LA Rams Week 15 moved to Tuesday, 29 Rams on COVID-19 list

The LA Rams are in no shape to play a football game and the NFL has agreed. Why? No, not because the team has a handful of players on their Reserve/COVID-19 list. Lest anyone forget, the Rams been there, done that, got the tee-shirt with a rather significant upset win over the Arizona Cardinals on the road.

The NFL established a roster limit of 53 active players on a team roster to carry the team through 17 NFL games. As of the morning of Saturday, December 18, 2021, the LA Rams have just 33 players on their active roster. And due to 4 more names being added to the team’s Reserve/COVID-19 list, the organization is not at 29 players on Reserve/COVID-19.

Despite the outcries of Seattle Seahawks fans who claim that their team has ‘done nothing wrong,’ on social media, this was, is, and never will be about right-versus-wrong. You see, the NFL agreed in July 2021 to ensure that the league would do everything possible to minimize the competitive and economic burden on both teams impacted by a spike in COVID-19 related cases due to vaccinated players.

NFL planned to reschedule if COVID spiked

Those criteria were surely met by an LA Rams team with nearly one-half of the team on Reserve/COVID-19 over the past six days. Since the NFL had to act to preserve player safety and the integrity of the game itself, the league did exactly that. Yesterday, NFL reporter Adam Schefter reported that the LA Rams game had been rescheduled to Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Now the question is, will it help? That remains the tricky part. You see, the first player to go on the Reserve/COVID-19 list was running back Darrell Henderson, whose assignment was reported on December 11, 2021. As of December 18, no players have been removed from the team’s Reserve/COVID-19 list.

If you think that the LA Rams got away with something, think again. The revised schedule has simply compressed what was once two very winnable games for the LA Rams into a logistical nightmare. Not only must the Rams compete on Tuesday, but must then instantly prepare to travel across the country to Minnesota to face their Week 16 opponent 114 hours later.

Rams revised remaining schedule

Okay, let’s break down what the remaining 2021 NFL schedule looks like for the Rams at this point:

Tuesday, Dec. 21, 4:00 pm PT: Week 15 vs. Seattle (5-8)
Sunday, Dec. 26, 10:00 am PT: Week 16: @ Minnesota (6-7)
Sunday, Jan. 2, 1:25 pm PT: Week 17: @ Baltimore (8-5)
Sunday, Jan. 9, 1:25 pm PT: Week 18: San Francisco (7-6)

In the end, the Rams will play four NFL games that run through both the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, in the next 20 days. And all four games are incredibly important to the LA Rams’ chances at earning a playoff berth.

Now, all of this gets rolled into the fact that the LA Rams roster continues to practice remotely, that the team has been getting no live-action training or prep time, and the team remains a group of players who have been trying to build chemistry and cohesion at the end of the season. By no means has this reschedule aided the Rams’ chances of victory. It has simply ensured that the team has a better chance of fielding a more competitive team, Why is that important? Because it’s the integrity of the NFL as a whole that is at stake right now.

By postponing games, the NFL did what it had to do. Now, the LA Rams must get healthy enough to do what they must do, too.