No one in Los Angeles is happy about the way the Rams’ season has gone. Players grew frustrated with the team’s struggles, and Sean McVay has spoken several times about how challenging it’s been to navigate the 2022 campaign after winning the Super Bowl less than a year ago.
With one game left, McVay spoke about whether this season has changed him, and while he won’t go that far, he does see it as a humbling experience – one he can certainly learn from. Personally, he views it as a “professional failure” based on what he was able to control.
“I’d like to think that you use it as a growth experience. To say that I have learned a lot of things about myself, both good and bad, I think that would be fair to say,” McVay said Wednesday. “However you want to look at it, you realize how fortunate and blessed I’ve been to be in a situation where you’re surrounded by so many good people, and we’ve been able to stay relatively healthy and that’s led to us having fairly consistent results. This year has been, in my opinion from just what I can control, professional failure. That’s been humbling, it’s been challenging. I think it’s revealed some things that maybe I wouldn’t have known about myself that you have to be able to deal with and acknowledge accordingly, but if you do it the right way, I do believe you can be stronger.”
The most difficult part about this season for the Rams was the number of injuries and turnover they experienced. In addition to losing key players in free agency and to retirement, the Rams have seen starters at almost every position go down with injuries, from Matthew Stafford to Cooper Kupp to Aaron Donald.
No team could have overcome the injuries that the Rams experienced this year, and while they still could’ve won more games when players were healthy, the crumbling offensive line made that difficult.
McVay hasn’t wavered in his confidence that the Rams will get back on track in the offseason ahead of the 2023 campaign, but that will be another challenge for this team as it looks to reclaim the success it had in the last five years.
