LA Rams: Matthew Stafford, zip, injuries, birds and QBees

The life of an NFL general manager is like trying to make a living by predicting the weather without satellite imagery or doppler radar. The only difference? If you get it wrong too severely, or if you get it wrong too often, you are canned without warning, Nobody thanks a weather forecaster for an accurate prediction. But get it wrong, and watch the vitriol fly.  Oh, and one other thing. NFL GMs do not get to bask in predicting anything tomorrow. Rather, their forecasts run anywhere from one to five years into the future.

The LA Rams may have some flaws in their current planning.

Let’s not rush to too many conclusions. I realize that you will read and interpret what you read in your own way. But this is not a call to take anyone out behind the woodshed. Rather, it is a stop-look-and-listen effort. In an operating room, all medical professionals can pause events (unless such pause creates an undue risk to the patient) by uttering the phrase “I have a concern”.  Once uttered, the surgical team is obligated to pause and confirm the correct patient is having the correct procedure on the correct area.  Better to measure twice, and only cut once.

So let me be clear. Training camp is already underway. The LA Rams are getting good mileage out of backup quarterback John Wolford. Still. “I have a concern.”

This is not a call to fire anyone, nor am I calling the team to reinvent the wheel. The LA Rams are strapped for cash now and into 2022. They are limited as to draft picks, and I’m quite certain that the front office has been working non-stop scanning waiver wires and digesting data from coaches about the status of the team. But from the moment that the team traded away a young Jared Goff for a seasoned veteran Matthew Stafford, everything changed.

Good enough is no longer good enough. Deep enough is no longer automatically deep enough. And that means that fact that John Wolford was good enough to back up Jared Goff in 2020 does not automatically mean that the guy is good enough to back up Matthew Stafford in 2021. Perhaps he will do, perhaps not.  Let’s think this one through.