed the pair to reach outstanding success in their rookie seasons. The Rams purposefully drafted great friends from Florida State in OLB Jared Verse and DT Braden Fiske, and discovered equally impressive results.

So, in 2025, the team decided to apply those lessons on a far grander scale, and took the entire team to Maui for a minicamp that was more like an organizational retreat than a football camp. And Behind the Grind Episode 3 captures all the magic of the event:

It's about building trust. Trust, loyalty, and kinsmanship. To win in the NFL, individuals must come together to play as one team. That means that every player must trust every other player on the football field to do their jobs. And if each player knows in his heart that his teammates are giving their all, he will give his all, too.

The Rams are investing in building that unquestioned level of trust, loyalty, and kinship that is needed throughout the long NFL season. As players face adversity, they lose hope and point fingers. But when a team faces adversity, it rallies around determination and resolve, with every member of that team trying to lift others up.

The Rams football team would love nothing more than to be a team that rallies in the face of adversity. And don't let it slip, but from all the evidence so far, they already are. Thanks for reading.

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