THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – Rams head coach Sean McVay held a video conference with local media Sunday afternoon, providing an injury update on wide receiver Cooper Kupp, final thoughts on Saturday night's preseason opener against the Chargers, and the possibility of the Rams signing a veteran interior defensive lineman or outside linebacker.
More on those top takeaways below:
Broncos practices more realistic goal for Kupp's return
As the Rams navigate a timetable for Kupp's return from a hamstring injury, McVay indicated that Kupp probably will not participate in this week's joint practices with the Raiders.
"I don't (have clarity) on that yet," said McVay, who had been meeting with Rams coaches and had not yet had the chance to meet with the team's medical staff prior to speaking with reporters on a video conference Sunday afternoon. "I would say it's more likely than not, but I don't have any clarity on that. Once I talk to (Vice President, Sports Medicine and Performance) Reggie (Scott), I'll have a better idea. I would think Denver's probably a more realistic goal."
By Denver, McVay was referring to joint practices with the Broncos that will take place there the week of Aug. 21.
Kupp sustained the hamstring injury in Los Angeles' Aug. 1 training camp practice and has not practiced since.
"He's feeling good and making good progress, but I don't know if we'll have him go this week," McVay said.
Not ruling out adding experienced interior defensive lineman or outside linebacker, but evaluation process of young players and cap space factors
The Rams are not going to let one preseason game determine whether they need to add experience to their young defensive line or outside linebacker rotations.
"I think you want to continue to evaluate," McVay said. "But I think like what you've seen with some of these other additions, whether it's an Ahkello Witherspoon, whether it's a Demarcus Robinson, Royce Freeman, even bringing John Johnson back, those are things that we're always monitoring. I think it's a little bit harder to evaluate some of those guys on the interior parts until you get into some of these game settings, and so there was a lot of things that came out of last night that we can really do a good job of communicating and emphasizing some of the areas of improvement. And it's not exclusive to one guy, but it's kind of a collaborative effort."
McVay said there a lot of players who are continuing to "learn on the fly," which is not something he wanted to use as an excuse, but emphasized continuing to use the evaluation process with the upcoming joint practices and the two remaining preseason games.
"If there's a guy out there that we feel like fits based on our cash and cap, kind of some of the restrictions there, I would definitely say, you never say never," McVay said. "But those are hard things to be able to find, especially as it relates to those positions."
Preseason opener small part of eval process for quarterback and other positions
The first preseason game will also not influence the way the Rams approach the quarterback position with their remaining two.
Brett Rypien played the first three offensive series Saturday night before rookie Stetson Bennett took over for the rest of the game.
"We'll just continue to evaluate it one day at a time," McVay said. "You know, there's gonna be a lot of situations in the next week. Tomorrow we'll have a good practice, get two opportunities against the Raiders in what's going to be a lot of good competitive work. So I think it was the first preseason game, it was one of the things that goes into our evaluation process, but it's certainly not the end-all, be-all. We'll continue to just kind of use it as part of that process, but it's an ongoing evaluation and it's not exclusive to the quarterbacks, it's really for our whole team."
