WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. – Being back on the University of Southern California's campus in late August was a full-circle moment for Rams Director of Rehabilitation Jon Hernandez.
Not simply because of the campus's proximity to the stadium where the Rams played their home games in the first four seasons back in Los Angeles, but rather standing before students as a keynote speaker for the 2026 USC Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy White Coat Ceremony who were sitting in the very same seats he was more than a decade and a half ago.
"16 years ago, I was sitting exactly where you're sitting, wearing the same white coat," Hernandez said at the beginning of his speech. "I was excited. I was nervous. And if I'm being completely honest, I was thinking, 'What the hell did I get myself into?' I'm originally from Paramus, New Jersey. So moving across the country to the West Coast only added to that anxiety. Everything felt unfamiliar. The city, the people, the program. I had absolutely no idea where this journey would take me. And if you had told that nervous kid from Jersey that he'd leave sunny LA for snowy Buffalo for two years before coming back to LA, that he worked 12 seasons in the NFL, he'd win a Super Bowl and he'd be invited back to USC to stand on this stage to speak to the next generation of Trojan physical therapists, he would have laughed in your face and told you you're absolutely crazy."
Crazy as the circumstances seemed, Hernandez's life and professional experiences were perfect for meeting the moment, offering three lessons to those students that he would've given to his younger self 16 years ago: Be comfortable being uncomfortable, consistency is the truest measure of greatness, and that people will always matter more than the accomplishments.
The first lesson stemmed from an uncomfortable situation that arose not long after being promoted to Director of Rehabilitation in July 2024, a new role and title after serving as a physical therapist/athletic trainer for his first eight seasons. Injuries to starters and other players mounted rapidly over the first three weeks of the season, overwhelming the training room and especially Hernandez. It wore on him so much, he wondered if he was the right person for the job – until a conversation with Scott changed his perspective.
"We were in the middle of a storm," Hernadez says in his speech. "I remember sitting in a meeting with our vice president of player health and performance, Reggie Scott, and he asked me how I was doing. And I told him, I felt helpless. I felt overwhelmed. I felt like I was standing in the middle of a snow globe that had just been shook about a hundred times. And he looked at me and said, 'Good.' Then he paused. 'You should be.' But then he said this, 'We don't stay there. How we respond and what we do while we're in the middle of that storm is what will define us in this moment.' He reminded me that we can't control external circumstances and that we can only control one thing: How we show up for our players every single day. Regardless of wins and losses, we have a responsibility to our players to be our best when our players need us the most. Our responsibility wasn't simply to rehab injuries. It was to create a healing environment physically, mentally, and emotionally.
"Heading into our bye-week, we're one and four in last place in our division. Half our starters were still out due to injury," Hernandez continued. "Everyone was saying our season was over. Our athletic training room was packed. Every treatment table was full and we were treating guys around the clock. I was in an uncomfortable position because I had never been there before. But I had to figure it out and find a way to lead. I had to respond. And we did just that. We control what we can control and we focus on serving our players with elite care one day at a time. Slowly but surely, our injured players started coming back. They passed our return to play criteria. They returned to practices, then to games. Their returns galvanized our team and we started winning games. By the end of that season, we clawed ourselves back to a 10-7 record. We had won our division and made the playoffs. But more importantly, every single player that was injured at the beginning of the year came back to play football that season. People look at that season and remember the record. I don't. I remember the storm because when I look back, I'm so grateful for that uncomfortable experience because despite navigating uncharted territory, being pushed to my limits, and getting tested like I've never been tested before. The storm passed. We dug our boots into the ground and weathered the storm. We trusted our process long before the results gave us permission to. And we came out on the other side battle tested, more connected, and with new skills I had gained because of how we decided to respond."
The second lesson derived from the elite athletes he's around daily. He said that most people ask him what it's like being around players like Matthew Stafford, Aaron Donald and Andrew Whitworth, expecting some groundbreaking secret. In reality, it was simply that they were the hardest workers, how they consistently held themselves to the highest standard every single day and the way they approached ordinary days – in other words, "built on ordinary days over extraordinary consistency." USC embodies that same standard of greatness, he said, and now it's on this next class to carry it forward.
The third lesson, meanwhile, was the one Hernandez understood best more recently compared to 16 years ago. His time with the Rams has been highlighted by moments like winning a Super Bowl, but it's the memories from that game – not the trophy or the ring – that gets talked about the most whenever he talks about it with current and former colleagues and players who were a part of that team. The same held true of his time at USC with the time spent with classmates and professors throughout that journey.
