Rams Davante Adams uses four-legged metaphor to separate boys from the men

Davante Adams has spent most of his career proving he could keep going.Now, at 33 years old and entering his 13th NFL season, the Los Angeles Rams are asking him to prove something considerably more difficult: that it’s okay to stop.Not forever.Not yet.

But just for a day.Adams is part of several Rams veterans that have scheduled rest days during the team’s training camp at Loyola Marymount University.Scheduled rest is one of those modern football concepts guaranteed to irritate anyone that played the game before 1987.

The old-school crowd that still remembers when they wore leather helmets.The ones that think training camp is supposed to be a boiling furnace where players are thrown inside, the weak melt and the strong emerge carrying the scars to prove they belong.“Training camp is not supposed to come out here and tear your body down to separate the boys from the men,” Adams said Sunday after practice.

“That’s the old school way of doing things.There are ways of separating the boys from the men, but I don’t think it’s through just trying to callous us coming out here and killing us on the field.”Adams has lived that life and he still believes in it to a certain extent.

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By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.Never miss a story “It took me 12 years to even have an off-day,” Adams said on Sunday.

“I’m not built that way.I’m not going to tell you I’m not going to practice.

You have to tell me I’m not going to practice.”That’s the contradiction at the core of every aging superstar.Adams’ stubbornness and refusal to not practice has gotten him to six Pro-Bowls, three All-Pro selections, over 12,000 receiving yards and 117 touchdowns, the most among all active players in the NFL.But that stubbornness is now the very thing that Rams�...