Rams improving defense, players & scheme (starts 6/27)

In contract year, Byron Young is coming for it all: ‘I need to get to All-Pro’

Nate Atkins

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7490436/2026/08/04/byron-young-rams-dollar-general-nfl-dreams/?unlocked_article_code=1.21A.vXpE.G2NWofyDQsCS&source=emp_shared_article&smid=ta-ios-share

LOS ANGELES — Don’t look now, but Byron Young is allowing himself to dream again.

Just seven years ago, the Los Angeles Rams outside linebacker was behind a cash register at Dollar General. Now, he’s entering his fourth year in the NFL. Just three years ago, he heard team after team tell him he was too old as a rookie to be on their radar, and now he’s a Pro Bowler fresh off a 12-sack season.

Ask Young about where he is after 27.5 sacks in three seasons, and he describes his standing in basic terms: Reliable. Dependable.

But to really know Young, you have to ask where he’s going. That’s the Dollar General employee turned tryout football player turned military student turned statistical anomaly in him.

“I need to get to All-Pro,” Young said. “I need to be a guy where when it comes to that third down and long and we need to have it, I come through. I’ll force a bad play or force a bad decision. That’s what it is for me. I want to be that guy where they look to find, ‘OK, we need a stop. We’re behind. Or we need to seal the deal.’ I want to be one of those crunch-time situation guys.”

“Someone like Myles Garrett.”

Yes, he went there.

That’s how dreams work. They can sound crazy to the outside world, but what matters is if there’s a piece of them that makes sense to the heart.

And perhaps nobody has a better view of what this outrageously high bar looks like than Young.

The Rams’ offseason blockbuster trade to send Jared Verse to the Cleveland Browns in exchange for a two-time Defensive Player of the Year and the NFL’s all-time single-season sack record holder did something to the vision sitting in Young as he enters a contract year.

He was so close with Verse, and the two built a terrific tandem, with Verse’s power collapsing the pocket to force a panicked quarterback into open grass so a speedy Young could chase him down. That duo landed two edge rushers in the Pro Bowl and had the Rams on the doorstep of the Super Bowl last season.

But like Young, Verse was a player ascending but not yet ascended. Garrett is a supercharged version, as he would be in upgrading just about any pass rusher. That’s what 125.5 sacks in nine seasons can do, and Young knows what that aura looks like after spending his rookie season on a line with Aaron Donald.

So, as Garrett begins to settle into a new home in Los Angeles, he has Young in his ear and in his shadow nearly everywhere in these various team settings.

“I just ask the questions,” Young said. “I ask for his thoughts on certain rushes and certain plays and why do you think like that?”

Garrett is an introspective character. He’ll allow his mind to zoom out a thousand feet from the spot where his 6-foot-4, 272-pound body with a chiseled six-pack is throwing a tackle onto his back and into a quarterback’s stomach. Garrett recently told Young that he has never once had a pass rush rep where he didn’t believe he could make the sack.

It sounds like simple confidence until you realize the barricade NFL teams place in front of one player to keep him from being the one to ruin their day.

“He gets chipped and he gets the slide. He gets triple-teamed and he still has the mindset of, ‘I’m going to beat that,’” Young said. “And he still beats that. He always has a plan.”

“… I’m not saying I don’t believe in every rush when I take it, but it’s understanding how powerful that is. The mind is a powerful thing. If you put a negative thought in there, you’re going to get negative results.”

And negative thoughts didn’t get Young to where he is today. They didn’t talk him down from going to that walk-on tryout practice at Georgia Military Academy between Dollar General shifts seven years ago. The devil didn’t dance on his shoulder as he stared out at hundreds of star high school players trying to crack the same handful of spots available, or when he made it there and was living in military barracks and attacking practices just in the hopes of landing a call with a cellphone that couldn’t ring because he didn’t have the money to pay the bill.

But Young’s path from then to now has been largely about making it, about proving he is somebody. Now, he’s trying to become a special somebody. Something more than reliable, worth more than a rookie contract, respected more than a Pro Bowler with a sack total. Because he knows the gaps in his game that fill the gulf between good and great.

They screamed at him in last season’s playoffs, when he banged his right knee up early on in the divisional round against the Chicago Bears, spent the night with an ice pack over it, missed a week of practice and tried to run through the fire to get his team to a Super Bowl but couldn’t. After a 12-sack breakout season, Young didn’t get to the quarterback in three playoff games. A 31-27 loss to the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship Game became the symbol for the distance between dependable and reliable and something to be remembered.

So, that’s what he’s chasing now.

It’s led to a different offseason routine than in the past. Whereas he used to channel his joy to be playing football for any team into hard offseason training, he’s learning what it takes to dial back and protect that knee so that it can survive a 20-game season. After all, he’s already in his athletic prime at 28, even though he’s just entering his fourth season. And part of playing catch-up was knowing how to work smarter rather than harder.

So he spent his offseason doing yoga and Pilates. He limited his football training to a mere walk-through variety of acting out hand placements. He owns 80 different compression sleeves to drape the right knee in, to pressurize and stabilize the knee, and he sleeps in them to make the adjustment feel like muscle memory. He sometimes wears a brace. And this season, he’ll practice on a designed maintenance schedule.

His work looks inherently different now than it did when he was just trying to stand out at a walk-on tryout or create practice film in spring football to get any major college to offer a scholarship. He isn’t looking for believers anymore. That’s what he found living in his corner by joining a team led by Sean McVay, a coach who called him twice at random this offseason just to check in on life.

“You want to talk about a guy that’s mentally and physically tough?” McVay said. “He looks like the statue of David out here, but he’s awesome. I love everything about him. … He can create on his own. I think he does a great job on some of the two- and three-man games where he’s a tight wrapper, looper. He’s got position flex where he can be an underneath zone defender, but we like him when he’s going forward a lot more often than not. He’s all about the right stuff.”

The Rams don’t have to worry about whether Young will commit to the grind. They see it all season long, like when he carries an iPad everywhere just to steal moments watching extra film where they exist, including over lunch in the team cafeteria. Those are the quiet moments where the dreams start to sound less crazy.

“The dude is just a worker,” defensive lineman Kobie Turner said. “You see it in the locker room, you see it just around the building, but you also see it on the tape.”

Young has among the best chances of any Rams player to cash in this season. He’ll be playing opposite the double-teams, chips, slide protections and game plans coming Garrett’s way. He’ll rush with two-time All-Pro Trent McDuffie as well as Jaylen Watson, Quentin Lake and Kam Curl, who all just signed the types of extensions he’s chasing now.

“I love this team,” Young said. “Whatever happens happens, but this is the team I want to be with. I want to be with the L.A. Rams.”

The Garrett and McDuffie acquisitions are going to make it challenging for the Rams to retain Young, especially considering that wide receiver Puka Nacua, Turner, guards Steve Avila and Kevin Dotson and right tackle Warren McClendon Jr. are all in contract years, too.

If Young can replicate last year’s 12 sacks, he will hit an edge rusher market where 18 different players are making at least $20 million per season.

His story has given him faith in how belief works. Now, it’s about figuring out how many more chapters his story has to write.

“Yeah, it’d be nice to get a contract right now, but at the same time, I can’t ask for nothing better than what I have right now,” Young said. “I’m playing with a team I love, with great coaches, I’m in the NFL and going into my fourth year. I used to work at Dollar General. Now we’re talking about a contract?

“I won. I won.”