Logan Bruss is still working his way back from a torn ACL but Sean McVay likes the way he’s progressed https://t.co/qqCUkyihy6

— Rams Wire (@TheRamsWire) May 25, 2023

…

from https://www.nfl.com/prospects/logan-bruss/32004252-5581-3072-7020-8fc2225cd6fb

COLLEGE
Wisconsin
HEIGHT
6’ 5’’
WEIGHT
309 lbs
ARM
33 1/8’’
HAND
10 3/4’’

Player Bio

Bruss was a finalist for the 2016 Joe Thomas Award, given to the top high school offensive lineman in Wisconsin. He started six games (three at right tackle, three as a blocking tight end) as a redshirt freshman in 2018. Bruss switched positions during 2019 (12 starts at right tackle, one at right guard) and in 2020 (one at right tackle, five at right guard), when he was named third-team All-Big Ten. He was a second-team all-league selection in 2021, starting nine games at right tackle. Bruss missed three games due to neck and shoulder injuries during the season and opted out the team’s bowl game to get healthy for the NFL draft. — by Chad Reuter

Analysis

Overview

Guard prospect with tackle flexibility who appears to be well-equipped for the NFL game. Bruss is well-proportioned with athletic feet and good core strength. He takes efficient angles to the block in Wisconsin’s zone-heavy running scheme but has the body control, leverage and play strength to operate in any running scheme. Leaning and oversetting are occasional problems, and he needs to improve his hand work in order to keep from getting behind in the early stages of pass protection. Bruss is well-rounded with an athletic profile and should become a good starter early in his career.

Strengths

Three-year starter with enormous hands.
Bent knees and ready hands in his pass sets.
Works at staying square in his slides for as long as possible.
Recognizes quarterback’s drop point and sets depth accordingly.
Athletic in adjusting slide to match the pace of the rusher.
Uses redirect power and sliding feet to protect his edges.
Fits run blocks with good momentum from settle steps.
Centers up contact with a wide strike zone and good lift.
Unencumbered for work-up blocks and stretch plays.
Above-average finding his landmarks as zone blocker.

Weaknesses

Ends up second in race to land punch first.
Needs to play with less predictable, more explosive hands.
Too much weight drifts to his outside foot in his sets.
Can be a little lazy with his outside hand in pass pro.
Could use better attention to hand placement for block security.
Needs to keep weight under his pads throughout the sustain phase.
Had trouble playing too far out on his toes versus Penn State.

Come for the Alaric Jackson pass protection.

Stay for the Cooper Kupp touchdown. pic.twitter.com/d5wIeQaKP7

— Blaine Grisak 💭 (@bgrisakTST) June 2, 2023

.

Don't have to worry about Jackson being overpowered. Handles Vita Vea coming around the edge. pic.twitter.com/dt9dQeS6s7

— Blaine Grisak 💭 (@bgrisakTST) June 2, 2023

.

Jackson does a great job of taking his guy wide and forcing them to go the longest route to the QB. Does that to Joe Tryon here. Allows Stafford time for the deep ball. pic.twitter.com/fXof0YgDJq

— Blaine Grisak 💭 (@bgrisakTST) June 2, 2023

.

Alaric Jackson = 🧱🧱🧱

Has his man on 🔒on this play at LT. pic.twitter.com/9sKZAQmsZ7

— Blaine Grisak 💭 (@bgrisakTST) June 2, 2023

.

Jackson remains extremely solid in pass pro. This is a longer developing route. Gives Stafford time to find Kupp. Exactly what you want from your LT. pic.twitter.com/pgd7oNd5he

— Blaine Grisak 💭 (@bgrisakTST) June 2, 2023

the various oline combos the rams fielded last year, by game, red text = guys who are now gone. pic.twitter.com/9ZuzzRZFGk

— roberto clemente (@rclemente2121) June 3, 2023

PFF still ranks Rams offensive line among worst groups heading into 2023 season. https://t.co/7Te1QuIO1p

— Blaine Grisak 💭 (@bgrisakTST) June 13, 2023

Rodrigue…from the 6/23 post in this thread: OTAs … w/ a good re-cap article (posted 6/23)

Ranking my favorite offensive line combinations, from the left side to the right:

• Alaric Jackson, Tremayne Anchrum Jr., Coleman Shelton, Steve Avila, Rob Havenstein

• Jackson, Anchrum, Brian Allen, Avila, Havenstein

• Jackson, Avila, Shelton, Logan Bruss, Havenstein

• Joe Noteboom, Jackson, Shelton, Avila, Havenstein

Bruss also got some reps at right tackle, where he played multiple games in college. Something to watch!

