By Nick Wagoner
Senior Writer

All of the pomp and circumstance of introductory press conferences and free agent visits are finally a thing of the past and the Rams are ready to dig into some football related activities.

That begins in earnest on Thursday morning when the team kicks off its first official minicamp of the Steve Spagnuolo era bright and early at 6:30 a.m.

“I was telling somebody the other day that when you finally get to this point, you finally feel like this is what you got hired to do,” Spagnuolo said. “We’re coaches, that’s what we do, that’s what we enjoy so now we get a chance to get out there and do exactly what we enjoy doing.”

The minicamp is set to run from Thursday to Saturday with plenty of work on the plate for the players and coaches along the way.

Each day will kick off with breakfast at around 6:30 and include a pair of practices on Thursday and Friday before one final session on Saturday.

Along the way, the players will get a crash course in everything related to the scheme in meeting rooms and then be asked to translate much of that classroom work to the football field.

Of course, there will be plenty of time for meetings as Spagnuolo says the team will be going non stop from that early start time until around its p.m. counterpart.

“It’s a tight schedule,” Spagnuolo said. “There’s not a lot of time for the guys. We do that purposely to test them a little bit that way. There’s no downtime for them but we get them in, we get them out. One of the things we always try to do is keep them going, no dead time. Everything is in short blasts. Even out on the field, the periods will be like that. That’s what the game is like, get them in, get them out. They have a pretty full day.”

While the Rams have been gathered in St. Louis for the past few weeks for the offseason conditioning program and they have had some opportunities to get acquainted with the playbook, this will be the first on field action that will give them a chance to take what they have learned and use it on the field.

A minicamp in early April is generally unheard of but league rules allow teams with a coaching change the chance to have an additional minicamp. This weekend will serve as that additional camp and is particularly important for Spagnuolo and staff to get a chance to evaluate the players already on the roster.

With the NFL Draft a few weeks away, Spagnuolo and Co. want to get a better idea of what they have so they can have a better idea of what they might need.

“I want to get a better assessment of the guys we have got in the locker room,” Spagnuolo said. “I think you can get a good feel for that in three days and five practices. I’d like to see us establish what we are in regards to fundamentals and how we practice. How we practice is going to be important to me and if the guys pick it up and operate fast like we are going to talk about and keep the tempo high and the intensity high and the focus high, I will be happy if we come out of the five practices like that.”

That isn’t all that Spagnuolo wants to get out of the weekend. There are plenty of other facets of the game he will be watching intently.

While minicamp is nothing more than a shortened version of training camp, it is also the first opportunity for these particular players and these particular coaches to be in a football environment.

That means that starting the team bonding process will be just as important as getting a grasp of the X’s and O’s.

“We will talk tonight, we talked this morning as a staff that the three things we are looking for is to evaluate the talent on the team, the character of the team, try to learn how we want to practice, that’s part of it too, there’s an element of teaching in that and getting used to each other,” Spagnuolo said.  “Let’s start to bring this thing together. The more we work together, the better the guys feel a part of it and the more the guys get united so we are looking forward to getting out on the field.”

From the players’ perspective the go, go, go schedule could leave some heads spinning as they try to cram so much into such a short period of time.

All of the Rams are expected to participate in some capacity with the exception of receiver Derek Stanley, who is still recovering from a knee injury suffered in a December game against Seattle.

Fortunately for the players, everyone will be starting on the same page meaning they will get a chance to learn together.

“This is probably more of a unique camp for veterans that have been in the league a while because it’s a new system for them unless they have gone through it a couple of times which some of them probably have,” Spagnuolo said. “It’s probably a little easier for guys if they are coming back in the same system year after year. We will test them mentally and we will test them physically.”

Despite the enthusiasm of finally stepping between the white lines, there are sure to be plenty of hiccups. That’s to be expected whenever a team is learning the new verbiage and terminology for the first time and trying to put it to use on the field.

That’s one punch with which Spagnuolo is prepared to roll.

“There are going to be some,” Spagnuolo said. “I am expecting those. I just hope they are not real long, drawn out hiccups. There will be. That’s to be expected but we’ll just work through those and move on.”