ST. LOUIS — This time last year, diminutive Tavon Austin could brag about never missing a practice, let alone a game.
After a rookie season that featured a handful of brilliant highs mixed with stretches of low productivity and three weeks of downtime at the end with a high ankle sprain, the St. Louis Rams wide receiver came clean. Especially early on, the playbook had him bamboozled.
“I didn’t really know what was going on,” Austin said. “Everything looked like Spanish and sounded like Spanish to me.”
Entering Year 2, the eighth overall pick of the 2013 draft realizes there’s more to the job than simply outrunning defenders. He’s comfortable with a system that’s undergone only minor tweaks, and better prepared to bedevil opposing coordinators.