Its hasn’t been one full week since the Los Angeles Rams lost to the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship Game, but the Rams are already making moves by hiring a new special teams coordinator in Raymond “Bubba” Ventrone.
Ventrone is a former NFL player and was most recently with the Cleveland Browns as their assistant head coach and special teams coordinator under then head coach Kevin Stefanski. With Stefanski out, and Todd Monken now in Cleveland, that opened up the possibility of Ventrone to the Rams.
That possibility is now a reality.
L.A. interviewed Ventrone this week and liked him enough to give him the job, which either means that Ventrone did very well in his interview, or the Rams were that desperate to make a special teams change after another shaky season.
The reality for the Rams is probably both; they wanted to make a change, AND Sean McVay, Les Snead and Co. feel that Ventrone is the right man for the job.
Fans of the organization will likely just be happy to see the team making a switch. Chase Blackburn had been leading the unit the last two seasons, and was going on a third before he was fired and replaced by Ben Kotwica before the end of the 2025 season.
Of course, under Kotwica it seemed like the unit was showing improvement, and then Xavier Smith fumbled in the Championship Game, and that led to a Rams loss, the end of their season and a few days later, the hiring of Ventrone.
It was likely that L.A. would’ve moved on from Kotwica either way, but with L.A.‘s offseason officially underway, there was no need to wait anymore.
Enter Ventrone who has a tremendous opportunity in front of him, and looks to turn around a unit that’s been inconsistent over the last three seasons.
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