EARTH CITY, Mo. -- Somewhere along the way, the words "rookie minicamp" when paired together became verboten around the St. Louis Rams.
That's why there's no evidence of what took place at Rams Park in the past two days being called anything other than Jeff Fisher's preferred term.
"We kind of fell into this," Fisher said. "Nowhere in the building are you going to see anything that says 'rookie minicamp.' We call it orientation. We have talked to them about this. It's not their fault. They're not in the same condition that the vets are. The vets, many of them were in before the start of the offseason program, they got a three-week head start and so our job is to get them caught up. That's what we're doing."
Fisher and the Rams welcomed their nine drafted players, 15 undrafted rookies and a pair of tryout prospects to St. Louis on Thursday and held what amounted to glorified conditioning sessions on Friday and Saturday. In total, they didn't spend more than about two-and-a-half hours on the field, but that doesn't mean there wasn't work getting done.
From Fisher's perspective, the idea is to slowly introduce the rookies to the mix before throwing them in with the veterans. He instructed the rookies to practice no faster than about three-quarter speed during the on-field work. Only running back Todd Gurley (knee) and receiver Bud Sasser (pending physical tests) did not participate.
Even with these two days over, Fisher won't let the rookies join the veterans in the weight room yet. In fact, the rookies won't have much interaction with the veterans until Thursday, when they do some skill development.
"That's kind of the way we approach it," Fisher said. "We had two good days on the field and we don't have a single soft tissue issue with anybody. So we have got to get them caught up. We are going to use the next week or two to get them caught up."
Getting caught up includes a little bit of everything, Fisher said. That means getting the rookies ready in the weight room, in player development, on the football side, even diet.
When the rookies do join the veterans on Thursday of next week, they'll still have be in separate offensive and defensive groups doing drill work on the field. By league rule, they can't come together as an entire team on the field until the beginning of June.
And the rookie class is now with the team until the end of organized team activities, with the draft class able to stick around until the rookie symposium on June 22.
