Police in Simi Valley, California arrested Rams practice-squad center Aaron Neary at 6:30 p.m. local time on Sunday, some 40 miles from the L.A. Coliseum. On Monday, Rams coach Sean McVay confirmed that Neary was with the team for Sunday’s win over the Cardinals.
"[H]e was at the game on sideline like our practice squad guys are,” McVay told reporters. “He went to a place and shouldn’t have made that decision. The one thing when you sit down and you talk to him -- when you talk to the human being -- I believe that he felt horrible about it. He knows that it was a mistake. I think the way that he handled it, in spite of making that mistake, I had respect for the accountability that he took for that.”
Left unanswered is how Neary, in roughly two hours after leaving the L.A. Coliseum, ended up with a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.17 percent. Thus, left open is the possibility that the consumption of alcohol began at some point before he left the Coliseum.
Neary was arrested both for DUI and hit and run.
“I do believe that Aaron is a good kid,” McVay said. “I could tell he felt horrible about the decision. We really use it as an opportunity. Let’s all learn from this. Let’s look at ourselves critically. Let’s use the resources at our disposal with the way that Uber or the way that Lyft is, and different things that we can utilize to try to avoid some of these circumstances. Thank goodness nobody was hurt. We’re going to help work through this with you. But that’s kind of the approach that we take. Now, each situation – you know how important it is for us with the character, different things like this – I think this was a poor decision in terms of the judgement, but this is something that based on how he felt and when you sit down and you talk to him and then based on the history that we have with the human being, I think you want to try to help him work through something like this as opposed to have severe consequences where he’s not a part of it. . . . Let’s use this as an opportunity for our whole team, our whole organization to be able to learn from and hopefully let’s not make these mistakes again.”
That’s the right attitude from McVay, but until more is known about how and where Neary consumed enough alcohol to get to that level of inebriation relatively close in time to the end of the game, it’s impossible to know whether he did or didn’t drink while at the game or in the locker room, either of which outcomes would expose the Rams to scrutiny from the league office.