Inside The Rams’ Culture: How High Standards, Low Egos, And Trust Keep Los Angeles Winning
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Every NFL team talks about culture. What specifically makes the Los Angeles Rams’ version function, survive turnover, and contribute to sustained success? A decade into the Sean McVay era, the Rams have remained contenders through roster turnover, coaching changes, and shifting expectations. Their advantage is not one corny slogan or personality, but a system built around accountability, clarity, collaboration and competition without selfishness. After observing the team at training camp for the past three seasons, I have seen that system most clearly at ground level.
The latest example involved Warren McClendon Jr. and Kevin Dotson. After outperforming expectations in limited action last season, McClendon is set to take over for the retired Rob Havenstein as a full-time starter. Between practice periods, he and Dotson were inseparable, with the veteran guard sharing tips and coaching up the younger lineman. I noticed the same dynamic two years earlier between Byron Young and then-rookie Jared Verse.
The Rams’ culture was easiest to see at the player-to-player level rather than during the plays themselves. It appeared between periods, inside position rooms and in the conversations that followed difficult reps.
From “We Not Me” To “We Then Me”
McVay introduced “We Not Me” during his first offseason with the Rams in 2017. The phrase became a rallying cry and gave the new head coach a clean way to explain what he wanted the organization to become. In recent years, it evolved into “We Then Me,” a mantra now displayed throughout the Rams’ facility.
It is easy to dismiss either version as the kind of corny slogan every team prints on a shirt. A slogan can introduce a value; it cannot enforce one.
The Rams gave it substance by identifying what it should look like in practice. The best players model the standard, teammates share information, and coaches create clarity and accept feedback. Players then are able to retain their individual styles inside defined responsibilities.
Talent still determines whether someone can help an NFL team, but the Rams have consistently placed weight on the person carrying that talent. They have not built the roster around one personality type. Jalen Ramsey and Odell Beckham Jr. arrived with strong personalities and substantial expectations, yet both bought into their roles on a championship team. The goal was never to remove individuality. It was to make individual ambition work inside a shared objective.
“Playing free” was a phrase I heard repeatedly from players. They described a structure that allowed them to use the qualities that made them successful while remaining part of something larger.
Alex Johnson felt the difference almost immediately. Johnson has spent time with the New York Giants, Tennessee Titans, and Indianapolis Colts, giving him an outside point of comparison.
“When I first signed with them last season and sat in my first team meeting, it is really hard to explain, but there was just this feeling and energy around the people in the building, the coaches and especially Coach McVay,” Johnson told me. “There is this belief that everyone around this program and organization is going to succeed.”
Johnson said he had seen flashes of that belief elsewhere, but never a foundation as clearly established as the one he felt during his first week with the Rams.
Belief is easy to advertise when a team is winning. The Rams have made it recognizable through almost constant change. Through McVay’s first nine seasons, Los Angeles produced a 92-57 regular-season record, seven playoff appearances, eight winning seasons, four NFC West titles, two Super Bowl appearances and one championship. The injury-ravaged 2022 campaign remains his only losing season.
The coaching turnover has been nearly as significant. McVay assistants have repeatedly left for head-coaching and coordinator jobs. Meanwhile, the roster evolved from a star-heavy contender into one of the league’s youngest teams and back into a veteran-loaded championship contender. Aaron Donald retired after the 2023 season. Havenstein followed after 2025. Matthew Stafford and Tyler Higbee remain, but many players now responsible for the daily standard once entered the building as young players trying to learn it.
That is what makes Johnson’s observation meaningful. He did not simply believe the Rams would win; he felt alignment around how players should prepare, communicate and improve. The Rams created an environment in which belief came with expectations, individuality came with responsibility, and competition did not require isolation.
The Standard Starts With The Most Powerful People
Culture loses credibility when stars receive exemptions from the rules imposed on everybody else. The Rams’ model has worked because their most accomplished players have rarely treated preparation, accountability or helping teammates as somebody else’s responsibility. There is a genuine camaraderie between players who step into the Rams locker room, whether they were drafted or just arrived there.
