Matthew Stafford is as tough and competitive as anyone you’ll come across in the NFL. He plays through just about anything and everything, no matter how major or minor an injury is.
But with almost three weeks until the start of the season, Sean McVay wants to play it as safe as possible with his star quarterback, who’s dealing with some hamstring tightness right now.
Stafford returned to practice on Monday but was limited to only individual drills. That was the call of McVay and the training staff, who are trying to protect Stafford from himself.
Being the competitor that he is, Stafford was “obviously very upset” about not practicing in full.
” My biggest thing was, wanted to be smart with him. If there was any sort of sudden movement that set him back, just didn’t think it would be worth it,” McVay said. “He’s feeling great. He was obviously very upset at me that he wasn’t practicing today, which is a good thing. That’s what makes him a great competitor. It’s also our job to make sure, looking at the timetable we have, talking with Reggie [Scott] – if there was any sort of sudden movement where there was a setback, that wouldn’t be worth it. That’s why we held him.”
McVay isn’t sure when Stafford will return as a full participant in practice, whether it’s Tuesday, later this week or next week. His primary goal is making sure he’s healthy for Week 1, which all signs point toward.
In fact, McVay said Stafford probably could have done everything in practice if he needed to, but with the season still weeks away, it wasn’t worth the risk of further injury.
“It’s our job to be able to protect him. Just like I thought he would, as a competitor, they want to be out here and they want to go,” McVay said. “He’s probably upset with me, which is why I love him. It is our job to try to make decisions that are getting ahead of certain things and, if he wasn’t a veteran player, it maybe would be a different approach. He’s so sharp above the neck and getting him physically feeling as good as possible is the most important thing. Could he have practiced today? Probably so. He felt good enough in the movement that he had throughout individual. Those unscripted movements where a guy beats a tackle, or a guard and you have to just make a sudden little movement. If there was any chance that it could aggravate a tight hamstring, we wanted to avoid that. So that was the reason for the approach.”
Stafford doesn’t need the same amount of practice time as a younger player like Stetson Bennett, which is why the Rams are so comfortable holding him out of practice until he’s fully healthy and not at risk of getting hurt more.
It sounds like a very minor hamstring injury, which is good news, but the team doesn’t want it to turn into something more like Cooper Kupp’s injury last summer.