LOS ANGELES — After 12 practices and battles back and forth between a loaded offense and star-studded defense, the Los Angeles Rams finally strapped it up against another team in Tuesday’s joint practice with the Dallas Cowboys.
Linebacker Omar Speights kept bringing the heat. He laid a hit during a goal-line drill that had Cowboys offensive and Rams defensive players from the sideline running in for a giant scrum. The group included Myles Garrett, who was in street clothes and wasn’t practicing.
But like every other moment in Tuesday’s 90-minute practice, the tensions diffused before anything more than talk happened.
“We could be a little more physical with them,” strong safety Kam Curl said. “We have to take care of our teammates. … You always want to set the tone. You don’t want to get pushed around. But at the end of the day, we want to get the work done. We know what we’re out here for. We’re not out here to fight. This ain’t no UFC fight.”
Here are six observations from the joint practice.
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1. The Rams did have one injury scare when wide receiver Puka Nacua left with trainer Reggie Scott and was not able to finish the practice. Coach Sean McVay had not heard an update on him as of the post-practice news conference, nor had Matthew Stafford.
“Nobody ran up to me in a panic, so I don’t think it was anything too major,” Stafford said.
The new-look defense did not feature Garrett, as the reigning Defensive Player of the Year sat out a second straight practice with swelling in his knee, which goes back to an issue that led to four days off earlier in training camp. It’s unclear which knee is injured, but Garrett did flash a sleeve over his left knee while in shorts on the sideline.
McVay said Garrett estimated he’s been around 85 percent when he’s been practicing recently, and his situation is nothing to be concerned with.
2. Given that the Rams’ offense is the known commodity with every starter back from the No. 1 scoring unit last season, I spent practice focused on the defense, which is fitting two new cornerbacks in with Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson and got the greater challenge on Tuesday. Even without Garrett’s presence, it was a fascinating scene.
That defense got to go up against what is arguably the league’s best offense other than their own. The Cowboys feature a top-10 player from last season in passing (Dak Prescott), rushing (Javonte Williams) and receiving (George Pickens), in addition to three-time All-Pro wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, two-time Pro Bowl tight end Jake Ferguson and three first-round offensive linemen in left tackle Tyler Guyton, left guard Tyler Smith and right guard Tyler Booker.
The Rams’ secondary mostly won the day, thanks to some help from the pass rush. And what stood out was the versatility in their approach.
Los Angeles lived in lots of dime personnel, something it led the league in last season, but it can get more creative and versatile with McDuffie’s ability to play inside and outside, in addition to the growing versatility of Curl and Quentin Lake. McDuffie often slid inside in these settings, offering a second nickel cornerback of sorts to Lake, which threw off the matchups the Cowboys were hunting for by motioning Pickens and Lamb into the slot, or a normal method to expose the lacking coverage of most teams they face.
3. That meant Emmanuel Forbes Jr. got plenty of run. He played mostly with hard outside leverage to take away the deep passes and the sideline throws Prescott was hunting for on designed rollouts or when the pocket broke down and he had to scramble, which happened time and again. Likewise, Forbes was stronger on those outside throws, including a couple where he was draped all over the receiver in tight man coverage to force incompletions.
He did slip out of his breaks on a couple of quick slant passes, where Pickens and Lamb are among the hardest covers in the league. But the Rams can feel more comfortable with that approach given how they crowd McDuffie, Lake and Curl into these areas and can trust their instincts to help off their coverage assignment to make the tackle, and that happened several times.
The Cowboys weren’t able to get many explosive plays as a result. They did generate a couple of yards-after-catch opportunities with dumpoffs to running backs and tight ends in the flat or on play-action leak patterns that tapped into Prescott’s ability to extend the play with his legs. The only time the Cowboys came close to scoring a touchdown was in the red zone period, where Prescott’s dual-threat abilities manipulated the numbers so much that it’s that much harder to get a stop when he can find Ferguson in the back of the end zone, which happened a couple of times.
4. The coverage highlight came when Lake intercepted Prescott in the red zone. The Cowboys tried to throw a quick shot to Pickens from the slot, but Lake was all over it, running the route for Pickens and stabbing the ball out of the air before running with it until he was tackled.
The play was an extension of the camp Lake has had, where he’s been consistently around the ball for pass breakups, interceptions on rushed throws and a scoop-and-score touchdown.
After signing a three-year, $38.3 million extension last fall, Lake is eyeing the playmaking as the next step in his game. He scored his first career interception last season against the Baltimore Ravens, but he’s had a hand in just four career turnovers, not including the two-point conversion he intercepted last year.
He’s been trying to incorporate more of the mindset that free safety Kam Kinchens is pushing on him, and he should be freer to do that with the additions of Garrett, McDuffie and Watson to eliminate previous structural weaknesses and introduce more rushed or forced throws.
“We always talk about calculated risk: If you see it, go get it,” Lake said. “(Kinchens) is the one who taught me that: ‘Q, just go out there. Sometimes you’re going to have to nut up and believe in it and go get it.’ I did that a couple times, but he’s the one who taught me that, which is a very, very valuable piece of my game that I’m going to take with me for a long time.”
Forcing more turnovers is a part of Quentin Lake’s game that he wants to improve. (Kirby Lee / Imagn Images)
5. Even with Garrett out, the Rams’ pass rush feasted on two tackles who are currently the lone question marks on the Cowboys’ offense.
Byron Young had a field day against Cowboys right tackle Terence Steele. He won with speed around the edge, one time so freely that he actually overran a sack that Prescott turned into a short scramble by dipping around his speeding body. He won with the bull rush at times, including one rep where he drove the pocket back so deep into Prescott that the Cowboys quarterback was left chucking the ball over McDuffie’s tight coverage on the outside just to get it away.
He had another rep where he lined up on the left side and threw Guyton into the running back for a quick run stop.
Josaiah Stewart also had a busy day. Often on the left side in place of Garrett, Stewart kept finding his way around the edge to bring run plays down in the backfield, and he scored a sack on another play with a deep speed rush.
The best offense the Cowboys had outside of the red zone came when Williams would cut back on inside runs, make a defender miss and gash up the middle, which happened a couple of times. Nate Landman and Speights had a busy day of physical run stops when that creativity couldn’t come together.
6. The Rams don’t have an update on Aaron Donald’s decision on whether or not to come back and play, but he did get another workout in at the facility on Monday, along with current Rams defensive linemen Braden Fiske and Desjuan Johnson, whom Donald played with in 2023.
At age 35 and two years removed from playing, Donald worked on his footwork with cones and ladders in a video posted by 2Tenths Speed & Agility. He flashed elements of his athleticism that once made him a three-time Defensive Player of the Year.
“It didn’t feel like he missed a beat at all,” Johnson said. “It feels like he even got a little bit faster, a little bit hungrier in a way.”
For as dominant as the Rams’ defense has been over the past week, Donald remains one more layer of fascination.
