Stetson Bennett was ominously placed on the non-football illness list at the start of the 2023 season and the Los Angeles Rams have given little clarity as to why he missed his entire rookie year. Bennett was never activated and didn’t return to the team, putting his future as a Rams quarterback in doubt.
Sean McVay has provided a couple of updates and his latest comments this week weren’t exactly encouraging. It sounds like he and the Rams haven’t been in contact with Bennett and they will talk to him “at the appropriate time” to see if he still fits with the organization.
“Yeah, I think the first thing is you connect with him, which we’ll do at the appropriate time. You figure out, where are you at and is this something that we feel like is best for him and for our football team to bring him back into this ecosystem?” McVay said Thursday. “Those will be conversations that we will have. I think once we have a better idea of what we’ll do with that, then that’ll give clarity. You do make sure that you know – right now, we got Matthew Stafford and really in our minds, we don’t have a backup quarterback that’s on this roster. We’ll see what that looks like in terms of how that affects Stetson and the draft or free agency.”
The fact that the Rams don’t feel they have a backup quarterback on the roster is telling of how they view Bennett’s prospects of ever playing for them again. Carson Wentz is a pending free agent and while McVay said “he did a great job,” there’s no indication the Rams are going to re-sign him.
The Rams drafted Bennett to be Stafford’s backup and potentially his successor at quarterback, using a fourth-round pick on him last year. He struggled in the preseason but Los Angeles still committed to him as its QB2.
With his future very much in doubt, the Rams will need to either draft a quarterback or sign a free agent to back up Stafford in 2024.
