LOS ANGELES — Rob Havenstein stood silently for a moment on the green grass of the Los Angeles Rams’ practice field in Woodland Hills, Calif., on Thursday afternoon. White smoke from the days-old Palisades fire billowed along a ridge line several miles away. Helicopters dropping water whirred around and through it as air and ground crews battled one of the multiple fires that have decimated Los Angeles over the past week.
Woodland Hills was, as that day began, a tiny pocket of blue sky amid pincers of flame and smoke enclosing around the county. So the Rams practiced, operating on schedule as they prepared to host a wild-card playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings in Inglewood on Monday night.
Havenstein scanned the horizon. He saw new plumes of darker smoke in the West Hills, where he and many players and coaches live. A familiar dread flooded into his mind.
“You’re like, ‘Oh, man, another one?’ … ‘Wait a second, I live over there,’ ” he said Friday. The sight, and the corresponding feeling, reminded him of 2018, when the Woolsey fire raged through Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
As the new smoke grew, Havenstein and several others, including equipment staff, bolted for the parking lot from the field, grabbing their phones from the locker room as they went.
As a 10-year NFL veteran, Havenstein battles against physical pain every day. Thursday, he felt only fear as he stood in the parking lot trying to reach his wife on the phone, his jersey soaked with sweat from practice, his face pale. He was in his full practice gear, with stabilizing pads and braces around his shoulders and elbow, his cleats on and several yards of athletic tape wrapped around his ankles and feet like hooves. The right tackle is 32, a husband, a father of three kids and a dog and cat dad, a team captain.
“I don’t get service at my house, and we’ve been without power,” he said. “I had no way of really knowing. Luckily my wife went in there and kind of saved the day. Got everyone out and safe.
“Someone has got to go in and get ’em. I’m here. … I’m getting voicemail, voicemail, ‘find my friends’ is not working.”
The Rams’ home playoff game was moved from SoFi Stadium. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Thirty players and coaches evacuated their homes that afternoon, and all of them know they are the lucky ones. In such destruction — tens of thousands of acres burned and people displaced, thousands of structures eviscerated, more than a dozen people killed with the death toll expected to rise — Havenstein, like so many throughout the region, feared who (and what) he might lose.
Fire changes a person’s world fast. The previous week, all anybody in the organization could think about was what they had earned.
The Rams were NFC West champions, and had clinched a spot in the playoffs — a home game in the wild-card round. They even got to rest most of their offensive starters in Week 18. Motivating signage and symbols went up in the locker room: a printed screen shot of Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell telling Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell after beating Minnesota in Week 18 to clinch a first-round bye, “I’ll see you in two weeks.” Someone’s replica of the Lombardi Trophy showed up on the equipment shelf that every player walks by on the way to the locker room, a tradition each time the Rams are in the playoffs. It was started by Von Miller as the 2021 team went on its Super Bowl run. He’d write encouraging notes next to it to spur on now-retired superstar Aaron Donald.
They had come back from the nearly unbelievable: a 1-4 record going into their bye week, the worst start to a season in head coach Sean McVay’s tenure, and just an 11 percent shot at the playoffs according to The Athletic’s model. After an embarrassing 41-10 loss to the Arizona Cardinals in Week 2, McVay stood bewildered and angry at the lectern.
“These are the moments where you get tested,” he said. “I know when I look back on moments of growth for me, they never occurred in good times. They only occurred in moments like this. You get that pit in your gut. You got a choice: You want to attack it? Or do you want to fold?
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During the bye week, McVay had blunt conversations with some of his assistant coaches. On-field adjustments were one task, but most importantly he had to find a way to better understand his team.
McVay spoke often in 2023 about that team’s climb out of adversity as one of the youngest teams in the NFL that season — the Rams drafted 14 rookies that spring and many played right away — as a cathartic coaching and development experience after a terrible 2022 season. That team “helped (him) find his way again,” he said.
But the head coach struggled at times early in 2024 to identify the personality of the newer group. They were a mixture of still more rookies playing starting snaps, a couple of key veterans such as quarterback Matthew Stafford and receiver Cooper Kupp, veteran free-agent acquisitions who were culture fits but couldn’t hold down a role (guard/center Jonah Jackson, cornerback Tre’Davious White), and a cluster of second-year players confident beyond their years because they played so many snaps as rookies.
