LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Rams' first practice of training camp Sunday was also the first time they've lined up as a full defense with Myles Garrett on the edge.
The experience left everybody on the field excited about what could be possible this season for the Rams.
“We’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time, and it definitely lived up to it,” defensive coordinator Chris Shula said.
Garrett is still in the process of getting settled in with his new team less than two months after the blockbuster trade that sent him from the Browns to the West Coast. But even with the Rams going less than full speed in shorts and no pads, Garrett's presence was unmissable — whether he was breaking into the backfield for a simulated sack or gracefully leaping to swat down a screen pass.
Even the highest-paid cornerback in the league was marveling.
“When he’s out there, you can just feel his aura,” Trent McDuffie said. “(It's just) this aura that this guy has. I mean, he’s gigantic. He’s a monster. But I’m just excited to get him out here and get him loose and get him going, because I know he has a little chip on his shoulder, and I know he’s excited about being here, so I think that just fires everybody else up.”
One year after winning 12 games and reaching the NFC championship game, the Rams added Garrett, McDuffie and cornerback Jaylen Watson to a defense that started last season strong, but faded down the stretch and ultimately couldn't match the performance of the NFL's top-ranked offense.
With three proven veterans installed as starters, the Rams are optimistic their revamped defense will allow them to live up to their preseason status as a serious Super Bowl contender. Los Angeles gave up significant assets and will be paying top dollar for all three newcomers, but the players and coaches see only positives in general manager Les Snead's aggressive moves.
“Honestly, I don’t know if many guys feel the expectation that everybody claims that we have,” McDuffie said. “For us, we’re here to play football, to enjoy the locker room, just to get to know each other. I feel like all the expectation, all that, we leave to you guys hyping us up. Whoever is on this field, whoever is on the team, whoever is in the locker room, I feel like we do a good job just enjoying each other’s presence and living in the moment.”
"Expectations are all the same,” Watson added. “All 32 teams have the same goal right now, and that’s to hold the Lombardi up at the end of the year.”
Even after winning two Super Bowl rings as teammates in Kansas City, McDuffie and Watson both said they haven't arrived in Los Angeles with a need to change the Rams' defensive culture. They think their new team already knows how to win in the culture set by coach Sean McVay, and they are attempting to build on it.
“The way we’re looking at it, it’s their team, and we’ve just got to learn the way they do things,” Watson said. “We can tell them things we did to be successful, get integrated, and hope it works out.”
Notes: NFL MVP Matthew Stafford skipped the opening practice as part of the Rams' plan to keep him fresh through camp. McVay says Stafford is fully healthy this summer after starting camp last season with a back injury that kept him out for weeks. Stafford is scheduled to practice Monday. ... Rookie QB Ty Simpson and backup Stetson Bennett appeared to split the snaps while the Rams went into 11-on-11 work on the first day of camp.
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FILE - Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett, center, celebrates with teammates after breaking the NFL single season sack record during the second half of an NFL football game against the Cincinnati Bengals in Cincinnati, Jan. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/David Dermer, File)
BERLIN (AP) — The suspect in the deadly Berlin Pride attack that left one person dead and 29 injured was shot and killed by police during a confrontation on Sunday in a suburb of the city, authorities said.
Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, was killed following a search that lasted nearly 24 hours after the attack in downtown Berlin. Prosecutors said he had previously sought to join the militant Islamic State group.
Ballout was suspected of driving a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival Saturday night before apparently stabbing others with a machete in what authorities believe was an Islamic extremist terror attack.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the attack occurred a few hundred meters (yards) from a party near the Brandenburg Gate that was supposed to close out the city's Pride festival.
Ballout was tracked down around 6 p.m. Sunday at a garden in Spandau, a Berlin suburb, the city's police department wrote on X. They said he apparently ran toward officers with a sharp instrument, and police fired at least one shot. He died at the scene.
Ballout was born in Germany, the minister said. His mother was naturalized in 2002, three years before he was born.
Ashley Jump, a 26-year-old U.K. resident, had traveled to Berlin for Saturday’s Pride parade but had left the celebrations before the attack. They returned Sunday to leave flowers at a memorial near the crime scene in support of the LGBTQ+ community.
“They’ll never erase us, we’ll never be gone,” they said. “As long as humanity has existed, we’ve existed. And as long as humanity exists, we will exist. We will not be removed.”
Ballout traveled to Lebanon in 2025 with the goal of going to Syria to join the Islamic State group, Berlin prosecutors said Sunday.
There, he made contact with several people who were presumed members of the militant group — or at least he believed them to be, prosecutors said. He was arrested in Lebanon last year and sentenced by a military court to three months’ imprisonment for offenses including incitement to religious and sectarian conflict.
He returned to Germany after completing his sentence, where he was arrested at the Berlin airport.