"I hate to say it, I don't talk about where we stood on the US News and World Report in 2013," Hernandez says in his speech. "I talk about the people, the professors who challenged me, the mentors who believed in me, and the classmates who studied beside me that ultimately became my lifelong friends."
Hernandez arrived in Los Angeles in 2010 to pursue his Doctor in Physical Therapy, and later his Sports Physical Therapy Residency, at USC after earning a Bachelor of Science, Health, Nutrition and Exercise from the University of Delaware. In terms of how USC prepared him for his current role and his career over the last decade, Hernandez pointed it being one of the top programs in the last decade, and especially the people within it.
"Being able to lean on some of the clinicians that were there for quite a while that had experience working in pro sports, being able to pick their brains and be a fly on the wall for certain things, that's what really stuck out to me and really prepared me for that," Hernandez said. "Especially during my sports residency, I was able to kind of share ideas with some of the best clinicians in the area, if not in the world, and absorbing a lot of information through osmosis, similar to how I do it here with (senior vice president of sports medicine and performance) Reggie (Scott) and (head coach) Sean (McVay) and a lot of great leaders here and great clinicians and people here."
In his first season in the NFL – Buffalo in 2014 – Hernandez was part of a Bills athletic training staff named the NFL's athletic training staff of the year for that season by the Pro Football Athletic Trainers Society (PFATS), in conjunction with the Ed Block Courage Award. The following year, a St. Louis Rams training staff led by Scott received the same award. Hernandez would join Scott's staff in 2016 after completing a second and final season with the Bills – who the Rams will host on Monday Night Football in Week 5 this week – going from one award-winning staff to another.
"The most consistent thing between the staffs was we put the player or we put the human ahead of the player," Hernandez said. "Both staffs, the common thing that they always harped on when I was in Buffalo, and especially here, is treating the mind, body, and the spirit. Being able to look at our players as humans first before athletes, because they feel emotions, they have certain thoughts that they'll have that they want to get off their chest, as well as the physical pain and physical condition that they're dealing with, so being able to treat those as equal parts, as opposed to one's more important than the other, they're just as important when you're treating the person."
Hernandez works alongside a Rams athletic training staff that has consistently kept the team among the healthiest in the NFL since 2017, one willing to adapt their strategy to athletes' needs and the evolving trends in sports medicine. Aaron Schatz, who has been doing NFL analytics for more than 20 years, has a metric called Adjusted Games Lost, which estimates the impact of injuries on teams. The metric has the Rams ranked in the top 10 for fewest injuries in six of eight seasons from 2017-2024 (AGL data for 2025 has yet to be published). In 2025, the Rams had 145 games missed due to injury, second-lowest in the league per Sports Info Solutions.
Players Hernandez has worked directly with include safety Quentin Lake as Lake rehabbed an elbow injury late last season and returned in time for the playoffs, as well as running back Kyren Williams in 2023. Williams rehabbed an ankle injury that year, missing just four games and eventually earning Pro Bowl and Associated Second-Team All-Pro recognition.
One of the biggest takeaways from working alongside that staff for as long Hernandez he has: While each person has a different style, it is unified and strengthened by a player-centric, human-centric approach "where we can deliver one message knowing that we're one, band, one sound, as Reggie likes to say."
"I think everyone, for the most part, again, has their different style, but everyone's heart's in the right place. Everyone's heart is in the same place," Hernandez said. "It's how do we get our guys back, but also how do we create this environment for them as well? I think that's probably the most common theme that I found is being able to find the right people that can create that environment for us. Their hearts have to be in the right place. Their approaches have to be in the right place, and I've just been fortunate enough to be with a team and a squad for so long where that is truly ingrained in our DNA, and it's wrapped in how we approach everything that we do."
Whether it's been his journey at USC or in the NFL, Hernandez has had inspiring mentors who helped shaped the wisdom he shared with students last month. So if there was an additional message to share as they embark on their next 10 years, it would be finding those along one's respective journey.
"Every step of the way, it's finding people that inspire you, finding people that you can always learn from," Hernandez said. "There's always going to be people that you can learn from, so it's a matter of finding them throughout your journey and throughout your path, and helping them carve your own path to be able to have those tour guides, as I like to say, on your journey."
