Matthew Stafford Reacts To Stetson Bennett Injury News
The Los Angeles Rams are without quarterback Stetson Bennett after he was placed on the reserve/non-football injury list Wednesday.
While Bennett was never going to compete to dethrone Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford as Los Angeles' starter, it does affect the operations and the meetings within the room with one less player in the room.
"One less guy in the red jersey at practice. Got a lot of love for Stetson," Stafford said Thursday. "I appreciate him as a teammate, and Brett and I will roll with it as we go now."
Head coach Sean McVay declined to go into details about what caused Bennett to be placed on the NFI list, but said it was not related to the shoulder injury he sustained in the preseason that held him out of the Week 1 opener against the Seattle Seahawks. McVay said Bennett was dealing with something that was "bigger than" football.
"Out of respect for him and the situation, I'm going to leave all the specifics and particulars in-house," McVay said. "And I want to be able to do that out of respect for that situation, so I'm not going to really have any follow-up information or anything that I'll give in that regards."
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Bennett had won the No. 2 quarterback job over Rypien in the preseason after completing 36-of-67 passes for 347 yards, one touchdown and three interceptions. The Rams signed Rypien to the active roster Thursday.
The Rams might consider signing another quarterback to their practice squad, as Rypien's active-roster signing opened up a spot.
The NFL's rule on quarterbacks now is that teams can have three dressed out without the third counting towards the league's game-day roster list. The third serves as an emergency quarterback in case the first two get injured.
Stafford turned in one of the best performances of any quarterback in the NFL in Week 1, completing 63.2 percent of his passes for 334 yards — the third-most in the league last week — and registering the second-best QBR.
He will look to replicate that performance against the current QBR leader in San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy. The game is scheduled to kick off at 1:05 p.m. at SoFi Stadium, and will be broadcast on FOX.
