Rams' Kobie Turner: 'My whole life it has been ... choose football or choose music'

LOS ANGELES -- It was the last day of organized team activities during the Los Angeles Rams' offseason program and Kobie Turner had to rush to his car.

After putting in a day of work at the Rams' practice facility in Thousand Oaks, California, the defensive tackle was headed to his first day of filming for Fox's "The Masked Singer," a reality TV singing competition that features celebrities singing in costume.

Turner got to Red Studios Hollywood, where he had 15-30 minutes before the dress rehearsal and then his first live performance in front of a studio audience: "Lose Control" by Teddy Swims. He performed the song while wearing an enormous green costume weighing 100 pounds -- one designed for him by the show. The inspiration? He participated in "NFL Slimetime" with Nickelodeon last year. On "The Masked Singer," he was given the alias of Goo -- the only name he was allowed to be called during filming in an effort to keep his identity a secret.

That evening was an example of how Turner has balanced two of his passions: football and music. Growing up, Turner says he often felt like he had to pick one or the other -- choosing between guitar or weightlifting electives in high school, or whether to take a music scholarship that required missed practice time -- while feeling both were important in his life.

"It was really validating that this is something that I can do and that I hope is validating for everybody," Turner said. "For anybody who's trying to do both, if you just put in the sweat equity, you really go after it, that you can do both.

"And it was kind of a full circle moment because my whole life it's been, 'choose.' Choose football or choose music ... But to just truly be able to live in that authentic part of myself and to be able to bring the totality of who I am to the surface was truly special."

In his second season with the Rams, Turner has had the opportunity to show every part of himself. He even reached the quarterfinals on the 12th season on "The Masked Singer," the farthest an NFL player has made it on the show. The quarterfinal episode, where his identity was revealed, ran Dec. 4.

Since Turner was drafted by the Rams in the third round in 2023, coach Sean McVay has praised Turner for being his true self, whether that means dancing on the practice field during walk-through or doing his conductor celebration after a sack. And now, the defensive tackle, who was voted a team captain in his second season, said the entire experience and way the team has embraced him showing off this side of who he is has brought him healing.

"When I had my mask on, I was able to take my mask off," Turner said. "And when I'm just me, sometimes I put a mask on to cover up some of the sides of myself that people might think are weird or quirky or maybe not the best times. But at the end of the day, as it translates to football, it's go out and be your authentic self. And I don't have to be anybody else. I can just exist completely as I want to."

THE DAY BEFORE Turner's reveal on "The Masked Singer," his connection with music showed up in a different way. On Dec. 3, he joined Brandon "Stix" Salaam-Bailey, a rapper and producer in Inglewood for a songwriting session with seven high school students.

When Turner walked in before the session started and introduced himself, the students asked him questions about football before turning the conversation to music. Turner, Stix and the students talked about the songwriting process and made plans to write a song together in a studio.

During that conversation, Turner began to weave in what he had learned about balancing music and football throughout his life, saying that music gave him the "confidence" to keep going on the football field.

"If I didn't have music to help me out of those moments, I would have stayed [in the hard moments]," Turner told the students. "And I wouldn't be there."

Part of that, he told them, is because "music helped show me that my voice matters."

Music has enveloped Turner's life since he was a child, when his mom, Latesa, brought him with her to church choir practices in Tallahassee, Florida. But Turner, the youngest of four, said it was his oldest brother Lamar Turner III learning to play guitar that taught him music wasn't just "a nerdy thing."

"The script completely flipped and I just delved face first into every music thing that I could do," Turner said. That included joining multiple choirs and leading three a capella groups at Centreville High School. His high school choir director, Lynne Levine Babcock, made such an impression on him that she is officiating his wedding next year and is the reason he hopes to be a high school choir director one day.

Turner again chose both football and choir in college, earning degrees in music theory and composition as well as mathematics at the University of Richmond. Later, part of his graduate project at Wake Forest, where he spent one season, was composing a song for choir.