In May, a juvenile court in Berlin convicted Ballout of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state, as well as publishing Islamic State propaganda on his Instagram account and other charges, prosecutors said.
The court handed down a suspended sentence of 1 year and 10 months in youth custody, which Berlin prosecutors had appealed.
The court said it took Ballout’s months of pre-trial detention in Germany and Lebanon into account. It also said it considered that Ballout had confessed to the crimes, appeared to distance himself from the militant group and no actual threat had ever materialized.
He was released from detention pending the appeal.
According to police, a white van drove into the Tiergarten park around 10 p.m. and hit several people before colliding with a tree. The closing party at the Pride festival, known as Christopher Street Day, was ongoing at the time next to the Brandenburg Gate, a short distance away. The party followed a parade with some 80 trucks that had made its way through downtown Berlin earlier in the day.
The attack did not occur at the festival, along its route or at the closing party. Rather, the violence took place a few hundred meters (yards) away on a track in the Tiergarten park. The van drove into a crowd that was likely a mix of festivalgoers and other locals or visitors.
Police said a woman was killed.
On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of mourners gathered at a memorial at the iconic gate. They hugged each other and laid down flowers, candles, rainbow flags and homemade signs, including a cardboard one that said: “the only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Hundreds of thousands had come to Berlin to celebrate on Saturday, though it’s unclear how many were still at the festival by late evening. It’s one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations.
“We are simply stunned by what happened,” said Andre Lehmann, a top official with the main national LGBTQ+ association, LSVD+. “This suspected attack hits the heart of the queer community.”
Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged the nation to remain united in the aftermath of the attack.
“I would like to say this to Christopher Street Day participants here in Berlin but also across Germany: Don’t let yourselves, let us not let ourselves, be intimidated," he said. "These acts have only one purpose: They aim to divide our society. They want to take away from us the most important thing we have: Namely our openness and our freedom.”
Dobrindt said he expected security measures at other major events in Germany, including Pride events elsewhere, to be reviewed and if necessary significantly boosted.
Berlin has seen Islamic extremist attacks before. In December, 2016, a rejected asylum seeker from Tunisia plowed a hijacked truck into a Christmas market, killing 13 people and injuring dozens. He was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
In February last year, a Spanish tourist was stabbed and seriously wounded at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, an attack that saw a Syrian man convicted in March and sentenced to 13 years.
This week, Amsterdam will be hosting World Pride alongside its own annual Pride celebrations. Mayor Femke Halsema said authorities and organizers “are closely monitoring the security situation” after the Berlin attack but aim to prevent any extra measures getting in the way of celebrating freedom and love.
Associated Press reporters Fanny Brodersen and Pietro De Cristofaro in Berlin, and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.
People gather outside the Brandenburg Gate for a demonstration in support of LGBTQ+ after a car rammed into a crowd at the Pride March in Berlin, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
People gather in front of the Brandenburg Gate illuminated with the message "Berlin, city of freedom", commemorating the victims, after a car rammed into a crowd at the Pride March in Berlin, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
People gather in front of the Brandenburg Gate illuminated with the message "Berlin, city of freedom", commemorating the victims, after a car rammed into a crowd at the Pride March in Berlin, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
People gather outside the Brandenburg Gate for a demonstration in support of LGBTQ+ after a car rammed into a crowd at the Pride March in Berlin, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
A man writes a message on a board at the memorial site commemorating the victims near the scene where a car rammed into a crowd near the Pride March in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Two men hold hands at the memorial site commemorating the victims near the scene where a car rammed into a crowd near the Pride March in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Two people embrace near others wearing thermal blankets as they stand near emergency personnel in Berlin, early Sunday, July 26, 2026, following the cancellation of Christopher Street Day festivities. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Police officers stand near a vehicle crashed into a tree after driving into a crowd near Berlin's annual Pride event, in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Police officers stand near a vehicle crashed into a tree after driving into a crowd near Berlin's annual Pride event, in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Police officers stand near a vehicle crashed into a tree after driving into a crowd near Berlin's annual Pride event, in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Two people walk together past emergency vehicles in Berlin, early Sunday, July 26, 2026, following the cancellation of Christopher Street Day festivities. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Emergency personnel and police gather in Berlin, early Sunday, July 26, 2026, following the cancellation of Christopher Street Day festivities. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Emergency personnel and police gather in Berlin, early Sunday, July 26, 2026, following the cancellation of Christopher Street Day festivities. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Emergency personnel and police gather in Berlin, early Sunday, July 26, 2026, following the cancellation of Christopher Street Day festivities. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Two people embrace near others wearing thermal blankets as they stand near emergency personnel in Berlin, early Sunday, July 26, 2026, following the cancellation of Christopher Street Day festivities. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
