5 problems LA Rams must avoid in 2023’s initial roster

From the outset of the 2022 NFL season, the LA Rams’ initial 53-man roster set the team up for the challenges that lay ahead. In truth, the decisions made over where to have more than necessary depth on the team’s roster versus where the team made a conscious and deliberate call to go far too shallow created problems that would plague the team all season.

Do you like to solve mysteries? Let’s take up a whodunnit over the LA Rams’ disappointing 2022 NFL season. Injuries? Predictability? Too rigid play calling? What were the causes of the LA Rams’ plummet from first to nearly the worst in one season?

Of course, the obvious answer here is player injuries and the havoc that those roster impacts caused to the team’s offense. Without consistency on the offensive line, the team’s ability to score points became a fight rather than a steady event.

Did the initial Rams roster set the team up to fail?

But upon inspection of the LA Rams’ first official depth chart, problems already began to surface:

The LA Rams offensive line had no backup to offensive center Brian Allen. Allen would fall to injury in the first game of the season, forcing the team to move right guard Coleman Shelton to center. That would not be a problem, except that the Rams roster had already lost backup rookie right guard Logan Bruss for the season.

That is just the first set of avoidable problems that the Rams experienced in 2022. In fact, I was so alarmed at the Rams’ initial 53-man roster that I took down notes then to be used as guidelines of what not to do in 2023. So here are those guidelines of what not to do when setting up the team’s 2023 initial 53-man roster: