Sean McVay left the Rams roster’s first week of OTAs with a clear takeaway: the secondary is already moving in the right direction. He said he has been pleased with how the group is learning multiple spots, handling the concepts and showing the kind of competitiveness he wants to see back there.
The work came last Thursday in Woodland Hills, California, in a seven-on-seven setting with no live contact, but McVay said the early signs were encouraging. He pointed to the way the Rams are teaching flexibility in the defensive backfield and said the coaching staff has liked the trajectory of that progression, along with the connection the players are building.
That matters now because the team is only in the first week of OTAs, when coaches are trying to identify how much movement they can ask from their defensive backs before training camp changes the pace. The Rams are still in the part of the offseason where ideas are being installed and tested, not proven against full-speed contact, which makes any early praise provisional even when it comes from the head coach.
McVay said the group is being asked to learn “really all the spots on the back end,” a reminder that the Rams want options rather than fixed roles. He also said he has liked what he has seen from Trent McDuffie, who was described as being all over the secondary. Pro Football Focus charted McDuffie with 479 snaps at cornerback last season and another 209 snaps in the slot, box or on the defensive line, the sort of usage that fits the flexible approach McVay is describing. Quentin Lake also plays the star position, adding another movable piece to the mix.
The early seven-on-seven work offered a limited glimpse, but McVay still singled out the defense for competitive plays and for the way the players have responded to the teaching process. That is useful data for a Rams secondary that appears built to shift around the formation, but the real answer will come later, when the offense and defense are both in pads and the staff has to settle on how those pieces fit together.
For now, the Rams seem to have an offseason plan that values interchangeable defensive backs, with McDuffie and Lake at the center of it. What remains unresolved is how much of that flexibility survives once the team moves beyond OTAs and into the harder, faster tests ahead.
