The Los Angeles Rams went into Saturday night’s game as the betting favorites, so sportsbooks expected them to beat the Chargers at SoFi Stadium. That may have been misguided considering how young and inexperienced the Rams are, particularly behind the typical starters.
Sean McVay had realistic expectations for his team, knowing there would be some growing pains and rookie mistakes on the field in the preseason opener. So when he was asked after the 34-17 loss what he thought about the performance, he said it went about how he expected.
And as poorly as the Rams played in some aspects, he sees their mistakes as being “very correctable.”
“A lot of things we can learn from. A lot of guys getting their feet wet for the first time, and that’s exactly what we kind of expected,” he said. “I thought there was some positives, I thought there was some things that are very correctable that we can clean up but when you’ve got that many new things – and really, this is a good chance for us to get our ducks in a row as far as our operation on game day. We’ll look at the film, we’ll clean it up and we’ll continue to keep it moving.”
There were some encouraging signs to take away from the 17-point loss, including Stetson Bennett’s performance, Puka Nacua’s play, Tre’Vius Hodges-Tomlinson’s aggressiveness and Ethan Evans’ powerful leg.
This week will be an important one for the Rams as they get set to practice with the Raiders for two days and then face them in the second preseason game, giving the starters some more competitive situations against a different opponent.
