Jan. 29, 2026, 5:08 p.m. PT

New Los Angeles Rams special team coordinator Bubba Ventrone has coached in the NFL for a long time.

He began as an assistant special teams coach under Bill Belichick with the New England Patriots from 2015 to 2017 before becoming the Indianapolis Colts’ special teams coordinator in 2018. Ventrone coached there until 2022, when he left to take the assistant coach/special teams coordinator job on Kevin Stefanski’s staff with the Cleveland Browns. He also played eight years in the NFL on special teams for the Patriots, Browns and San Francisco 49ers before becoming a coach.

Ventrone will now coach a Rams special teams unit that’s been league-worst since 2020 and has consistently underperformed with Sean McVay at the helm. The Rams parted ways with former coordinator Chase Blackburn in the middle of the 2025 season and moved on from interim coordinator Ben Kotwica at the end of the year.

While Ventrone has experience, have his units performed well? Let’s take a look.

First, we’ll look at Ventrone’s time with the Colts. We’ll use special teams rankings from former Dallas Cowboys reporter Rick Gosselin, whose methodology is considered to be accurate by media standards. His rankings gives each team a score based on 22 kicking game categories, which are each assigned points according to their standing. The fewer the points, the higher the score.

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It’s not perfect, but it’s an easy way to synthesize the viability of a unit.

Here’s how Ventrone fared with the Colts:

Besides one blip in 2019, Ventrone’s Colts units have ranked in the top 10 every year. And if you remember, that 2019 season was when Colts quarterback Andrew Luck abruptly retired during the preseason. That whole year was a mess for Indianapolis.

Things got a little worse in Cleveland for Ventrone, though. Gosselin stopped doing rankings after the 2023 season, so we used Green Bay Packers reporter Bill Huber’s rankings for 2024 and 2025.

There was a noticeable drop off after the 2023 season for Ventrone’s Browns team. That was the year the Browns went 3-13 following their shocking 11-6 season in 2024. Things didn’t get much better in 2025 as Cleveland went 5-12.

This paints a picture of a coordinator who works well when he’s with a solid team. The Colts won at least nine games in three of the six seasons Ventrone coached in Indianapolis, and he still put up top-10 numbers across the board. In Cleveland, Ventrone was good when the Browns were good, and awful when they were awful.

By and large, Ventrone seems to be a quality special teams coordinator who will, at the very least, keep the Rams’ unit above board in 2026.

It can’t get any worse than the past five years, at least.