Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford emerged from a Week One clunker without any injury that landed him on the team’s first practice report in advance of Week Two. That’s the good news. The bad news is that 40 percent of his starting offensive line didn’t practice on Wednesday, six days after a blowout loss to the Bills and four days before a visit from the Falcons.
Left tackle Joe Noteboom, who suffered an MCL strain that left him (per coach Sean McVay) day-to-day, didn’t practice yesterday. Likewise, center Brian Allen missed practice, also with a knee injury.
Also not practicing was receiver Van Jefferson (knee) and long snapper Matthew Orzech (calf).
As to Stafford, the fact that he wasn’t listed at all implies that his elbow is perfectly fine, to the point where he’s not even getting treatment on it.
“He’s feeling good,” McVay told reporters on Wednesday. “I think we’re all excited about an opportunity to be able to move forward the right way. There’s a lot of things that we can all do better. We’re interested in eyes forward and looking towards a great challenge against a really good opponent that played excellent in Week One.”
Stafford agreed that he will be a “full go” for the game.
“I feel good,” Stafford told reporters. “I feel great. Obviously had a couple extra days off, nothing hurt, so I feel pretty good.”
He didn’t play pretty good last Thursday. But he didn’t seem pretty interested in talking much about it.
“Definitely two or three [throws] I wish I had back, there’s no question about that,” Stafford said. “I think I just got to do a better job of seeing it and hitting it. A couple of those maybe trying to do a little too much. Others, sometimes you lose vision on guys, whatever it is. Everything I’m saying is something that’s in the past and doesn’t matter anymore, to be honest with you. I just keep trust in my preparation and knowing that if I do what I’m supposed to do, preparation-wise, I can go out there and play at a high level and whatever happens, happens.”
It may be in the past, but it definitely matters. He needs to be sure he learns from decisions he made last week. While nothing that happened against the Bills can be changed, lessons learned can be used to help avoid similar outcomes moving forward.
That seems to be what teams trying to get better do. Embrace the past, not ignore it.