***

The Rams have plenty to sort out before the season begins, including a handful of positions on offense.

My best guess as to who will be part of the starting offense come Week 1 https://t.co/X6XjMSBRVj

— Cameron DaSilva (@camdasilva) June 22, 2023

Left tackle: Joe Noteboom

The offensive line is where things get really interesting, beginning with left tackle. Noteboom will need to not only stay healthy this year, but he’ll have to hold off Alaric Jackson for the starting job, regardless of his larger salary. Sean McVay has said every spot on this team will be earned so Noteboom won’t be handed the starting spot just because he has a sizable contract. Still, I think he’ll win the battle in camp.

Left guard: Steve Avila

Avila has already been working with the first-team offense so the Rams are trying to get him integrated rather quickly. He has the ability to play any of the three interior positions, which gives him a good chance to start somewhere in the middle. If Avila plays well enough in training camp and the preseason, he should be able to hold off either Noteboom or Jackson, as well as Coleman Shelton, Tremayne Anchrum Jr. and the other guards competing for playing time.

Center: Coleman Shelton

The Rams are by no means committed to Brian Allen as their starting center. In fact, they might be leaning more toward Shelton at this point. They’ve rotated their centers throughout the offseason, giving Shelton first-team reps in place of Allen. Shelton is a bigger blocker, which helps in the run game, and that has been evidenced when he’s filled in for Allen in the past. This is one of the most intriguing position battles of the year for L.A.

Right guard: Logan Bruss

Bruss missed his entire rookie year and the Rams are probably itching to get a look at their top pick from the 2022 draft. He’ll have to earn his starting spot, beating out the likes of Anchrum, Jackson and others, but I think he’ll get the job done and show the Rams what they liked so much about him in the draft last year.

Right tackle: Rob Havenstein

The only position on the offensive line that’s not up for grabs is right tackle. Havenstein is going to be the starter there, as he has been for years, and there’s absolutely no reason to think any of the Rams’ other linemen will beat him out or even get a chance to compete for his job.

JackPMiller wrote:

Then next year, if we pick in the top 5,

I seriously doubt that happens.

Logan Bruss missed his entire rookie season with a torn ACL, but he could be a major factor up front in 2023 https://t.co/ccHR6CJvB4

— Rams Wire (@TheRamsWire) July 6, 2023

Alaric Jackson is competing for snaps at left tackle and guard, potentially starting at one of the two positions https://t.co/WLLQmjPZb5

— Rams Wire (@TheRamsWire) July 9, 2023

Rams’ 2023 to be defined by protection of Matthew Stafford, with OL play and more

Jourdan Rodrigue

https://theathletic.com/4731651/2023/07/31/rams-offensive-line-protecting-matthew-stafford/?source=emp_shared_article

IRVINE, Calif. — In 2022, Matthew Stafford was hit more times through nine active games than any other quarterback in the Sean McVay era.

Those 63 hits (29 of them sacks), and also the hits to the ground, sent Stafford to the concussion protocol twice and resulted in a bruised spinal cord that ended his season.

“We want to do everything in our power to make sure we’re protecting him,” said McVay, as the Rams reported to training camp last week. “We left him … whether it was play call, scheme, there (are) a lot of different reasons … We want to do a much better job of keeping him upright. There’s a lot of things that go hand in hand with that.”

