A little marker on the timeline for the 2018 Los Angeles Rams.
The 2018 NFL Draft is officially over. We’re now looking at that roughly three-month span to get from the draft to training camp. Last year, the 2017 NFL Draft ended on April 29; the Rams’ 2017 training campopened on July 29.
So as we buckle in for the long divide, it’s worth noting today is the first official day of Phase II of the offseason program. Time to put away those Phase I clothes. They’re useless at this point. Put em in storage. Break out the Phase II gear lest ye be mocked soundly by all.
What is Phase II?
Phase Two consists of the next three weeks of the program. On-field workouts may include individual player instruction and drills as well as team practice conducted on a “separates” basis. No live contact or team offense vs. team defense drills are permitted.
It’s a soft-practice period mostly to introduce the new roster members to each other, bring the rookies in and get everyone acclimated to the offensive and defensive systems.
Or put simply, it’s the three-week slow burn to Phase III with organized team activities (OTAs) and the optional mandatory minicamp in mid-June.
One interesting note is that Rams Head Coach Sean McVay is opting not to hold a traditional rookie minicamp as allowed by the collective bargaining agreement. He explained in his post-draft presser:
We’re not planning on having a rookie camp. We’ll have something more similar to a tryout camp. That will be in a couple weeks. You look at some of the people that we envision adding to really get us to around that 87 to 88, and then you’ve got a couple spots to get up to your 90 (man roster) allotment. I think we’ll use that as an opportunity to see if we can find some spots just based on the numbers and how we want to allocate that 90 over the course of some of the different positions.
So stay tuned. The staff will be going through the roster and putting together the first touches on the 2018 season these next three weeks. Phase III is obviously a more intense and thus more useful practice period before the one-month summer break before training camp hits.
The annual voyage across the post-draft desert begins now…