All of the pieces didn’t seem to initially fit together, in part because the team was so injured to start the year.
McVay needed to connect them.
Unlike their previous temporary practice site in Thousand Oaks, Calif., the layout of the newer facilities that have housed the Rams since late August puts McVay’s office on the far side of where players often congregate. McVay isn’t the type of coach who hangs out in the locker room, but has always had an office in the path of players’ daily routines. When that door was closed — as it was at times when McVay dealt with burnout in 2022 — it felt like a black hole for the entire building. He didn’t like the natural separation of the new layout and the inadvertent distance it created.
So McVay sought players out. He sat in more position meetings on both sides of the ball than he ever had previously — not to hover, but to be a part of the group. To do so he delegated to assistants some tasks he used to pore over meticulously for long hours alone. He had frequent on-field and in-office conversations with players.
“Being able to kind of take your hands off the wheel, trust a lot of different people to do their jobs, but be more connected with this group (has) ended up making me (feel) a whole lot more fulfilled because when you’re able to develop relationships and feel more connected to not only the team, but your coaching staff and just be a little bit more present — you realize how much you thrive on that,” McVay said. “(It) motivates you to want to do right for them.”
For example, McVay spent extra time with kicker Josh Karty after a series of missed kicks this season (Karty has since become the Special Teams Player of the Month for December/January for his consistency and range). He pulled star second-year receiver Puka Nacua aside for a long chat following a Thursday practice a few weeks ago.
“I’ve gone to speak with him multiple times,” said team captain Kobie Turner, “it’s not just where you go in and just vent, or just talk. It’s like, right after you talk there are actionable steps that he tries to apply. He’s truly listening to where we’re at — and listening to what we have to say as a way for him to grow as a coach and as a leader of all of us.”
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By Week 12, the Rams were 5-6 and at an inflection point. They had just lost another lopsided game to the Philadelphia Eagles, whose offensive line outsized and outmatched a young L.A. defensive front missing Donald. Running back Saquon Barkley had 255 rushing yards, including touchdown runs of 70 and 72 yards.
To even win five games through all of their injuries had worn out players and staff.
All but one starting offensive lineman (right guard Kevin Dotson) missed one or more games to either injury — or in left tackle Alaric Jackson’s case, a two-game suspension — through the first half of the year. Week 12 in New Orleans was the first time the line played all five of its intended starters. Nacua missed most of training camp with a knee injury, then went on injured reserve after re-injuring it in Week 1. Tight end Tyler Higbee continued rehabbing from ACL and PCL injuries suffered in the wild-card game months earlier, and his replacements — a three-headed combination of free-agent Colby Parkinson, Hunter Long and Davis Allen had underwhelming production. Among the few bright spots was running back Kyren Williams, who powered the stifled offense with Stafford and minus the team’s top receivers. Uncertainty had even recently swirled around the futures of Stafford and Kupp after the latter was the subject of trade conversations ahead of the November deadline.
Sean McVay and Kyren Williams celebrate the Rams’ overtime win in Seattle earlier this season. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
McVay had a message for his players in their Wednesday all-team meeting as preparation began for Week 13 in New Orleans: They had only 39 days of work still guaranteed to them. That was it.
What would they do with them?
“Go all out,” said Williams. “Give it everything I’ve got. Sacrifice what I need to sacrifice, put it all (out there) for this team. It really hit me when he said that.”
Stafford said McVay’s comments galvanized the team.
“Sometimes you kick off September 1st and you go, ‘Man, there’s a lot of football to be played.’ It’s daunting to look at the whole chunk,” he said. “He broke it down for us.”
Perhaps no position group embodies how the Rams came to life in the second half of the season than their defensive line. Led by first-year defensive coordinator Chris Shula, a front that ultimately featured all rookie and second-year starters (and was the roster’s most scrutinized after Donald’s retirement last spring) struggled as the year began. The defensive line was literally pushed backward in Week 1 as the Detroit Lions ran the ball over and through them in overtime to win. They couldn’t take down Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray in Week 2. The Eagles ran them over.
After particularly bad losses, position coaches Giff Smith, A.C. Carter and Joe Coniglio would ask them to re-visit their fundamentals even if it meant using simple-looking tactics. They’d overturn large gray plastic trash bins and arrange them as if they were opposing linemen, creating three-dimensional gap assignments for each defensive player. The players spent extra time after practices literally walking through the bins, asking and answering each others’ questions as they went.
