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The 7-4 Rams went 2-2 in November. In the two losses, quarterback Jared Goff hasn’t played well.
A day after coach Sean McVay said that Goff must take better care of the ball, McVay was asked whether he considered yanking Goff in either of those two losses, to the Dolphins and the 49ers.
“If I thought it was going to be the best thing to just take a deep breath and step away, then I’d say, maybe,” McVay said. “But not in either of those situations, because both of those reflected kind of having an opportunity where there was enough plays made to get back in it. The Dolphins game, maybe a little bit different, but I thought it was important to be able to play through some of those things, learn from it, especially just based on some of the things that they were activating defensively.
“Yesterday, each of those situations that occurred that that ended up hurting us, were kind of different in their own right. All of them happened to be versus a man-coverage type of situation, the three turnovers that he had. Really for us, we got back in that game where we had a good little bit of momentum on that drive, that you get the big play to [receiver] Cooper [Kupp], then you end up hitting [receiver] Josh Reynolds and then we just kind of missed hitting a touchdown to [running back] Darrell Henderson which ended up getting it to 17-6. Then Aaron [Donald] does an unbelievable job of forcing the fumble [which resulted in a touchdown] and then the next thing you know, the next drive you get, that’s where you see [running back] Cam [Akers] break a 61-yarder and he has a tough, hard red-zone run that two plays later, you punch it in and then you’re looking up and you’re winning the game.
“Yesterday that was never part of the consideration nor was it really for Miami, to answer your question.”
What’s stunning about McVay’s answer is that it was so long. When a team has a true franchise quarterback and a reporter asks the coach whether he considered benching the franchise quarterback, the coach doesn’t engage in an extended monologue explain when asked why it didn’t happen. He simply says, “Because that’s our quarterback,” or possibly something far less tactful.
This doesn’t mean Goff is in danger of being benched (his backup is John Wolford of the “Who The Hell Is That?” Wolfords), but McVay’s failure to dismiss the question in knee-jerk style is telling.
