The Rams are breaking in a bunch of new players. To do so properly, the Rams apparently have to risk literally breaking them by putting them on the field for live reps in the preseason.
“It’s going to be very different than what you guys are accustomed to,” coach Sean McVay told reporters on Saturday. “We haven’t decided exactly, but we’ve got to get guys ready to go. There’s a lot of players on this team that haven’t had an opportunity to even really suit up, play real tackle football, that we’re going to be counting on against Seattle [in Week One of the regular season]. So it’s going to be a very different approach now.”
It won’t be so different that the best players are put at risk, like quarterback Matthew Stafford and defensive tackle Aaron Donald.
“The Matthews and the Aarons, you’re not going to see them but, we’re still kind of working through that,” McVay said of the preseason plan. “But it will be very different than what we’ve been accustomed to, and really even in 2017 when we got here, we did play guys in those first couple preseason games and just a series in the third one. So, that really kind of started from ‘18 on and I think this is a lot closer to 2017 where we’re kind of learning a lot about these guys. But the guys that have been big contributors that have played a lot of snaps, we’ll tilt towards being smart with them. But for the most part, there’s going to be a lot of guys that are playing and very few guys that won’t.”
There’s a conscious risk assumed when putting a guy on the field in the preseason. McVay was asked how to balance that against the potential reward.
“It’s a case-by-case thing,” McVay said. “If a guy has played a lot of snaps and it’s somebody that’s been in big-time games, we don’t have a whole lot of those guys right now but we do have a handful of them and those guys, you’ll be smart with them. But I do think there’s something to be said for even just getting your pads on, going through a warmup, having some of those good pregame jitters where you’re playing real NFL football and there’s actually fans in the stands and you can play tackle and do some of the things that we don’t always simulate in practice settings just because we want to try to minimize the risk for injuries.”
While the plans have yet to be finalized, it sounds as if all Rams will be playing with the exception of the biggest names — Stafford, Donald, and receiver Cooper Kupp. With the Rams trying to whip a muddled roster into a contender, those reps become critical, even if it means that some of them will end up being not available for the Seattle game.
