LA Rams injured players can have huge impact on 2022 season success

Even as the 2021 NFL season has ended, and the LA Rams training camp is about to begin, how can we possibly ignore the devastating impact to this team of losing so many players for significant periods of time, or even for the entire season itself? Those players had fought to earn a role contributing on offense, defense, or special teams. Some were lost for the season, others lost for critical periods, and some found ways to play through the pain all year long.

The fact is that a 17-game regular season is going to decimate the original 53-man roster. And that is not where we want to take this story. But if you check where the LA Rams‘ injuries occurred, you will notice quite a disturbing pattern:

2021 DB injuries – four
2021/22 RB injuries – five
2021 WR injuries – 3.5
2021 OLB Injuries – three
2021 TE Injuries – 3.5

Rams Roster: The Purple Hearts club

That works out to 19 injuries over five positions. Who, pray tell, is on this list?  You’d . . . ahem . . . better sit down for this one. I didn’t dive too deeply into the LA Rams’ banged-up 2021 roster (plus the untimely injury to rookie RB Kyren Williams), so I may have missed a few. But the draft numbers come in at 21 players injured in 2021. Of course, some players were able to play through a season of pain.

There was almost no significant media coverage of the LA Rams roster status. That was especially surprising in light of the fact that media day for both participating teams oftentimes goes as far as discussing whether a hotdog is a sandwich, ketchup, or mustard on a hamburger, or whether a particular player is a dog, cat, or another pet type of person.

But when the media covered the LA Rams, the news topics were about the team adding OLB Von Miller, WR Odell Beckham Jr., and RB Sony Michel, and almost nothing about the various injuries to key players throughout the season that warranted front office action.