The Los Angeles Rams took a chance on Stetson Bennett by drafting him in the fourth round last year, bringing in the two-time national champion to back up Matthew Stafford. Despite concerns about his size and arm strength, the Rams were confident in Bennett’s leadership skills and playmaking ability, which he showed at Georgia.
Unfortunately, he spent last season away from the team. He went home to Georgia to focus on his mental health, something Les Snead says definitely benefitted the young quarterback.
In the last couple of months, Bennett has spoken a bit about his time away from football, most recently on the “UNRESERVED with TJ Callaway” podcast. Toward the end of this week’s episode, Bennett discussed the doubts he had about himself, wondering if he could make it in the NFL.
“Going to Georgia, it was less so about being on the team,” he said. “It was like, ‘Ok, well I want to see if I can be the quarterback. I want to see if I’m good enough to do that.’ Kind of the same way now with the Rams. I kind of just want to see if someone beats me.”
Bennett told Callaway that last year, he was worried he wouldn’t be what the Rams needed him to be, questioning his own ability despite being a fourth-round pick in the draft.
“I needed it,” Bennett said of his absence. “And I think part of it was, I don’t know, there was a million thoughts. I was scared that I wasn’t going to be what they needed me to be.”
The NFL is a different animal than college football. There’s a lot of attention on high-profile players, particularly quarterbacks, and a lot of players are just fighting to make the 53-man roster.
Bennett could feel the difference in pressure and the brighter spotlight last year as an NFL player, feeling like he was on his own much more than he was in college. That’s partly because of the fact that if a player isn’t good enough, the team can just cut him. In college, that’s not the case.
“It is different because you’re much more on an island. At Georgia, it was, ‘Are you good enough? But we’ll still give you food and an education.’ But with the Rams, it’s, ‘Are you good enough? If not, get out of here.’ Right?” he said. “And it is harder not to think about that because you don’t want to be embarrassed and to not be good enough because when I went to Georgia it was, don’t really have much to lose, right? Nobody really knows you. It’s all house money. You’re going out there and if you’re not, then nobody really expects you to. Then you go do whatever. But here, it’s very out in the open. You’re naked to the world. It’s like, are you (good enough)? And if you’re not, then everybody knows. But you can’t really think about that because it just slows you down. But I don’t think you can hide from it, either. You’ve got to know that it’s there because if you know that it’s there, then when that feeling arrives, you just know that, ‘I’ve got a job to do. I’ve got to do this three-step drop that I’ve practiced a thousand times.’ And if you ignore it, then you get that feeling that’s just that feeling, right?”
Bennett played with swagger at Georgia, looking like an always-confident quarterback capable of stepping up in crunch time. That may be true, but he admitted that self-confidence doesn’t come easy for him.
Though he does feel secure in some regards, he also knows how tough it is to make it in the NFL, especially as a quarterback. He’s still trying to handle the pressure of the position he’s in, knowing how many eyeballs are on him every time he steps on the field.
“Self-confidence for me, it’s not innate,” he said. “I wasn’t born – like, I was always sure of myself but I’m confident in what I do because what I do, I can see. Did I practice throwing 10 balls today, like an out route? Pretty confident I can hit that out route, right? And I don’t have to practice everything, but it goes back to the work. If you don’t do the work, in my mind, then you don’t deserve it.
“Work, and then the confidence comes from that. The letting go and almost being an NFL quarterback, being the face that people see. The hero and zero. That is kind of what I’m trying to figure out now.”