The Cleveland Browns are treating their third preseason game like it’s real. The Los Angeles Rams are treating the same game like it’s only real for the Browns. One could only wonder if Sean McVay would petition for the NFL to get rid of the third preseason game right now, but Roger Goodell is waiting until he finally gets an 18th game added to the schedule.
Since they have to show up anyway, the Rams will humor Kevin Stefanski, who is expected to play his starters for 20-30 plays against L.A.’s practice squad, and hope that none of their emergency players get injured.
Rams 2024 3rd preseason game
How many Rams players on Saturday will make the final 53-man roster? Aside from the kicker, punter, and longsnapper, the answer could be ZERO.
In L.A.’s third preseason game last year, a 17-15 loss to the Houston Texans, Sean McVay sat practically any player on the 90-man roster who was going to have a role in the regular season. The quarterback was Dresser Winn for the entire contest — as will be the case on Saturday — and the running backs were Zach Evans, Boston Scott, and SaRodorick Thompson. The only players to catch a pass were Xavier Smith, Drake Stoops, and Miller Forristall.
All seven of those players were cut.
The only defensive players in the game who made the roster were linebacker Elias Neal and edge Brennan Jackson and that’s because Jackson was a fifth round rookie who had yet to earn anything. Jackson made one tackle in the game and he would eventually end up playing in seven contests with 47 snaps in the regular season.
Neal made seven tackles in the game and made the roster as the fifth linebacker, an area of weakness. Neal appeared in six regular season games and had zero snaps on defense.
Nobody who plays for McVay on Saturday has a serious role on the team except for kicker Josh Karty, punter Ethan Evans, and longsnapper Alex Ward.
The Browns will be the complete opposite, starting and giving extended playing time to players like Joe Flacco and his entire supporting cast for 25-30 plays, which is almost the same as saying that they will play a half. The end result could only be the first quarter, but Cleveland is treating most of the contest like a real game. This may lead you to believing that the Rams do have something to play for: The guys on the field can “prove themselves”.
This is a false narrative.
It’s false because as is already established, nobody on the field has any opportunities left to prove anything.
They can make the practice squad — typically just a purgatory for guys who will at best get futures contracts in January — and they can extend their dreams for a week, a month, four months, and possibly up to 1-3 more years. That’s awesome and fans can be happy for those players because Sean McVay is giving them something that coaches like Stefanski are not giving to the filler and camp bodies that every team must carry in August:
Playing time.
That’s pretty cool. It still doesn’t change the fact that if McVay could avoid Saturday altogether, he would probably take the chance to not show up in Cleveland and go into Tuesday’s cutdowns with the exact same decisions that he’s already made by Friday. The roster will not change because of anything that happens on Saturday.
That’s very different than the story on the Browns, as the game will be the highlight of the weekend for a lot of fans around the country who really enjoy entertainers more than they root for real competitors:
Shedeur Sanders could play most of the second half and will see at least the fourth quarter.
That is yet another favor that the Rams are doing for the Browns, giving Sanders one more chance to play in a game before possibly getting cut on Tuesday; Sanders is QB4 and his only real hope is that Stefanski keeps four quarterbacks or the team gets rid of Kenny Pickett. (They aren’t going to get rid of Dillon Gabriel.)
Even Rams fans are likely more interested in watching Cleveland’s QB competition than they are in seeing what Dresser Winn does in possibly his last ever NFL appearance.
Because the L.A. Rams didn’t necessarily want to be here. They have to be here.
