Anyone who has followed the Los Angeles Rams for the last four years knows Sean McVay’s approach to the preseason. He doesn’t like to put his top players in harm’s way for meaningless games that don’t count toward the team’s record, so he keeps the Rams’ starters on the sideline.
Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that Matthew Stafford will not step foot on the field for any of the Rams’ three preseason games, despite being new to McVay’s system. McVay was definitive on his plan for Stafford during an appearance on the Doug Gottlieb Show, saying the veteran will never play a preseason snap with the Rams.
“There is zero chance you will ever see Matthew Stafford take a snap in the preseason for the Rams as long as I’m the coach. That will never happen,” McVay said. “He is not going to play. That’s why it’s important for us to try to get competitive ‘opps’ against some of these other teams in practice settings. Practicing against the Cowboys this Saturday. Get the Raiders twice. So we’re always looking for those things. Until you tell me that if a guy gets hurt in the preseason that we’ll get those games back or they’ll add them on the schedule afterwards as, ‘Oh yeah, you get two games because you lost those guys in the preseason,’ it’s hard for me to make sense of it.”
The same plan will be used for Darrell Henderson Jr., who is now the team’s starting running back. McVay hasn’t said which other players won’t play in the preseason, but it’s an easy list to predict: Andrew Whitworth, Cooper Kupp, Robert Woods, Jalen Ramsey, Leonard Floyd, Rob Havenstein, Darious Williams.
Essentially, any player who has already established himself as a surefire starter will not play in the preseason. It’s that simple.
