As the regular season comes to a close and every game becomes more important than the last, the Los Angeles Rams are doing what they can to make sure COVID-19 doesn’t derail their great season. At 9-4, they just need a win over the New York Jets on Sunday to clinch a playoff berth, and then a victory over Seattle in Week 16 to lock up the NFC West.
As a precaution, the Rams are keeping quarterbacks Jared Goff and John Wolford away from each other when possible, separating them during meetings under the team’s massive tent outside their facility in Thousand Oaks.
“With the quarterback spot, we try to be really cognizant of making sure that Jared and John are never in a situation where if one of them were to get it they’d be a close contact trace,” McVay said Wednesday. “That’s been a huge thing and then with Bryce (Perkins) as well. … We’ve talked about potentially having a quarterback kind of just meet virtually and be available in an emergency situation, but the approach we’ve taken with that is just make sure that we understand all the parameters around what dictates and determines a close contact trace that would knock those guys out if one of them were to get it.”
The Rams did a ton of work to their headquarters at Cal Lutheran this offseason in wake of the coronavirus pandemic. They turned the parking lot into a huge meeting tent, allowing players to spread out and keep distance between each other.
That helps the quarterbacks, who do some virtual meetings and some in-person meetings – though they’re never held indoors at the facility.
“Sometimes it’s virtual meetings. Sometimes it’s in the tent where you make sure that they’re never within the proximity that makes somebody a close contact trace,” McVay added. “And then when they do meet – every meeting that we have is either in the tent or it’s virtually. There’s nothing indoors. Everything has the amount of space that you can allocate – and then you try to be mindful of when they’re on the field, those are some of the times that it can really occur. You just want to be careful about that because it is something that’s consecutive time spent. So, keeping them moving and keeping them spread out. I think Kevin (O’Connell), (assistant QBs) Liam (Coen) and those guys have done a really nice job of kind of identifying how we can avoid that at all costs.”
The Broncos were faced with an impossible predicament earlier this year when all of their quarterbacks missed a game due to one positive test in the position group, causing the others to be considered close contacts.
As a result, they started undrafted wide receiver Kendall Hinton at quarterback and got blown out by the Saints, 31-3. The Rams would like to avoid a situation like that at all costs, which is why they’re taking extra precautions at the all-important position this season.