After suffering through a miserable 2-14 season in 2011, the St. Louis Rams know that competition for starting spots is the best way to make training camp a productive time for the team activities. The offensive line is a unit particularly in flux for the upcoming year, and with incumbent starting left guard Jacob Bell now retired the Rams have opened up the LG spot for a position battle in camp. Quinn Ojinnaka is a 28-year-old journeyman now on this fourth team as he begins his seventh NFL season, but the former fifth-round pick in the 2006 NFL Draft knows he has a chance to win a starting job in St. Louis:
"This is my first opportunity I've been given to win a starting job," said Ojinnaka. "I'm gonna try to take the job, but at the end of the day I'm doing whatever I need to do to make this team and help this team win."
"I don't know how it happened," Ojinnaka said, modestly. "I took some reps with the '1s' (starters) early in OTAs, but due to Roger (Saffold) not being able to practice I had to play left tackle, help the team that way. I had no idea I was going to be with the '1s' coming back."
quotes via Jim Thomas of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The competition currently involves Ojinnaka and Bryan Mattison, but Robert Turner may become part of the mix as soon as starting center Scott Wells gets healthy.
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