IRVINE, Calif. -- The team with the youngest coach in the NFL is almost certain to be the youngest roster in the league this year, and the Los Angeles Rams may be the youngest team in the NFL in many years.
As of Tuesday morning, 52 of the Rams 88 players on their current active roster whose ages are publicly available are 24 years old or younger. Two-thirds of the team has two or fewer years of experience in the league.
About seven months ago Sean McVay seemed exhausted. Today, he's invigorated -- in part by the youth.
"I think you always want to have an understanding of what you're dealing with. But our job is to be able to reach those players and to figure out how to connect with them, to help them reach and realize their highest potential," McVay told me earlier in camp. "There's certain guys that accelerate faster than others. You know, I've been around some rookies that seem like they're 10-year vets and then you've been around some rookies that feel like rookies. And so I think you want to just do as good a job as you can of bringing along guys.
"I think the patience is an important thing. I'm not a very patient guy, but hopefully I'll continue to be a little bit more patient. But we're going to compete. We're going to continue to strain and I think it's going to be a really fun group to watch the way that these guys compete and hopefully continue to get better every single day, every single week when you guys are seeing us playing these games that count. Man, I'm just enjoying it and it is a blessing."
When rosters were set heading into Week 1 last year, the average age of an NFL team was 26.08 years. The Rams came in just younger than that at 25.87 years.
Naturally, once the roster is trimmed to 53 men, the Rams won't have an average age as young as it is today (which hovers around 24.6 years.) But it's still possible the Rams' average age by opening weekend is younger than 25.
The 2017 Browns are the youngest team in the NFL over the past 40 years. That Week 1 group had an average age of 24.76 and wound up going 0-16 in what was a tanked season. And the youngest season-opening roster in the NFL since 1970 belongs to the 1978 New York Jets at 24.5 years, and that group of pups went 8-8 and missed the playoffs.
Having a young roster doesn't mean a team will be unsuccessful, of course. The Lions had the youngest roster of any team last year at 25.07 years and narrowly missed the playoffs.
The Rams' youth movement is partially by design and partially by necessity. Instead of spreading out their dead money hits over several years, the Rams decided to take their lumps mostly in 2023. According to Spotrac, the Rams have the second-most dead money this year at $72.2 million, behind only Tampa Bay's $74.3 million (of which $35.1 million belongs to Tom Brady.)
That makes building a roster with veterans rather difficult. L.A.'s biggest outside free-agent signing this offseason was Demarcus Robinson at one year and $1.165 million. But on Monday, the Rams did sign 27-year-old safety John Johnson III to add a couple more grays to the team.
McVay compared this roster -- with all the competition across positions -- to the 2017 year when he took over the team.
"You want to make sure that you're inspiring positive change with the demeanor, the way that you're just handling inevitable things that go like this in a football season," McVay says. "And so even though I'm still very young, you know, there's been a lot of learning lessons in the six years that I've been here. And I got great people that I can really lean on. And so that's what it's all about. It's being surrounded by great people. That's what we've got. And we're looking forward to attacking the challenge the right way."
Why Vrabel deserves credit for handing over HC duties
Titans head coach Mike Vrabel deserves a great deal of kudos for his unique and unusual decision this week.
On Monday, Vrabel announced that assistant head coach/defensive line coach Terrell Williams will serve as the head coach of the Titans for their exhibition Saturday against the Bears.
There's no issue with Vrabel. He's not sick and he's not going on vacation. He'll be right there all week and even on the sideline Saturday night.
"We'll go into the game with things that we think we need to try to get done and I'm sure he'll try to do that, and I'll help him where need be," Vrabel told Nashville media Monday. "But I do think it'll be a great opportunity, well deserved. And so, this is something I wanted to do."
Coaches handing over play-calling duties in a preseason game has been done before. And due to a variety of factors (including several due to COVID-19), permanent head coaches have been replaced by assistants in preseason and regular-season games. But I (and others I chatted with) cannot recall a coach freely volunteering the reins for a preseason game.
Vrabel didn't dive into the reasons why he opted to do this, so let me try. First of all, he's an incredibly secure person and head coach. He has a career .585 winning percentage and has been to the playoffs three times in five years.
The 47-year-old Vrabel won NFL Coach of the Year in 2021. (By the way, on a recent visit to the team facilities I spotted that trophy sitting on a cabinet in his office. Not encased in glass or with a spotlight on it. Just sitting there like a table lamp or a book you've been swearing to yourself you'll read for the past several months but still haven't picked it up.)
The Titans are also one of 13 teams that will have joint practices against two teams this summer, having joints with the Patriots and Vikings. So Vrabel will get plenty of opportunity with his team in game-like situations this preseason that he can hand the headset over to Williams.
Beyond that, it's an incredible gesture by Vrabel because it allows an assistant coach to "put some tape out" if you will. In the same way down-the-roster players need to show out in a preseason game so they can get picked up by another team, an assistant coach can get irreplaceable experience while showing what he's got for a potential future employer.
It's further impressive that Vrabel does this for a Black coach amid all the well-documented issues the league has had with teams hiring Black men as head coaches. The league office continues to implement programs to increase diverse hirings but can only do so much. A head coach giving such an opportunity to an assistant -- even no matter race or gender -- is one that, frankly, needs to be replicated by those who are in a position to do so.
49ers have interesting decision looming at QB
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- One of the roster-management decisions I'm fascinated to watch play out is at the quarterback position in San Francisco.
The 49ers plan to start a fully healthy Brock Purdy in Week 1, and behind him they have Trey Lance and Sam Darnold battling for QB2 while Brandon Allen is taking the fourth-team (and when Purdy has an off day, third-team) reps.
On my visit to camp, Darnold had what one source described as his best day. And I was blown away by how sharp Allen looked in his two-to-three reps at the end of each period.
Based off how the NFC Championship game went, you can carve it in stone that this team will carry three quarterbacks on its active roster. It'd be impossible to carry a fourth, and the Niners couldn't stash any of Purdy's backups on a practice squad without them getting scooped up elsewhere.
But the Niners can't keep all four on their active roster. These exhibitions and joint practices will go a long way to deciding the order of backups, but I won't be surprised if San Francisco fields some calls on these quarterbacks in the coming weeks.
Allen looks sharp in camp, and with Joe Burrow's calf strain he could be used in Cincinnati. I believe San Francisco would move on from Lance if a reasonable offer that didn't exist in the spring came along in the next month.
Decisions are soon to come in the Bay.
Daniel Jones takes strength to another level
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The first time I met Daniel Jones I was surprised (for whatever reason) by how tall he was. He's every bit of 6-foot-5 when we met in the hallways of the Giants facilities in the summer of 2019.
Since then I've made an annual camp visit to the Giants and talked to the quarterback. Last week after practice we met briefly on the field, and I'm still stunned at how much stronger he is now than in years past.
This is, admittedly, completely anecdotal, but I'm not sure I have encountered someone this camp tour with as strong a handshake as Jones. He's noticeably more muscular in 2023, and that will only help one of the toughest quarterbacks in the league.
The Giants' strength team has been focusing more on core strength with the team this offseason and summer, doing much more plyometric training and explosion work. Whatever gains D.J. has gotten must have been mostly on his own time.
