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Rams RBs coach Ra’Shaad Samples is the youngest position coach in the NFL. His goal: Create lanes
Jori Epstein, USA TODAY
Thu, September 8, 2022, 8:34 AM
IRVINE, Calif.— Ra’Shaad Samples hoped the sauna would clear his mind.
Instead, the Los Angeles Rams running backs coach encountered there the source of his frustration: Bobby Wagner.
Wagner, the eight-time Pro Bowl linebacker, had been “beating the dog out of” Samples’ running backs in one-on-one pass protection drills at training camp. Samples yearned to understand.
“I’m a big fan of going to ask the person who whooped your (expletive): ‘How did you whoop my (expletive)?’” Samples told USA TODAY Sports. “I rage for answers.”
After 45 minutes of scheme and steam later, Samples could explain: Wagner saw young Rams backs shifting weight to an inside foot before the snap. The 11th-year defender jabbed toward that center of gravity to shake them loose, then sought to beat them inside on some snaps and around the edge others. Physicality was not enough to triumph – player and coach alike must seek out every mental edge.
“Hard work,” Rams head coach Sean McVay said, “expedites experience.”
When the Rams host the Buffalo Bills Thursday night for the NFL season opener, Samples will take the sideline as the youngest position coach not just in the game but across the entire league this year, a USA TODAY Sports analysis confirmed. The 27-year-old was born 506 days after New England Patriots cornerbacks coach Mike Pellegrino, the next youngest.
More than 100 coaches — roughly 14% of the league — were coaching full-time in the NFL or college football before he was born, the analysis found.
Rams running backs coach Ra'Shaad Samples at training camp at University of California Irvine.
Since 2015, Samples has climbed rapidly from college receiver to college assistant coach and recruiting force, to now position coach for the defending Super Bowl champions. He relishes the opportunity. But this meteoric rise is not enough.
“It’s what you do when you get here, succeeding,” Samples said. “Because there’s going to be another 26-year-old coach, 25-year-old coach who gets to interview for a job. I’m the youngest one in a job now so the next that’s going to come up – I’ve got to do a good job for him.
“Create lanes for people.”
What would Ra’Shaad have said if he was told three years ago the Rams would hire him to this role?
“I’d say, ‘Wake up from that [expletive] dream,’” Samples laughs.
But he values the work ethic and insatiable hunger for knowledge that guided this path.
He was football-savvy from a young age, more crafty than athletic. Former Texas Longhorns head coach Tom Herman ranks Samples as one of the two best high school route runners he ever recruited. The other: 13-year NFL player Danny Amendola.
“Could cut on a dime, double moves, releases vs. press,” Herman described the teenage Samples to USA TODAY Sports. “I was just like, ‘Man, this is stuff upper-level college guys, if not NFL guys, are doing.”
Samples committed to Oklahoma State, where he played just one game, and then transferred to Houston, where concussions abruptly ended his career. Herman, then Houston’s head coach, implored his team captain to stay on.
“Tom dragged me out there and said, ‘You’re going to be a damn good coach.’”
Samples was soon distributing weekly quarterback tests and charting defensive coverages from the game booth alongside offensive coordinator Brian Johnson. They remember the learning curve — Samples charting a series of defensive formations as simply “Drop 8,” without specifying the specific coverage within a coverage family — and the exciting moments, like when Johnson first empowered Samples to choose a play.
The young assistant chose 50-T-Fly-Panther, giving his quarterback a decision to run a draw or throw to the fly.
“I was terrified,” Samples said, “like this (expletive) is going to get pick-sixed.”
But he learned.
Samples soon migrated north to Herman’s Texas staff in 2018, to Sonny Dykes’ SMU staff in 2019, and then with Dykes to TCU last December. Before his 27th birthday, he was named TCU’s assistant head coach, run game coordinator and recruiting coordinator. But within three months, a Rams shift began: Super Bowl running backs coach Thomas Brown shifted to tight ends coach to further immerse in the pass game, and McVay trusted Brown to guide the search for his replacement. Brown says Samples was the youngest, least experienced and least personally familiar candidate he contacted. But Brown saw the coaching material Samples wished his narrative had more centered on and even was “irritated” that Samples was labeled firstly as a recruiting weapon — Samples believes that stemmed in part from stereotypes of the young, dynamic Black coach — and only then touted as a football coach.
“Having the opportunity to listen to him detail up the running back position, which I’ve known my entire life from playing and coaching it, you can’t B.S. me on that,” said Brown, whose 10 years coaching running backs at the college and pro levels also included a stint as Miami offensive coordinator. “His detail and his communication skills were like a no-brainer to me.”
