The Los Angeles Rams have been changing their story on Matthew Stafford’s back for the past three weeks, so nothing was unusual about the team doing it again on Saturday. According to Gary Klein of the LA Times, a Rams official declined to comment on Stafford’s scheduled workout on Saturday, telling Klein that Sean McVay would address the situation on Monday.
So rather than saying that Stafford’s workout went well or bad or undecided, or saying that McVay would talk about it after the team’s ongoing preseason game against the Chargers, or talk about it on Sunday like he did last week, the Rams decided to deflect and defer the response by almost 48 hours. Is this more “being cautious” with a 37-year-old QB or another alarm bell that has made many fans want plug their ears and ignore?
The “Stafford back” story is one that won’t go away and not because the media is covering it. Everyone agrees that Stafford’s health is a critical component for the success of the L.A. Rams. Players get hurt and teams are cautious with quarterbacks, but the team has not been able to keep their story straight the entire time, whether that’s by design or because they are just as caught off guard by the changing status of Stafford’s back as the public is: Stafford had no injury at the end of OTAs, then McVay said at the start of training camp that he would only sit for five days, then he was week-to-week, then he had a “great” throwing session that would allow him to return to practice this past Monday, but over three weeks into camp he has yet to return.
If McVay had been able to tell the media in July that Stafford would miss all of training camp as an extreme measure of caution, that would have been alarming but there would be no reason to cover the story again until the end of camp. That’s not what happened. The story keeps changing, which means that the updates moving back his return date are getting more alarming each time, which indicates a reasonable reason for Rams fans to be concerned.
Matthew Stafford is the quarterback of the Rams and he was recently called a “tier-1 quarterback” by NFL personnel. He might not be healthy enough to start in Week 1. We can’t definitively say to not be worried about that because clearly the head coach of the Rams doesn’t know either.
And if he does know the answer, and doesn’t want to share it, that should make you even more concerned.
