Repeating as Super Bowl champions is incredibly difficult for any team to do, and the Los Angeles Rams are a prime example of why.
Even though the Rams had a talented team on paper, injuries ravaged the roster throughout the year. Perhaps their postseason hopes were unofficially erased when Cooper Kupp went down with a high-ankle sprain in Week 10.
Kupp was placed on IR and even though he could make it back before the end of the 2022 season, head coach Sean McVay admitted that that isn’t a likely scenario, via Stu Jackson of TheRams.com:
Rams head coach Sean McVay on Tuesday said he would be “hard-pressed” to see a scenario where wide receiver Cooper Kupp (ankle) plays again this season.
“I’ve got to be careful speaking in absolutes,” McVay said during a video conference with reporters Tuesday. “I think it would be surprising if he was able to play again. But I don’t want to say there’s a zero percent chance of that.”
While McVay didn’t completely shut down the chance Kupp returns but he cited that the timing of his injury doesn’t help his prospects:
“It’s not that anything’s been made (as far as a decision),” McVay said. “It’s really just the timing of the injury and how long it would take for him to get back to even being medically cleared to return to performance. So he’s making good progress, but to see him jumping around, and then actually be able to play NFL football, to see him have good energy on the sidelines, and then going and playing professional football with the toll that that leg takes on it with the way that he plays, I still think you’re probably anywhere between three and four weeks away, and you’re talking about less than a month of football remaining, even though we’ve got four games.”
With the Rams already eliminated from the postseason, shutting down Kupp for the remainder of the year makes the most sense. Los Angeles should be able to compete next season with a healthy roster, so making sure their top receiver is 100 percent should be their highest priority.