After the losses to Detroit and Arizona, players walked out to practice to see the bins on the field. They came out again after the Eagles game.
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Honesty and the extra work brought the group closer. As the regular season drew to a close, the young front featuring Turner, rookies Braden Fiske and Jared Verse, second-year outside linebacker Byron Young, and fifth-year outside linebacker Michael Hoecht, started to give shape to the Rams’ overall identity.
Now, they have friendly wagers (the player with the lowest sack tally has to shave his beard) and a secret handshake used to celebrate successful plays out of their “Cheetah” package, which features Hoecht, Fiske, Turner, Young and Verse (a combination that produced 31 1/2 sacks in the regular season).
During the back stretch of the season they set the tone for the team when the offense struggled to score points or even sustain drives. The Rams scored 44 points in a win over the Buffalo Bills in Week 14, but like it often has this season, the offense has stalled in games since. In three consecutive wins from Weeks 15 to 17 to cap an undefeated December, the offense totaled 44 points while the defense — led by the young front line — held opponents to 24 combined points (eight per game).
After their second win over rival San Francisco in Week 15 for the season sweep, the five players of the “Cheetah” package posed for a team photographer in the end zone as a misting rain fell. Each of them now has a copy they all signed for each other.
When Turner and his fiancee evacuated their home due to the fires earlier this week, that photograph was among the few items he took with him.
Pose for the pic. 📸 pic.twitter.com/40bIlhTtcQ
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) December 13, 2024
The NFL made its official decision to move the game to Arizona during Thursday’s practice, and team officials who weren’t on the field alerted business staff at the separate Agoura Hills, Calif., office (which also had to evacuate just a few minutes later), and Vikings officials.
Air quality throughout the region was a factor in the NFL’s decision as well as the continued risk for pop-up fires and keeping local traffic minimal in case areas needed to evacuate. Also significant: to host any NFL game, a large number of first responders, law enforcement and medical personnel need to staff the stadium. On average, the Rams have 100 such personnel at Sofi Stadium as well as at least two full paramedics crews/EMTs with life support ambulances, in accordance with the NFL’s Emergency Action Plan.
Hosting the game would likely mean diverting those professionals away from active duties fighting the fires and related support.
“Obviously it sucks to move a home playoff game,” said Havenstein, “but it sucks worse for Southern California to go through this. So this is a small price to pay.”
Once the Rams got official word of the relocation, they scheduled a video meeting with the entire organization, plus families of staff and players. The latter would be able to come on the trip — plus any pets or extended family if sheltering with someone in the organization. Arizona Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill offered his team’s plane to help transport the oversized travel party of about 350 people (usually players, coaches and support staff take one).
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Friday morning, McVay held another team meeting. He wasn’t sure he could keep the focus on football after Thursday’s evacuations — which included Veronika, his wife, and their young son Jordan. But as he walked into the room where players and staff sat waiting and scanned across their faces, he saw they were locked in on him.
This time, he had no number to give them. Instead, McVay held up a paperweight that he usually keeps in his office. On it are the words, “built for this.” In the context of football, their location change wouldn’t be too much for the players to handle. What hadn’t they overcome already?
“As much as we can’t control the environment around us,” Hoecht said, “(football) is something we can control.”
As players, coaches, their families and a few pets boarded the two planes later that afternoon — nicknamed “Noah’s Ark” — Hoecht and his girlfriend handed out Los Angeles Fire Department sweatshirts and T-shirts, purchased from a vendor whose proceeds will benefit the LAFD.
Some spent the short flight to Phoenix scrolling the news or responding to worried messages from family and friends. Others chatted to each other across aisles and rows.
A couple of younger kids (and even some Rams players) marveled over Koda, a Great Dane belonging to offensive lineman Conor McDermott who made the trip.
“We’re rolling as a family,” Hoecht said. “We’re going in there, and our job is to handle business. And we’re going in there for everybody in Los Angeles, everybody affected by the fires, everybody displaced, everybody evacuated. That’s what this week is for, for us. That’s what we play for.”
Conor McDermott, with wife Kelly and dog, Koda, at the LAX terminal. (Photo courtesy of Conor McDermott)
(Top photo of Sean McVay: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)