In what's becoming an annual event, the Rams welcomed back many of the great players in franchise history for legends weekend. The many former Rams — who played for the team in either of its locations — were at the team facility to observe the workouts and sit in on meetings.

Among the legends in attendance was Hall of Fame offensive lineman Jackie Slater, who was also at the event last year. He said he's continued to be impressed by head coach Sean McVay and the way he teaches. "What's the same is they welcome us and they make us feel like we're a part of what they're doing, even though we're never here," Slater said. "But I think the biggest difference, the thing that jumped out at me about Coach McVay a year ago, was how when we went into the room in there and he was going over some of the basic plays that they were installing, and he talked to every single position during that period of time."

Running back Steven Jackson — the all-time franchise leader in yards rushing with 10,138 — also took note of how McVay teaches the details of his offense so well.

"He's an aggressive play-caller. Balanced. Demands a lot of his players. Knows their potential, and maximizes it on Sundays," Jackson said. "But he does it in a way that's not — he can put it in layman's terms. He's not speaking over people's heads."

That comes through even with Hall of Famers like Jack Youngblood, who may have been a bit skeptical of McVay when he was hired purely because of the head coach's young age.

"Yeah, he's young. But he's real smart, too," Youngblood said with a laugh. "And we were talking about that the last time we were here. Tom Mack and I looked at each other and went, 'Ooo, what if that happened to us? We were older than the head coach.' But it's a really good thing. And he proved that he's a good head coach."

Super Bowl XXXIV champion defensive back Todd Lyght is currently the DBs coach at Notre Dame, and he said he even picked up some things he'll bring back to South Bend during his time at the facility on Friday.

"Absolutely, I was listening and watching very intently on some of the instructions that they were giving them, especially some of the drill work and some of the footwork drill work that they were doing today," Lyght said. "So, yeah, I'm going to take it back and hopefully during some of the end of the OTAs, when we're back off the recruiting cycle I will be able to come back and watch a couple of practices and further my knowledge and my professional development."

But the former players said the best part of the weekend is getting to be around their teammates.

"We get to tell our exaggerated stories, and we have a lot of them. We may stretch it just a little bit now and then — 'I was better than I really was,' sometimes. But we're a family. Especially us that played for just the Rams," Youngblood said. "It's a lot of fun. And it's great to be able to communicate with your old teammates, find out how the babies are, and how many grandbabies do you have, and who got operated on this year, and what did you operate on — and there's a lot of that going on. But it's a tremendous asset, I think, for not only just the franchise, but for us."

"We appreciate one another for what we did more than anybody else — any coach that we had, any back that we were blocking for, and quarterback we had. We appreciated each other and it's good to see them because you can remember when they were special," Slater said. "You can remember how much work they put in and then you wonder sometimes, are their other guys that are playing today, did they work as hard as [Tom] Newbury, did they work as hard as Dennis Harris, did they work as hard asme? You wonder those things and you hope that they are and so when I see these guys it's like family. It's like one of the coolest things."