In his press conference after the team announced its 53-player roster, Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay also took the time to announce who had been voted team captains.
The offense was chalk; Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp, and Rob Havenstein. They are arguably the team’s two biggest stars and its longest-tenured player.
Los Angeles Rams Name Quentin Lake Defensive Team Captains
The bigger question was on the other side of the ball. Last season’s defensive captains, Aaron Donald and Ernest Jones are now gone. Not only that but the defense is almost entirely made up of rookies, sophomores, newcomers, and role players.
But after a vote, the team arrived at its top two; 2023’s rookie defensive line standout, Kobie Turner, and 2022 sixth-round defensive back, Quentin Lake.
The two have taken very different journeys to get to the Rams’ captaincy. While Turner’s assent was meteoric, Lake’s started slow after being drafted out of UCLA 211th overall by the Los Angeles Rams in 2022. Here is how Sean McVay described it to the media during a recent press conference;
He came in, he had a little bit of a knee issue that he wasn’t able to practice early on in camp. But I came down in the training camp at UC Irvine when we were staying at the hotel and there was a light on in the DB room consistently, night after night at about 9:30, 10 o’clock.”
He’s a guy that wanted to have a big picture ownership and understanding of what we were trying to get done. He’s a football junkie. Loves it. He’s a great competitor. It’s why he’s a safety and then he [moved] so seamlessly, because we needed him to transition to the nickel spot last year. His position flex and his ability to communicating he’s got such a nice way about himself with people.”
Lake, the son of former Pittsburgh Steelers safety, Carnell Lake, started his rookie season on the injured/reserve list. He was able to rejoin the active roster in Week 10 but didn’t play much until the final week. By the next year, his playing time lept to nearly 40 percent of defensive snaps, in large part due to his versatility.
“At first it was dime linebacker, or dime money, dime DB. Then it was safety, then it was nickel in one package, then nickel, then safety, and then safety and nickel in the same game,” Lake said in an interview with LAFB Network.
Now Quentin Lake finds himself not only at the top of the depth chart but also as a top leader in the locker room.
“It was damn near unanimous.” McVay said of the captaincy vote, “The support that he got from his teammates. I think that’s a real credit to the impact and the influence and the way that he inspires guys to want to be better. I love this guy and I’m really excited that he’s in a leadership role that’s been earned and he doesn’t have to do anything other than just be himself.”
