The Los Angeles Rams are in a difficult spot when it comes to their backup quarterback situation. They signed Jimmy Garoppolo to a one-year deal this offseason, but he has to serve a two-game suspension to start the year. Therefore, the Rams won’t have him behind Matthew Stafford for the first two games of the season.
They do have Stetson Bennett and Dresser Winn on the roster but neither has exactly shined up to this point. So who will fill in for Garoppolo during Weeks 1 and 2? While Bennett, a 2023 fourth-rounder, would be the obvious choice, he doesn’t look ready to take the field in a regular-season game based on what we’ve seen in the preseason.
Following a four-interception game against the Cowboys on Sunday, Sean McVay shared some doubt about whether Bennett is ready to be the team’s QB2. He told reporters Tuesday that he needs to see more from Bennett and that the Rams are “still in evaluation mode.”
“Yeah, I think we still have to be able to see some more body of work,” McVay said. “What I did like was what I mentioned to you, to be able to stay together. That’s a tough deal when you have the ball, when you turn it over a handful of times. He kind of mentioned it in the postgame to you guys where he thought he was seeing some things and then the mistakes ended up being pretty costly but he just kept playing. He kept fighting. The guys kept believing around him. I was really impressed with the resilience that he demonstrated. We do need to take better care of the football. That’s a very important thing. All of those are very correctable and really in a lot of them, it’s not necessarily with the exception – well, a couple of them were bad decisions and then a couple of them were just missed the way that you want to make the type of layered throw. But you’re going to the right spot. All things that we can learn from. He has to continue to improve and we’re still in evaluation mode.”
Not all interceptions are the same. Some are more the fault of the quarterback than others, while some are simply great plays by the opposing defender. In Bennett’s case, all four of his picks on Sunday were rookie-type mistakes that you don’t want to see your quarterback making.
He wasn’t seeing defenders in coverage, he forced passes into tight windows and just made some flat-out poor decisions. And it’s not as if he was under duress on any of them. He had plenty of time in the pocket and a clean platform to throw from.
It was a similar issue last preseason for Bennett. He threw three interceptions on just 62 attempts in 2023, which was tied for the third-most in the league. With four picks on 38 attempts Sunday, he now has seven interceptions on only 100 throws in four preseason games played – an unsightly 7% interception rate. For comparison, Mac Jones had the highest interception rate in the NFL last season at only 3.5%.
It’s hard to feel good about Bennett being one play away from being thrust into action in Weeks 1 or 2 if Stafford were to get hurt. Up to this point, he has not looked like a starting-caliber quarterback or even a reliable backup.