Within 15 minutes of a group Zoom interview, McVay agreed.
“He’s got a refreshing security in himself to be able to ask questions,” McVay told USA TODAY Sports, adding Samples “knocked it out of the park” explaining run concepts in his interview.
Samples has created a similar collaborative ethos with his players, they say, leading meetings with conversation that “doesn’t feel like a lecture,” 2021 seventh-rounder Jake Funk said.
Darrell Henderson, who has rushed for a team-high 1,312 yards and 10 touchdowns the last two seasons, credited Samples’ tutorials helping him sharpen footwork and more effectively press in phase with blockers during camp.
“He corrected me, and the next day I came out and got my steps down better and saw bigger gashes,” Henderson told USA TODAY Sports. “He keeps us on our toes.”
Samples regales his players with wisdom from the nine-and-a-half personal growth books he has read and noted in depth since April, reminding them to be vulnerable to growth and to automate their habits toward success. Entering Thursday’s game vs. the AFC runner-up Buffalo Bills, his motivation focuses less on individual production goals and more on building toward efficiency, consistency and well-executed assignments that best contribute to team success. Samples considers his own goals through the same communal lens.
Sure, Samples aspires to rise, aiming to earn jobs as coordinator and then NFL head coach — ideally within the next five years. But he frames his own advancement as a means rather than end.
“Give people opportunities they may not necessarily have had,” Samples said. “That’s why I want to be a head coach.”
He embraces the chance to represent coaches of color in a league in which they constitute just 18.3% of head coach hires and 10.5% of offensive coordinator appointments in the last 10 years, according to an NFL diversity and inclusion report released in February. Only six of the league’s current 32 head coaches are of color.
“My definition of leadership is the hunger to attain knowledge but the drive to give it away,” Samples said. “When I stop finding information to fill my cup to pour into yours, I’m no longer serving my purpose.”
Rams RBs coach Ra’Shaad Samples is the youngest position coach in the NFL. His goal: Create lanes
Since 2015, Samples has climbed the coaching ladder from college assistant coach to position coach for the defending Super Bowl champions.
Rams RBs coach Ra’Shaad Samples is the youngest position coach in the NFL. His goal: Create lanes
Jori Epstein, USA TODAY
Thu, September 8, 2022, 8:34 AM
IRVINE, Calif.— Ra’Shaad Samples hoped the sauna would clear his mind.
Instead, the Los Angeles Rams running backs coach encountered there the source of his frustration: Bobby Wagner.
Wagner, the eight-time Pro Bowl linebacker, had been “beating the dog out of” Samples’ running backs in one-on-one pass protection drills at training camp. Samples yearned to understand.
“I’m a big fan of going to ask the person who whooped your (expletive): ‘How did you whoop my (expletive)?’” Samples told USA TODAY Sports. “I rage for answers.”
After 45 minutes of scheme and steam later, Samples could explain: Wagner saw young Rams backs shifting weight to an inside foot before the snap. The 11th-year defender jabbed toward that center of gravity to shake them loose, then sought to beat them inside on some snaps and around the edge others. Physicality was not enough to triumph – player and coach alike must seek out every mental edge.
“Hard work,” Rams head coach Sean McVay said, “expedites experience.”
When the Rams host the Buffalo Bills Thursday night for the NFL season opener, Samples will take the sideline as the youngest position coach not just in the game but across the entire league this year, a USA TODAY Sports analysis confirmed. The 27-year-old was born 506 days after New England Patriots cornerbacks coach Mike Pellegrino, the next youngest.
More than 100 coaches — roughly 14% of the league — were coaching full-time in the NFL or college football before he was born, the analysis found.
Rams running backs coach Ra'Shaad Samples at training camp at University of California Irvine.
Since 2015, Samples has climbed rapidly from college receiver to college assistant coach and recruiting force, to now position coach for the defending Super Bowl champions. He relishes the opportunity. But this meteoric rise is not enough.
“It’s what you do when you get here, succeeding,” Samples said. “Because there’s going to be another 26-year-old coach, 25-year-old coach who gets to interview for a job. I’m the youngest one in a job now so the next that’s going to come up – I’ve got to do a good job for him.
“Create lanes for people.”
'You're going to be a damn good coach'
Samples never expected to become an NFL coach in his lifetime, much less before his 28th birthday. He wasn’t a running back growing up; concussions forced him into medical retirement before he could pursue an NFL career; and he resented how his father, Reginald — a legendary Texas high school football coach named USA TODAY’s 2019-20 national coach of the year — coached his son as hard at home as he did on the football field.What would Ra’Shaad have said if he was told three years ago the Rams would hire him to this role?