Aaron Donald was the clearest example. McVay has described his influence through ownership, accountability, work ethic, and the way he celebrated other players’ success. When the best defensive player of his generation practiced that way, younger players had little room to treat the standard as optional.
Darrell Henderson Jr. entered that environment as a third-round pick in 2019 and saw the same effect on offense through Todd Gurley.
“I got to watch Todd Gurley work, and he worked like a dog,” Henderson told me. “Being under him, I knew I had to do the same thing because he was one of the best players in the world, and he was still working like he was just getting started.”
Gurley and Malcolm Brown also gave Henderson a place to take questions before he needed to bring them to a coach. Established players modeled the work, then helped the next player understand how to meet it.
That pattern remains visible. Stafford’s command was obvious when he returned to team drills at camp. Myles Garrett arrived as the reigning Defensive Player of the Year but continued asking how teammates saw pass-rush situations. Davante Adams remained available to sixth-round rookie CJ Daniels, who had studied his releases long before they shared a meeting room.
Johnson was struck by how approachable Stafford, Adams and Puka Nacua remained despite their accomplishments. He described them as players willing to answer questions and still looking for information themselves.
The same standard showed up near the other end of the depth chart. Ty Simpson routinely reached the practice field early and stayed late for extra work. He and Daniels continued building their rookie connection after practices. On the final open day of camp, players fighting for the last few roster spots kept working after most of the team had finished. Nobody told them to go and do the work afterwards; the behavior had already been modeled for them.
Rams Competition Without Selfishness
Kam Curl offered the clearest explanation of how the Rams want players to compete.
“I’m not stingy with the information; I share it because I want to see them be great just like I want to be great,” Curl told me.
Ronnie Rivers described the running back room as players “pushing each other to be our best selves, feeding off each other, and helping everybody out.” Former Rams defensive lineman Bobby Brown III said veterans reminded younger players that they had played football their entire lives and needed to trust their games.
The examples continued across camp. Dotson coached McClendon between periods, Garrett discussed pass-rush plans with younger defenders, then told offensive linemen when something had revealed a snap count or given him an advantage. Adams gave Daniels specific areas to address during the summer break, and Daniels returned with more confidence while continuing to ask questions.
Garrett wanted to pour into teammates, but he also wanted to understand their styles and what they saw. Despite everything he had accomplished, he said he would never become too good to listen to someone else.
Clarity Creates Freedom
NFL schemes require discipline, but several Rams used the same word to explain how they felt inside the team’s structure: free.
Larrell Murchison gave me the most direct example. “Coach Henny told me, ‘If I didn’t know the call, I should just play ball,'” Murchison said. “That gave me the freedom to be myself.”
That freedom does not mean abandoning an assignment; it means understanding the structure well enough that indecision no longer controls the rep. From there, players can trust their preparation, instincts and individual strengths.
The Rams establish the boundaries of a role, then give the player room to solve problems inside them. Even Garrett, after years in a different organization and scheme, described the freedom to play more naturally in Los Angeles.
That balance also explains why football intelligence matters so much to the Rams. The team values players who study and recognize why a call works rather than merely memorizing where to stand. We’ve seen time and time again where they go for the smarter player rather than the freak athlete or media-projected pick because they have confidence in their coaching staff to develop that player.
Kamren Kinchens described the result as genuine buy-in. “Every coach they bring into the building wants to see you succeed,” Kinchens told me. “It never feels like you have to do something – the players want to.” The slogan may sound corny, but the football result is practical: clear players react faster than uncertain ones.
Communication Builds Trust
The Rams maintain a hierarchy, but useful information is not expected to travel in only one direction. Coaches teach players, players show coaches how a call feels on the field, and newcomers introduce ideas from other systems.
Quentin Lake has become the clearest example. He described football as a shared language that allows the secondary to align before the snap. “The more you talk, the more you communicate, the more you’re on the same page … the more trust gets earned,” Lake said during camp.
Lake opened the floor to Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson because both won championships in Kansas City. He did not treat their arrival as a threat to his authority. He wanted to know what they saw and how they approached the biggest moments of a season. Defensive coordinator Chris Shula, in turn, has described Lake as a coach on the field who gives the staff a player’s perspective.
