The Los Angeles Rams are set to start an all-rookie special teams unit this season. Between Tanner Brown at kicker, Ethan Evans at punter, Alex Ward handling the long-snapper duties, and Puka Nacua returning punts, the Rams have no NFL experience on special teams. In the NFL, special teams doesn’t matter until it does. The Rams can roll out an all-rookie special teams unit, but what happens when they inevitably begin to make rookie mistakes?
As rookies, at some point the mistakes are going to happen. That’s inevitable. When the Rams went with a rookie kicker in 2020, the Sam Sloman experiment didn’t exactly work out to say the least.