Sean McVay unsure if Rams starters will play vs. Raiders next week
Cameron DaSilva
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theramswire.usatoday.com]
Only two projected starters for the Los Angeles Rams saw the field on Thursday night against the Baltimore Ravens in Samson Ebukam and Jamon Brown, but that’s not atypical for a team’s preseason opener. The second and third games typically give way to more playing time for the starters, making those contests more exciting for the fans watching.
That may be the case for most teams, but the Rams are in a unique situation. They’re slated to face the Oakland Raiders next Saturday, the second of their four preseason games. Then, three weeks later, they’ll play the Raiders again, only that game will count against their regular season record.
As a result, Sean McVay is unsure how much he’ll play his starters against Jon Gruden’s squad, if at all. He was asked if he anticipates putting more starters into next week’s game, and it doesn’t sound like he will.
“I’m not sure about that. I think the biggest thing was, when we sent this practice schedule out a long time ago, that was kind of the plan all along,” he said after Thursday’s loss. “We got a lot more work than we would in a normal two-day sequence with our starters, with all the different situations – two-minute, red zone, third down, move the ball – so the entirety of what we were able to get done, we felt that if we got that work done, that was going to be one of the main reasons we wanted to come out here against a really good football team, get a chance to measure ourselves and see how that worked out.”
McVay, of course, is referring to the two days of practice the Rams had in Baltimore with the Ravens. Joint practices are always more intense and tougher on the players because they’re no longer facing their teammates.
The starters got plenty of work in against Baltimore in practice, which is a big reason McVay felt comfortable holding them out of the preseason opener. As for how the joint practices impact his plan against the Raiders next week, McVay is “not really sure yet.”
“I’m saying that it’s always adjustable and we kind of have an idea and we’ve talked about it. The tricky thing, too, is that you open with the team you play next week. So there’s a lot of different layers to it.”
McVay admitted this week that he’s having a “tough time” deciding how exactly to handle the Rams’ starters in the preseason, considering how great the risk of injury is before the season begins.
“Figuring out what’s best for our football team, having an appreciation and respect for the work that you get done in the preseason, those are the things that we’ve got to do a good job of talking through as a staff and then see what we think is the best way to approach the Oakland game and really the rest of the preseason with regards to some of these guys,” McVay said. “And that’s something that we’ll discuss and we’ll figure out what’s best and then we’ll move forward and be firm with that decision.”
Todd Gurley has already said he’d prefer not to play in the preseason, and he showed last year that he really doesn’t need too much work before Week 1. He carried it just six times last preseason and proceeded to win Offensive Player of the Year. Aaron Donald didn’t go through a single training camp practice and won Defensive Player of the Year, so those are two guys who have proved preseason work can sometimes be overrated.
As for Jared Goff and the wide receivers, that’s a bit of a touchier situation. If the starting offensive line doesn’t play and Goff does, you’re putting your starting quarterback in harm’s way behind a shaky unit, as we saw on Thursday night.
So, McVay and the coaching staff have plenty to figure out, but it seems like he’s OK with resting his starters for a fair amount of time.