Protecting Stafford isn’t just non-negotiable in 2023; it’s a make-or-break factor for a season that could either be better than most expect, or a total disaster. Behind the veteran are Brett Rypien and Stetson Bennett, who have rotated as second-string quarterbacks in the first week of camp. The Rams drafted Bennett in the spring to eventually take over the No. 2 role, but there is a long road ahead in his development. And after the Rams’ front office gutted their defense with eyes on the 2024 and 2025 seasons, if the offense can’t score, the season will get very ugly, very quickly.

It starts with the offensive line, of course. The Rams’ position group in 2022 had 71 “adjusted games lost” to injury according to Football Outsiders, the most since the statistic was developed in 2001 (the next closest were the 2020 Eagles, with 57.1 AGL). They started 12 different combinations in their first 13 games.

Re-working this group wasn’t just about getting healthy. McVay fired previous offensive line coach Kevin Carberry, and hired up-and-comer Ryan Wendell, a former longtime Patriots offensive lineman who was most recently the assistant position coach to Aaron Kromer in Buffalo.

Wendell presents as an imposing figure, with a wild mane of a beard/hair combination and the build you’d expect from a former player. But with his players, he is calm, technical and direct.

“Ryan Wendell is a great coach,” said third-year player Alaric Jackson. “He is a great teacher. He’s not like, a ‘rah-rah’ guy or a ‘scream at you’ guy. But he breaks things down for you to understand overall. He makes things really simple, so you really can’t mess it up. If you do, he gives you more tools to fix it. He’s amazing. … He’s very stern with you, (but) not like, aggressive. It’s more like, ‘Come on, I believe in you and I’m gonna push you a little bit, but I got your back as well.’ So it’s not like he’s trying to motherf— you or be too aggressive, but he just wants to teach you the right things.”

Added Wendell, “All I’m looking to try to do is to try to help these guys out. I let them know what I see, I try to give them clear, honest feedback as best I can.”

Wendell, his assistant position coaches Zak Kromer and Nick Jones, McVay and the Rams’ front office wanted to launch into spring OTAs and training camp with competition at nearly every position (right tackle, as eight-year veteran Rob Havenstein joked, may be locked in already).

“Everybody has a lot to work on,” Wendell said. “We don’t slow down. The young guys learn how fast it is, and they catch up. The old guys keep refining their technique.”

Between players getting healthy and additions via the NFL draft, the Rams have that. Rookie Steve Avila and third-year player Tremayne Anchrum, who fractured his fibula in 2022, have led the way at both guard spots in camp but will be pushed to hold those spots when pads finally go on this week. Coleman Shelton and Brian Allen, who both dealt with various injuries in 2022 that forced them to miss time, are competing for the starting center position.

Jackson and veteran lineman Joe Noteboom, who tore his Achilles in 2022, are competing at left tackle.

“It’s never my guaranteed spot,” said Noteboom, who, after surgery by Dr. Neal ElAttrache and rehab over the last year says he is feeling back to full health. “Competition, like Sean (McVay) said, it brings out the best in people. I was never thinking anything was mine, guaranteed. It can be a positive thing, I feel like.”

Noteboom signed a three-year, $40 million contract extension in 2022. This spring, the Rams restructured his deal to free up about $9 million in space. The question looms: Will the Rams start the player they paid, or will Jackson show enough through the rest of training camp to force the coaching staff’s hand? The odd man out would fill a “swing tackle” depth role … not usually an assignment for a well-compensated player, but if Jackson does earn the job the front office would have to swallow a little pride.

Jackson hurt his knee in early November while playing left tackle in replacement of Noteboom, after initially playing left guard in replacement of David Edwards (concussion). But then, Jackson was also diagnosed with blood clots and shut down for the year.

Now, Jackson says he’s only working at his dominant position, tackle, that he’s “healthy as hell” (his words) and has cut his weight down to 330 pounds. The Rams are rotating Jackson and Noteboom pretty evenly in practices so far, but the intensity will increase when the pads go on this week and that could determine future rep allocation.

The coaching staff is also implementing more “game-like” situational work into practices to get linemen on both sides of the ball up to speed.

Future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Aaron Donald was mildly irritated to discover that, unlike past years of training camp, the offensive line is sliding its protections to double- and triple-team him in 11-on-11s as opponents would in games. This serves a dual purpose: A very inexperienced defensive line understands how to play together when more attention is on Donald, and the offensive line gets more realistic reps countering an elite and versatile interior defender.

