It’s hard for quarterbacks to get injured during training camp, since they can’t be hit. But they can still hit their hand against a helmet while throwing the ball.
That’s what Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford did on Monday. Stafford left the field with his thumb wrapped.
Said coach Sean McVay after practice, via Kevin Modesti of the Los Angeles Daily News: “I don’t know anything yet. I think he’ll be OK.”
“It was a freak thing, but it is something that consistently occurs,” McVay told reporters, via quotes distributed by the team. “See somebody come down on the top of somebody’s helmet and when you get a little bit of a push interior, those are things that do inevitably occur. It’s one of those things where I’m saying to myself, ‘Man I feel stupid that I didn’t implement some of the things to prevent that.’ I’ve seen some teams around the league, they have those shells on their helmets that you can at least soften the blow when you do come down on the top of it. So, what you say is, hopefully you don’t have to learn the hard way and you start implementing things like that to try to just minimize the risk for injury.”
That’s good news, if McVay actually knows anything. The fact that he admits he doesn’t know anything makes it harder to accept the representation that he’ll be OK.
If Stafford misses time, the Rams won’t be OK. Expectations are sky high in L.A. because of the arrival of Stafford (or maybe because of the departure of Jared Goff). If Stafford can’t play all or most of the season, it will be harder to fulfill those expectations, especially in the most competitive division in the NFL.