After playing every snap at guard as a rookie, the former second-round pick has a leadership style that helps with his move to anchoring the offensive line
Rams offensive lineman Steve Avila goes through drills during the first day of training camp Wednesday, July 31, 2024, at Loyola Marymount. It was a hot August afternoon in 2022, the Fort Worth air heavy with humidity. TCU was a week into training camp and had just finished a practice. And Steve Avila was not happy.
The old sports maxim goes, “Good teams are led by coaches, great teams are led by players.” That TCU team went on to reach pinnacles no other group of Horned Frogs had, making it all the way to the national championship game for the first time in program history. His first four years at TCU, Avila played center. But shortly after Dykes was hired, he recruited his old center from SMU, Alan Ali, across county lines to Fort Worth and kicked Avila out to guard.
“That neutral zone is even smaller, that amount of space between you and the defensive linemen in front of you,” Rams offensive line coach Ryan Wendell said. “So it’s just a little bit of a different timing issue but just like guards, centers are expected to set the depth of the pocket on the inside and to move defenders in the run game. So there’s a lot of carryover for Steve, there’s just smaller details that he’s been working on.
“In meetings, I feel like I get into my own world. Like, it’s so weird. I think Coop talked about how he runs routes in his head. And I do the same thing like mentally with trying to see what I would get during a certain play,” Avila explained. “I try my best to know what Im supposed to do. And if I don’t, that’s when I open my book up and go over it again, because I don’t want to mess up when I’m out there.
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