LA Rams rapid roster review for remainder of 2021 season

After the LA Rams mini-epidemic that sat five starters before the team took the field, the LA Rams roster feels a bit chaotic. At the end of Monday Night Football, the official website of the LA Rams listed 11 players on Injured Reserve status, plus five players on COVID-19 reserve.  The Rams were able to call up sufficient reserves for the game, but the 16-man (plus one) practice squad was reduced to just 10 players (plus one) at game time.

But by Tuesday morning, the LA Rams had 10 active players from their 53-man roster on COVID-19 reserve, one player from Injured Reserve on COVID-19 reserve, and two players from the practice squad on COVID-19 reserve. That number is now 12 active players, two IR players, and two PS players. And even now that number could grow.

That’s a huge number of players taken off the field for the Rams organization all at once, isn’t it? Well, let’s back this up for a moment. Hopefully, doing so will help make sense of all the chaos going on right now.

Rams roster remains depleted

At the moment, the LA Rams are still scheduled to host the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday, December 19, 2021, at 1:25 pm PT. Don’t expect the NFL to take any interest in rescheduling the game for now, even with the LA Rams even more short-handed than their Week 14 roster.

We had questioned the compatibility of the Rams roster with what the LA Rams wanted to do on the football field. But in Week 14, those questions were answered as the team made use of a number of key depth players to record one of the team’s greatest upset wins this season, and perhaps in Sean McVay’s tenure as head coach of the team.

Now, the team will need to be even more resourceful than ever before.  But that process of working within the constraints of available players opens the door to one of the most basic questions of professional football. Who is available now through the end of the 2021 NFL season? Perhaps the better approach is to identify the players who are not currently available and work from there.