Eugene Sims and Ethan Westbrooks have come a long way to add depth to the Los Angeles’ Rams defensive line

Between position drills, defensive line meetings and the grind of training camp, Eugene Sims and Ethan Westbrooks of the Rams spend a lot of time with each other.

But what ties their careers together is rarely mentioned.

“Once in a while one of us will do something and we’ll say, ‘You know we came from D-II?’” Sims said after a practice last week. l “Other than that, we don’t talk too much about coming from the same place.”

That place is West Texas A&M, the Rams’ unlikely source for depth at defensive end. Sims, entering his seventh season and one of the team’s oldest players, was drafted in 2010 after playing at the tiny Division II school. Westbrooks, starting his third season, was signed by the Rams as an undrafted free agent in 2014.

Each describes himself as a “rotational guy,” looking to relieve Robert Quinn or William Hayes and make big plays off the edge. It’s a key role in what might be the Rams’ strongest unit, and neither Sims nor Westbrooks is a stranger to maximizing limited opportunity.

“There’s a lot of pride in being a Division II guy,” Westbrooks said. “You’re used to being told you can’t do something. You’re used to not getting a lot of chances. But when you do, you make the most of it.”

When former West Texas A&M coach Don Carthel was recruiting Westbrooks out of Oakland, he told a white lie.

“Canyon is a great town between two cities,” Westbrooks remembers Carthel telling him in a phone conversation.

That was enough for the self-described “city kid,” who was bouncing around junior colleges in search of a stable situation. But when Westbrooks showed up for his first training camp, he noticed the flat landscape and not much else. There were no tall buildings to shield the beating sun. A few players on the team wanted to take him out for a night of fun, and that meant partying inside a barn.

Canyon’s two neighboring cities are Lubbock and Amarillo, not exactly the big-city atmosphere Westbrooks had grown accustomed to around Oakland, San Francisco and Sacramento.

“You can watch a dog run away for three days,” said Brett Watson, who played with Sims at West Texas A&M and later became Westbrooks’ defensive line coach at the school. “There is nothing out there but school and football.”

For Sims and Westbrooks, West Texas A&M offered each of those things — and one last shot at the NFL.

Sims says he “messed up his chance to play Division I football” coming out of Mississippi, and leaves it at that. Westbrooks had a reputation for being difficult to coach, which is why he attended three junior colleges in two seasons before landing in Canyon.

Watson said he had been told by NFL scouts that D-II linemen have to win five out of six snaps to attract a pro team. Sims moved from safety to pass rusher and as a senior collected seven sacks among his 13½ tackles for loss. Westbrooks set a school record with 19½ sacks in his first season with the team.

When Westbrooks was trying to make the Rams as an undrafted free agent in 2014, 15 West Texas A&M players were either on NFL rosters or trying to make one. There are now nine former Buffaloes in the NFL: Three defensive linemen, two offensive linemen and four at skill positions.

“Us cats from West Texas A&M, I’ll tell you, we can play with the guys from the big conferences like the SEC, Pac-12, all that,” Sims said. “You just have to give us a shot.”

Heading into their return season in L.A., the Rams are made up of moving parts. The linebackers are either young or in new roles. Half of last year’s starting secondary is being replaced. The offense, aside from star running back Todd Gurley, is full of question marks.

That leaves the defensive line as the team’s surest unit, and the emergence of Sims and Westbrooks is another reason why. Sims has never had more than three sacks in a season but said he’s in the best shape of his career. Westbrooks, who finished with two sacks and 14 tackles while getting his first taste of action in 2015, feels a breakthrough coming.

“Those two guys provide an important lesson,” Watson said. “It’s not really about where you come from, but where you end up.”