In completely unsurprising news, the Los Angeles Rams are going to stick with the quarterback who led them to a miraculous comeback win over the Las Vegas Raiders. Sean McVay said Baker Mayfield will start the Rams’ last four games of the season after showing incredible poise and confidence in Thursday’s victory.
McVay acknowledged that John Wolford isn’t fully healthy, and the team wants him to get back to full strength, but it’ll be Mayfield starting over him and Bryce Perkins.
“Baker would give us an opportunity to run a couple different things that maybe we wouldn’t have been able to present to them defensively otherwise just because of John’s health,” McVay said of Thursday’s plan. “So we want to get him healthy. Bryce is such a pro in every sense of the word and a guy that can bring a lot of different things to the table, but those guys continue to go about their business the right way. We’ll get John healthy and we’ll get a chance to, if he stays healthy, be able to see Baker start and lead the way for the last four games of the season.”
Mayfield provided a real spark for the Rams in Week 14, replacing Wolford just three plays into the game. His debut came just two days after the Rams claimed him off waivers, but he’ll have plenty of time to prepare for his next game.
The Rams don’t play again until next Monday night against the Packers, giving him 11 days between action. McVay is looking forward to getting Mayfield into a more normal rhythm next week as the Rams prepare for Green Bay.
“I think it’ll be fun,” McVay said of the next four weeks with Mayfield. “I think you just take it a day at a time. You don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself. I think it’s good for us to kind of be able to catch our breath today. It was a quick crash course for him, but we’ll get connected, we’ll start to get a plan together for the Packers and I think we’ll just at least have a little bit more normalcy to a weekly rhythm. But you still don’t want to be naïve to the fact that there’s a lot of things that we’ve got to continue to try to be able to build on. I thought what he did last night was miraculous, but I think we just want to take it a day at a time, and it’ll be fun to be able to see what we can do with it for the last quarter of the season.”
Mayfield completed 22 of 35 passes for 230 yards and the game-winning touchdown, a beautiful throw to Van Jefferson with 9 seconds left. Expectations should be tempered after such a dramatic comeback, but it was fun to see the Rams moving the ball on offense again.
