The Los Angeles Rams found a way to beat the Dallas Cowboys in Sunday’s preseason opener, winning a low-scoring game thanks to Stetson Bennett’s game-winning touchdown pass to Miller Forristall with 4 seconds left. The final score was 13-12 after Joshua Karty sealed it with a go-ahead PAT, a miraculous win by the Rams after it seemed like they were destined for an 0-1 start this preseason.
While Bennett did lead an impressive game-winning drive, he struggled mightily in his first action of 2024. He completed 24 of 38 passes for 224 yards and a touchdown, but he threw four unsightly interceptions.
All four picks came from the pocket, which is particularly concerning because Bennett had issues when he wasn’t rolling out or throwing on the move. Even though Sean McVay found some bright spots in the second-year QB’s outing, he also knows Bennett has to learn from his mistakes.
“The first two were tough because those are kind of occupational hazards,” McVay said, referring to the first two interceptions. “He will be able to learn from them. The second two, we have to be able to make better decisions. On his third one, our X(-receiver) fell so that safety didn’t have any work. He ended up coming off. We had a play that we really liked there. The last one, he’s got a high cross. He has to change the way that he’s layering that ball, but he is a resilient guy. All of them are ones that he can learn from, and I thought he did a really good job of being able to keep us ahead of the sticks, really moving us down the field. We obviously kind of petered out in the red zone, but I thought he did a great job getting us in and out of the huddle. I want to be able to learn from those plays, but for him to be able to just stay together, make some of the plays. I thought the fourth down, where we ended up drawing the penalty to be able to advance the drive and then for him to create off-schedule on fourth-and-6 was big time.”
Bennett did show some good things, like a couple of strikes over the middle to Jordan Whittington and a beautiful touch pass to Tyler Johnson in the corner of the end zone – which was just out of the reach of the receiver. But a quarterback can’t make it in the NFL throwing four interceptions in a game, especially after he struggled with the same turnover issues last preseason.
Bennett called it “one of the weirdest games” he’s been a part of, admitting there “were some lapses” in his play that he wants to correct.
“I think it’s great and I think it’s really good to have – that was probably the weirdest game that I’ve ever been a part of, to be quite honest with you,” he said. “I don’t know. I told myself today, we’re going to roll with the punches and we’re going to – my goal was to not make any mental errors, which I know it was basically to run the offense correctly. And I know the interceptions are different, but to run in and out of the huddle, execute, and I thought we did that for the majority of the day. There were some lapses, obviously. But in the end, it was get the ball in the end zone or you lose. And I think everybody kind of felt to do it.”
With Matthew Stafford getting the preseason off and Jimmy Garoppolo likely sitting out the next two games, too, Bennett will probably get a lot of opportunities to show what he can do against the Chargers and Texans the next two weeks.