Rams coach confirms some starters will rest vs. 49ers

Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay confirmed that the team will likely rest some of their starters during the Week 17 game against the San Francisco 49ers. The Rams are locked into the third or fourth seed, easily the biggest “whatever” spot a team can be in.

Yes, strictly speaking, third over fourth could mean another home game, but for what it is, the Rams are locked into at least one home game in the playoffs. McVay spent time talking about the nature of resting starters, and it seems as though he’s more focused on making sure people that are dealing with lingering injuries get as healthy as possible rather than giving someone like Jared Goff a rest day

But, it is one of those deals where I think you might see us rest some guys and use this week where, you don’t ever take anything for granted, but knowing that you do have a home playoff game regardless of how things play out, this might provide an opportunity for us to get some guys healthy unless it’s one of those games where you had to go play to win the division this week. So, that’s a luxury that we want to try to take advantage of and everything that we did is what we think is best for our football team and while we do want to give ourselves a chance to compete to go win this football game against a tough 49ers team that’s rolling, we also know that we have a chance to play for a championship and get into the playoffs and that’s something that we’re also very mindful of as well.

McVay continued and talked about the nature of sitting core guys like offensive linemen, and how that gets tricky due to the way it could potentially impact someone like Goff or running back Todd Gurley. Imagine if Joe Staley were dealing with a nagging injury — it would be difficult to consider sitting just him and leaving Jimmy Garoppolo to deal with whoever at left tackle.

If you’re interested in which way the Rams might ultimately go with this, they spent a lot of time talking about it over at Turf Show Times. I personally would expect the Rams play most of their starters for a quarter or two, but I can see them resting some key players early.