“I’d say, ‘Wake up from that [expletive] dream,’” Samples laughs.
But he values the work ethic and insatiable hunger for knowledge that guided this path.
He was football-savvy from a young age, more crafty than athletic. Former Texas Longhorns head coach Tom Herman ranks Samples as one of the two best high school route runners he ever recruited. The other: 13-year NFL player Danny Amendola.
“Could cut on a dime, double moves, releases vs. press,” Herman described the teenage Samples to USA TODAY Sports. “I was just like, ‘Man, this is stuff upper-level college guys, if not NFL guys, are doing.”
Samples committed to Oklahoma State, where he played just one game, and then transferred to Houston, where concussions abruptly ended his career. Herman, then Houston’s head coach, implored his team captain to stay on.
“Tom dragged me out there and said, ‘You’re going to be a damn good coach.’”
Samples was soon distributing weekly quarterback tests and charting defensive coverages from the game booth alongside offensive coordinator Brian Johnson. They remember the learning curve — Samples charting a series of defensive formations as simply “Drop 8,” without specifying the specific coverage within a coverage family — and the exciting moments, like when Johnson first empowered Samples to choose a play.
The young assistant chose 50-T-Fly-Panther, giving his quarterback a decision to run a draw or throw to the fly.
“I was terrified,” Samples said, “like this (expletive) is going to get pick-sixed.”
But he learned.
Samples soon migrated north to Herman’s Texas staff in 2018, to Sonny Dykes’ SMU staff in 2019, and then with Dykes to TCU last December. Before his 27th birthday, he was named TCU’s assistant head coach, run game coordinator and recruiting coordinator. But within three months, a Rams shift began: Super Bowl running backs coach Thomas Brown shifted to tight ends coach to further immerse in the pass game, and McVay trusted Brown to guide the search for his replacement. Brown says Samples was the youngest, least experienced and least personally familiar candidate he contacted. But Brown saw the coaching material Samples wished his narrative had more centered on and even was “irritated” that Samples was labeled firstly as a recruiting weapon — Samples believes that stemmed in part from stereotypes of the young, dynamic Black coach — and only then touted as a football coach.
“Having the opportunity to listen to him detail up the running back position, which I’ve known my entire life from playing and coaching it, you can’t B.S. me on that,” said Brown, whose 10 years coaching running backs at the college and pro levels also included a stint as Miami offensive coordinator. “His detail and his communication skills were like a no-brainer to me.”
Within 15 minutes of a group Zoom interview, McVay agreed.
‘Give people opportunities’
McVay, who became a position coach at 24, has advised Samples: Don’t be afraid to admit what you don’t know. Young position coaches can achieve more success, the league’s youngest-ever head coach said, with an open mind and transparent knowledge basis.“He’s got a refreshing security in himself to be able to ask questions,” McVay told USA TODAY Sports, adding Samples “knocked it out of the park” explaining run concepts in his interview.
Samples has created a similar collaborative ethos with his players, they say, leading meetings with conversation that “doesn’t feel like a lecture,” 2021 seventh-rounder Jake Funk said.
Darrell Henderson, who has rushed for a team-high 1,312 yards and 10 touchdowns the last two seasons, credited Samples’ tutorials helping him sharpen footwork and more effectively press in phase with blockers during camp.
“He corrected me, and the next day I came out and got my steps down better and saw bigger gashes,” Henderson told USA TODAY Sports. “He keeps us on our toes.”
Samples regales his players with wisdom from the nine-and-a-half personal growth books he has read and noted in depth since April, reminding them to be vulnerable to growth and to automate their habits toward success. Entering Thursday’s game vs. the AFC runner-up Buffalo Bills, his motivation focuses less on individual production goals and more on building toward efficiency, consistency and well-executed assignments that best contribute to team success. Samples considers his own goals through the same communal lens.
Sure, Samples aspires to rise, aiming to earn jobs as coordinator and then NFL head coach — ideally within the next five years. But he frames his own advancement as a means rather than end.
“Give people opportunities they may not necessarily have had,” Samples said. “That’s why I want to be a head coach.”
He embraces the chance to represent coaches of color in a league in which they constitute just 18.3% of head coach hires and 10.5% of offensive coordinator appointments in the last 10 years, according to an NFL diversity and inclusion report released in February. Only six of the league’s current 32 head coaches are of color.
“My definition of leadership is the hunger to attain knowledge but the drive to give it away,” Samples said. “When I stop finding information to fill my cup to pour into yours, I’m no longer serving my purpose.”
