OXNARD – The impetus for the bonds that connect players and coaches sometimes have varied and blurry starting points. The one that will forever link Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and safety Maurice Alexander couldn’t be any clearer.

Williams is the primary reason Alexander is with the Rams, having fought hard on his behalf during the 2014 draft while most of the NFL saw a raw, risky prospect.

“He supported me,” Alexander said, the appreciation obvious.

The gratitude Alexander has returned is the work he’s put in to develop into a potential starter.

It’s almost inconceivable to think about it while watching Alexander fly around the Rams’ practice field Tuesday, but two years ago it took all of Williams’ instincts, vision and projection to see in Alexander what so many were missing.

Tapping into intuition honed over 20 years of coaching – and maybe even a little bit of imagination – Williams saw past the present and into the future. The image that emerged was a raw Utah State prospect developing into an eventual NFL starting safety.

So Williams went to bat for Alexander in the Rams’ draft room, essentially promising everyone with any sort of draft input they’d have an angry coach if Alexander eluded their grasp.

If you’ve spent any time at all observing and listening to Williams on a practice field, he’s equal parts motivator, agitator, comedian, philosopher and mad scientist. In other words, not exactly someone you want on your bad side.

Which probably explains why the Rams drafted Alexander in the fourth round in 2014 when so many others saw him as a sixth- or seventh-rounder, at best.

“That was the beginning for me,” Alexander said.

It was also the foundation upon which Williams and the Rams would take little more than speed, toughness and athletic ability and construct an NFL-caliber safety.

The project is essentially complete, with Alexander making a compelling case for himself as a starter with a strong performance during OTAs.

The 6-foot-1, 220-pounder is competing with Cody Davis and Christian Bryant to replace Rodney McLeod, who moved on to the Philadelphia Eagles as a free agent.

But with T.J. McDonald out of OTAs dealing with legal issues, all three have been mixing and matching in the back end of the Rams defense and making strong impressions.

Alexander has been a standout.

“He’s having a really, really, really good camp,” Williams said.

It’s everything Williams envisioned for Alexander two years ago, although he knew it was going to be an extensive project.

“You want to talk about somebody’s head spinning,” is how Williams described the beginning of Alexander’s development.

Alexander played just one year of safety and only two years of Division I football before joining the Rams. Making the transition from college to the NFL is difficult enough, but doing so while essentially learning a new position, terminology, responsibility and nuance made it even more challenging.

“He couldn’t discuss football from a secondary standpoint, and he was just paralyzed with all the information and the speed of the game of the National Football League in the secondary,” Williams said.

It also didn’t help Alexander suffered a knee injury during OTAs his rookie year that slowed him down in training camp.

Understanding the difficulties, Alexander set up personal yard-markers for himself measured in days and stretched out across a football field.

The objective was clear.

“I set a goal to be better every single year,” Alexander said.

He played in nine games as a rookie and made four tackles. While many wondered if the Rams invested too high a pick in Alexander, behind the scenes he was making strides.

By his second year, positional knowledge began catching up with the physical skills. He was getting on the field more frequently, and Williams was growing more confident not only in structuring specific schemes to capitalize on Alexander’s skills, but also his ability to carry them out.

“I invented packages for him last year, because of how well he was doing, to get him more playing time,” Williams said.

And when McDonald was lost in December to a shoulder injury, Alexander replaced him as a starter and responded with 27 tackles and two sacks.

“That was fun,” he said.

Alexander approached this offseason knowing McLeod’s departure opened a starting job. He’s attacking the opportunity as if it were a quarterback and he was on a safety blitz.

“It’s been a great OTA for me, I’ve been learning and it’s a blessing to get an opportunity to be with the (first team),” he said. “It’s been a great process.”

Alexander’s confidence and performance, compared to two years ago, are almost startling to Williams.

“Right now, he is light years ahead of where he was when he first came in,” Williams said.

It took intuition and imagination, but it’s everything Williams saw in Alexander when he looked beyond the present and into the future.

Contact the writer: vincent.bonsignore@langnews.com