“I was kind of mad because you want to be able to work different things,” said Donald, drily. “But it’s realistic so I appreciate (them) doing that for me, allowing me to make my job hard at practice and making me study a little longer at night.”

As McVay and others noted, protecting Stafford must go beyond just pass protection from the linemen specifically.

The Rams have to get back to running the ball efficiently and consistently, for example, after finishing the 2022 season ranked No. 19 in rushing DVOA.

“The better you can run the ball, the better you can screen, the better you can do quick game, the better you can play action, the better things can open down the field, the less likely they are to (pass) rush. It all plays into it,” receiver Cooper Kupp said.

The running backs’ abilities in pass protection are an added emphasis for a team with a quarterback who isn’t considered to be mobile, just like it is the responsibility of the receivers to get off the line and create space quickly, to avoid Stafford having to hold the ball longer.

“Our passing game, nothing matters if we can’t protect Matthew,” Wendell said. “It’s our job to keep him upright. But, (we understand) that the protection unit is the entire unit. It’s not just the offensive line. We protect Matthew by workin’ hard on first and second downs so that we can play ahead of the sticks, so that we don’t have long yards so he’s got to hold the ball for a long time. Our receivers protect Matthew by getting open fast and catching the ball, and getting those extra yards. Everybody is a part of that protection unit. Our running backs have been all over it.

“So, when you talk about ‘protecting Matthew,’ you can’t just single out one part of football. We run the ball well, that helps us protect Matthew. All of that stuff goes into it … that’s the big picture. And at the end of it, it’s single guys winning their one-on-one battles. That’s what these guys have to do every day.”

An old “McVay offense” staple — play-action passing — may serve a role in protecting Stafford, too. In McVay’s world, an average to above-average run game is needed to properly deploy play action (truly selling “the threat of the run”).

Still, it’s a concept he intentionally moved away from in 2021 after trading for Stafford.

From 2017 to 2020, the Rams ranked among the top teams in the NFL in play-action usage. But as McVay, Stafford and then-offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell rebuilt the offense in 2021, they preferred more of a pure dropback passing game and to spread the field out wide using empty sets.

In 2022, of Stafford’s 337 total dropbacks in nine games, just 73 pass attempts were out of play-action concepts from either under center or out of shotgun, according to TruMedia. Stafford completed 49 of those (67 percent) for 684 yards and 9.05 yards per attempt, significantly higher than his 6.9 yards per pass attempt average on all pass plays. Stafford had an overall EPA/pass attempt of 0.10, but with play action, he had between a 0.32-0.35 EPA/pass attempt depending on whether it was from under center or out of shotgun.

Some quarterbacks prefer empty sets because it forces a defense to “declare” earlier, or show its intended coverage instead of rotating after the snap, because it is immediately accounting for more known eligible receivers. Rotating coverages are especially insidious for a quarterback who uses a lot of play action under center, meaning his back flips for a brief moment to the defense as its coverage shifts.

If the Rams can run the ball effectively, they’ll see less players who can muddy up coverage looks in the defensive backfield and in turn, Stafford will have more space to manipulate downfield whether he flips his back or not. Play-action concepts, built off a consistent run game, can help Stafford move his pocket in a variety of ways, keep defenders hesitating between pass rushing and run defending just a little longer, and naturally keep a running back in the vicinity to pick up pressure. The Rams aren’t likely to move totally away from empty sets, especially with Stafford at quarterback and because of the mathematical advantages it provides in the pass game, but perhaps in 2023 their play-action frequency will increase for the sake of adding other ways to protect him.

However the Rams do it — between scheme, play calls and the responsibility of every position group on offense — whether they can keep Stafford off his back will define their 2023 season.

“We all know this, it’s no rocket science here. If we give Matthew an extra tick back there, he’s one of the best in the world to do it,” offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur said. “So the whole focus is just keeping him upright, and if that means putting a few extra guys in protection, or whatever we have to do, we’re going to do it.”