And when Turner was drafted by the Rams in 2023, he cemented his focus on football, but his enthusiasm for music has never wavered. Instances like belting out "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on a Friday at practice with other defensive linemen and performing the national anthem before Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Kings games during the offseason have allowed him to continue to show his love for music as he focuses on his professional football career.

When he saw the way his teammates embraced his performances on "The Masked Singer" -- something he had to keep a secret from June until the show aired in the first week of December -- it meant a lot. Especially when McVay put him on the spot to sing a capella during a meeting after playing his performance for the team.

"Everybody loved it," Turner said of the reaction he got when McVay played his performance of "Iris" by The Goo Goo Dolls during a team meeting. "It was so cool. Everybody was clapping and everybody was super excited.

"It is really cool to be, again, a part of a team and an organization that values those types of things and lets us go off and be our own personality."

WHILE IT WAS "The Masked Singer" that helped Turner find his voice off the field, it was his teammates voting him a team captain in August that helped him find his voice on it.

Turner was coming off a stellar rookie season, finishing third in NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year voting after leading first-year players with nine sacks. He played a key role on a playoff team, finishing with 57 tackles, including eight for loss, and 16 quarterback hits.

When the Rams defense was struggling early this season -- their first since Future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Aaron Donald retired -- Turner needed to figure out how he could be a better leader of a unit that wasn't "going in the direction" he wanted it to.

"A lot of how [Donald] approached things worked because he had already proven himself for so long and so everything that he did with his example already worked," Turner said. "Everything that he said, everybody already treated like gold because he had earned that right. And so even in talking to him early on in the season where I'm like, 'OK, what do I need to be doing as a leader?'

"He's able to show me things and be like, 'OK, you got to be really real with these guys and you can't just be buddy-buddy.' And that's something that he also did a great job of. ... And so that's something that I'm continuing to learn is how to be very real and to talk real with people and to call people out and hold them accountable, as well as holding myself accountable."

The moment that sticks out to 2024 first-round pick Jared Verse was after the Rams lost to the Green Bay Packers in Week 5 to fall to 1-4 heading into their bye week. Turner approached Verse and told him, "You have to be better."

"Just coming up to me, man to man," Verse said. "He's done this week in and week out, whether I've had a good game, whether I've had a bad game. He's like, 'You have to be better.' And him saying that to me, I'm like, 'You're right.'"

And even after the Rams' 44-42 victory over the Buffalo Bills in Week 14, when Verse didn't have "a lot of production," Turner made sure he was in Verse's ear.

"He literally just told me, 'Keep going,'" Verse said. "'Don't get frustrated with it. I know it's upsetting having a lot of attention. Keep on your course.'

"And him saying that is something that's just engraved in my head."

Even though he's on the other side of the ball, wide receiver Puka Nacua sees that influence too, calling Turner "a vocal leader."

"Being somebody who can sing, knows his own voice, is confident in himself and is able to communicate with other people around him, not only on a defensive line, but across the whole defense," Nacua said. "He's continued to thrive and be a leader on that defense."

And while McVay said he never worried about Turner trying to fill the shoes of Donald rather than playing like himself, he praised the leader Turner has become. Defensive coordinator Chris Shula said the "whole emphasis" this offseason was that Turner didn't need to be Donald, but just needed "to be the best version of Kobie Turner."

"We want him to be himself and that's what he's done," McVay said. "He's naturally ascending and asserting himself as a leader with just such a good awareness level on ... all right, how do I reach these guys with my own personality? How do he and I continue to build on our relationship?

"He has a great way of speaking up when it's necessary, but he shows it with the effort, the urgency, and the sense of purpose that he plays with every single snap. I've been really pleased with him."

There's no doubt to Verse that Turner, in his first season as a team captain, has found his voice -- just like he showed off on "The Masked Singer."

"Oh, he's found it," Verse said. "Oh, he's found it. No doubt about it."