Those exchanges depend on relationships. “This is the closest team I’ve ever been on,” Murchison told me. “Everybody can go to lunch with everybody. Everybody hangs together.”
Training camp at LMU accelerates that process. Players sleep in the dorms, eat together and spend most of the day within the same small stretch of campus. As an LMU alum myself, I know the dorm common areas give them room to watch film, play video games or cards, and spend time together away from the field.
The point is not that everybody must become best friends, which is hard to do given the number of players on a single team at one time. A correction lands differently when the player receiving it trusts the person delivering it. Teammates who know one another can be honest without every criticism feeling personal.
Belonging Does Not Guarantee Employment
Curl supplied the line that keeps any discussion of Rams culture from turning into team promotion.
“Everybody cannot play for the Los Angeles Rams,” he said. Camp made that reality unavoidable; the roster appeared deeper than the number of available jobs. Players near the bottom needed to contribute on special teams, especially after a 2025 season that produced an in-season coordinator change.
The Rams can believe in a player and provide him with resources without promising a roster spot. Culture cannot remove conflicting roles, contract decisions, or the scarcity built into an NFL roster. It can establish how people handle those realities.
How The Culture Survives Turnover
The Rams’ culture survives less like a policy manual and more like an oral tradition. Veteran knowledge moves to the next group. Players who once learned the standard eventually become responsible for maintaining it.
Lake represents that succession. Johnson knew him before the NFL, when both were at UCLA. “At UCLA, he was one of the main guys I looked up to,” Johnson said. “In my head, he was the captain of our defense. He was our best player and our smartest player. To look forward and see what he has built with the Rams, how players look up to
him and how the organization has really latched onto who he is as a person is really awesome to see.”
Lake entered the Rams’ building as a young defensive back learning several roles. He has become a captain, the communicator holding together the secondary, and a player whose feedback helps coaches shape the defense. Now he welcomes ideas from new teammates and creates room for them to grow.
Henderson saw that transfer across roster generations. He first learned behind Gurley and Brown, then returned during the 2023 season after the Rams had shifted toward one of the NFL’s youngest rosters. By then, the names had changed, the behavior had not. “Everything they have going right now, all the success, they earned it,” Henderson said of Nacua, Young, Kobie Turner and McClendon. “Those guys came in, worked and blocked out everything.”
Henderson’s two stops created a line between generations. Gurley helped establish the expectation Henderson inherited. Four years later, Henderson recognized it in rookies who never shared a Rams locker room with Gurley.
Two former players now carry that cycle into coaching. Brian Allen, a Rams fourth-round pick in 2018 and the starting center on the Super Bowl LVI team, joined the 2026 staff as an assistant offensive line coach. Robert Woods signed a one-day contract to retire as a Ram, then became the assistant wide receivers coach.
Their returns are more than ceremonial. Woods helped define the unselfish identity of McVay’s offense. Allen was drafted, developed, won a championship and came back to teach the position.
Former players such as Gurley, Andrew Whitworth and Donald have also returned to visit camp. Their presence alone does not prove the culture works, but the pattern matters. Players continue treating the Rams as a football home after the business of the league sends them elsewhere.
McVay and general manager Les Snead provide the organizational continuity, but the Rams do not need one permanent locker-room voice. The system lasts because leadership keeps transferring from one generation to the next.
When Culture Becomes Ordinary
That brings the story back to Dotson and McClendon between periods at LMU. Dotson did not need a speech or an organized mentorship program. He saw something he could share with the player beside him and helped. McClendon still had to take the next rep and meet the same standard.
The interaction looked ordinary because other players had made it ordinary first. Havenstein, Whitworth, Woods and Donald helped establish the behavior. Young, Lake, Dotson, Nacua and others inherited it. New stars such as Adams and Garrett entered the building and joined it without the Rams erasing what made them individual.
The Rams’ culture is not proven by what hangs on a wall or appears on a shirt. It appears when a veteran teaches the player competing behind him, when a coach listens before correcting, and when a young player eventually becomes responsible for carrying the same standard forward.
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