https://www.presstelegram.com/2018/08/25/whicker-la-rams-find-a-model-rookie-in-khadarel-hodge/
Whicker: LA Rams find a model rookie in KhaDarel Hodge
LOS ANGELES >> He already has the one thing an undrafted rookie should have. That’s a backup plan.
“I’d really like to get into modeling,” KhaDarel Hodge said. “Casual, street clothes, it doesn’t matter. Suits, yeah, I like that one. I’ve given a shout-out to GQ if they want to get me on board. I was working on getting into a magazine, sometime in September.’
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He smiled as he said it, outside the rookies’ locker room at the Coliseum Saturday. He knows the camera blinks about as often as football does.
Both businesses are competitive and they rest in the eye of the beholder. But football at least has numbers, and Hodge is taking care of those. Just because he has a Plan B doesn’t mean he’s given up on A.
Hodge is a 6-foot-2 receiver from Prairie View A&M who came into Saturday’s preseason game leading the Rams in receiving yards, with 71. Included was an
eye-jarring 47-yard touchdown catch against the Raiders. Three catches earned first downs.
Hodge did not hurt himself on Saturday against Houston. Rams quarterbacks threw him three footballs and he caught them all, for 22 yards.
The coaches are peeling off the layers of the roster onion, with various injury lists and practice squads thrown in. They have Robert Woods, Brandin Cooks, Cooper Kupp and Pharoh Cooper coming back, along with Josh Reynolds and Mike Thomas, neither of whom played Saturday.
Jo Jo Natson and Fred Brown got some time, along with USC rookie Steven Mitchell.
“All those guys played well,” quarterback Sean Mannion said. “KhaDarel has been making plays all over the place.”
It will come down to special teams flexibility and everyday production. But 31 other NFL teams have directors of pro personnel, and they are watching, too. It’s unlikely that Hodge will be striking any poses until the off-season.
“It’s an incredible experience to play in the NFL, it’s like living a dream,” Hodge said. “And actually playing in the games is an even better experience.”
Hodge’s name wasn’t called during the 3-day draft. He wasn’t terribly surprised. Prairie View isn’t what it was when it sent Otis Taylor, Ken Houston and Clem Daniels to greatness.
“I had late-round expectations but I wasn’t sitting around crying about it,” Hodge said. “I prepared myself for both.”
He credits Reggie Moore, the wide receiver coach at Prairie View who played for the Rams in 1993 and coached at UCLA for Rick Neuheisel. Hodge caught TD passes in eight consecutive games last year and, against Alabama A&M, broke Taylor’s single-game school record with 232 yards.
So the Rams worked out Hodge in July and invited him to camp. There is a very short list of reasons why there are four NFL preseason games, especially when Todd Gurley, Jared Goff and most of the headline Rams don’t play them. KhaDarel Hodge and his ilk are the best reason. Without live snaps in front of real fans, his talents would remain unmodeled.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Hodge said. “I was training a couple of other players back home, getting that going, and I was trying to do the modeling thing. I was just building my portfolio.”
Back home is a place called D’Lo, in the south-central part of Mississippi, a town of less than 500 that used to thrive when the sawmill was open. “It’s a place where everybody’s family, where the parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters are all together,” Hodge said.
You might not have been to D’Lo in person, but you might have seen it. Remember the scene with the “sirens” in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” The one with the mysterious young women in the river, singing “Go To Sleep, Little Baby” as the Soggy Bottom Boys stood there enchanted? That scene was filmed in the Strong River, just outside D’Lo.
You have such reveries during preseason games on mild sunny afternoons.
The Rams did win, 21-20, and they controlled the ball for 35:38 and converted 11 of 17 third downs.
Mannion was shaky in the beginning but got better. John Kelly ran with authority. Micah Kiser tackled the same way. Otherwise, get ready for even less significance Thursday at New Orleans, as the Rams get the palm fronds ready for Aaron Donald’s procession into Thousand Oaks, unscheduled at this writing.
Hodge just hopes he isn’t leaving town as Donald arrives. But even if he never plays another down, we might see him in the magazine rack.
“It’s what I want to do,” Hodge said. “I think I’m pretty photogenic, actually.”
