Matthew Stafford didn’t miss a single game last season despite battling a handful of injuries, including an ankle tweak, elbow pain and a finger injury. He’s as tough as they come at quarterback, and he never uses injuries are a reason for any struggles he might experience.
But this offseason, he had an injection in his right elbow to help alleviate pain in his throwing arm. Stafford said he’ll be better off in the long run, but right now, he’s still feeling the effects of the injection.
In practice on Monday, Stafford had his workload limited to only individual work, not participating in team drills. Stafford is feeling a little pain in his elbow, Sean McVay said, so the team decided to play it safe with the star quarterback.
“We lessened Matthew’s workload today,” McVay said after practice. “Really, when we look at it, we’ve got five weeks until September 8th. He’s still feeling a little bit of pain. He could push through it. You guys have been out here, he’s been throwing and competing in team settings. We felt like the smart thing was, let’s really just take it a week at a time.”
Stafford still got in plenty of work throughout the practice, and he looked sharp from what we saw. He threw a nice fade to Allen Robinson, who made a fantastic catch over Robert Rochell in the end zone during one-on-ones.
He also dropped a perfectly thrown ball into Cooper Kupp’s hands, also against Rochell in the end zone. In total, McVay said Stafford got in about “40 to 50 throws in individual,” which he seemed pleased with.
The Rams are just being cautious and making sure he’s ready for the season opener.
“He ended up getting about 40 to 50 throws in individual,” he said. “We didn’t take part in the team activities and that’s really more a result of he’s got so much experience. The most important thing is for him feeling good and healthy on September 8th. We could certainly push and he could really grind through this, but that’s not the goal with somebody like him. It’s not something that we’re concerned about. We just want to be really smart with somebody that is as important as our quarterback is and as experienced as he is to be able to put together a plan that we feel like is in his best interest and in our team’s best interest.”
Rushing Stafford back isn’t going to do any good if it’s going to cause a setback later on in the season, or prevent him from being ready for Week 1. He’s played 13 years in the NFL so he knows the ins and outs of training camp enough that he can still be effective and prepared with a lighter workload.
