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- Covered Rams for two years for Los Angeles Times
- Previously covered the Falcons
- Has covered the NBA and college football and basketball
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Dawg — d-a-w-g — work: Either you’re gettin’ better or you ain’t.
No explanation needed if you’re a member of the Los Angeles Rams’ defensive line.
“It’s a mindset,” defensive tackle Aaron Donald said. “It’s a mentality.”
It’s grimy. It’s tough. It’s “whipping somebody’s behind, play in and play out, by working with great technique, fundamentals, energy and effort,” according to cornerback Jalen Ramsey, an honorary member of the pack.
It’s the ethos of second-year defensive line coach Eric Henderson, whose group sets the tone for a defense that ranks second in the NFL in efficiency, and dawgwork starts with how Henderson treats the league’s best defensive player.
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When Rams coach Sean McVay searched for a defensive line coach following the 2018 season, he sought the input of Donald, who had been named NFL Defensive Player of the Year for a second time and was coming off a 20.5-sack season.
“I just said, ‘I just want to be coached,'” Donald recalled saying to McVay. “Let him know that you don’t hold nothin’ back from me. Find ways to get me better.”
Enter Henderson, an energetic, football-loving technician who sugarcoats nothing but inspires his players to accomplish everything.
“He’s going to be 100% real with you,” veteran defensive end
Indeed, there’s not.
The Rams’ defensive line has been feasting on opponents this season.
Last Sunday, the Rams (6-3) dismantled the Seattle Seahawks, sacking Russell Wilson six times while producing 12 quarterback hits. They will attempt to do the same against three-time NFL MVP quarterback Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (7-3) on Monday Night Football (8:15 p.m. ET, ESPN).
The Rams’ defense has held opponents to a league-low 4.8 yards per play. They rank third with 31 sacks and have produced 124 pressures, which ranks in the top five.
“You just can’t say enough about what they’ve consistently done,” McVay said. “Our defense has been stout all year.”
It starts up front.
With nine sacks and 32 pressures, Donald sets the tone for the defense. He’s the hardest worker. The best player. He wants to be coached. And more than anything, he wants to succeed.
Henderson, who played defensive line at Georgia Tech and spent three seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals before moving into coaching, breaks down techniques, studies how to defeat blocking schemes and tries to find new one-on-one situations, a must for Donald — who is double-teamed on 68% of his pass rushes.
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“I definitely feel like it has taken my game to another level,” Donald said.
No detail is too small to Henderson, something that has helped Donald and Brockers continue to improve into their seventh and ninth seasons, respectively.
“Usually you get into a situation where a lot of coaches don’t play the game, but they mentally know the game very well, where he’s played the game,” said Brockers, who has three sacks this season. “He’s played the position, so he understands what we go through.”
Henderson usually grabs some pads during individual drills at practice, hollering about his sturdiness and the players’ quick feet, while challenging them to knock him over.
“His natural ability to have energy every day just fuels us,” Brockers said.
Dawgwork is hard, but a lot of laughter comes with it.
On the practice field, Donald and Joseph-Day bust out dance moves when early 2000s hip-hop comes on. Brockers is often heard laughing, a distinguishable bellow from anywhere on the field.
Position meetings are focused and informative, as Henderson takes aim not only at opposing quarterbacks, but often at the opposing defense, whom he wants his unit to outperform every game, even though they’re not directly facing off.
“When we’re talking about the opposing team, I kind of talk — different,” Henderson said with a deep chuckle. “From that standpoint, know I don’t hold anything back. It is raw, it is uncut.”
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Meetings often turn into brainstorm sessions, as Henderson solicits feedback and ideas from players. He breaks down film and provides feedback, speaks in terms that the players grasp and doesn’t withhold anything from them — good or bad.
“He’ll call me out in a room just like everybody else,” Donald said. “But that’s what I want. I want to be able to be coachable.”
And sometimes, the meetings go a bit off the rails with witty one-liners, jabs, puns and “a lot of inside jokes that have built up over the years,” Fox said.
“As a D-line, you got to be able to talk trash,” Joseph-Day said. “You’ve got to be able to think fast on your feet and be able to dish it out.”
Donald teased that Brockers and Fox are “jerks” who “don’t hold back nothin.'”
Joseph-Day called Donald and Brockers the top trash-talkers, while Fox said the 29-year-old Donald is “a big little kid” who “jokes around all the time and always poking at people, always having fun.”
‘It’s like a real brotherhood’
When Henderson had the dawgwork shirts placed in the defensive linemen’s lockers at the start of training camp, they each had something to say about them.
“Brock made jokes that it was AD’s body,” Joseph-Day said, laughing. “That it was a dog head and the body was AD’s.”
Said Fox: “It’s what Coach Henny wants to look like, as far as its muscles.”
And Donald got his two cents in: “So I’m the one that picked that picture,” he said, chuckling. “You can put it out there.”
For the record, “it’s AD with a dog face,” Henderson said. “We know how much this guy means to our group.”
Jokes aside, Donald softens when he talks about dawgwork, the grind, but also what it brings out in his teammates.
Even the best defensive player in the NFL can have a bad day. But he can’t stay down too long around this group.
“There are days when I come to work and there might be something personally going on in my life that I might be down a little bit,” Donald said. “But there’s always some way, somehow, one of these guys make me laugh when I don’t want to laugh and make me feel better, so having a group like that that isn’t just for football — it’s like a real brotherhood.”
And everyone wants a piece of it.