The Los Angeles Rams are signing quarterback Brett Rypien to their 53-man roster to serve as the backup to Matthew Stafford. Rypien was the backup for Stafford during the Rams’ Week 1 victory against the Seattle Seahawks with Stetson Bennett on the mend due to a shoulder injury.
Earlier this week, Bennett was placed on the reserve/non-football illness list with Sean McVay unwilling to discuss the details of the roster move out of respect to Bennett’s privacy. Rypien now takes Bennett’s place on the roster for the time being and will be the backup quarterback for the 1-0 Rams.
Rypien is in his fourth NFL season after spending his first three campaigns with the Denver Broncos serving as the backup to a number of different starters. He appeared in eight games and started three over the three seasons, including one start in 2020 and two starts behind Russell Wilson last season.
In that time, he has thrown for 778 career yards with four touchdowns and eight interceptions. At 27 years old, the Rams are hopeful that he can provide a steady hand in the case that Stafford should need a backup. But with the way their 30-13 victory over the Seahawks went, Stafford is certainly looking back to his 2021 self.
New NFL rules also state that teams can carry an emergency third quarterback on game days that do not count towards the 53-man roster. McVay opted against this for Week 1 but did not give any indication as to whether he would consider it for future weeks.
McVay keeping Bennett roster move in-house
McVay was given several opportunities to discuss the reasoning behind Bennett’s move to the NFI list. However, in order to keep Bennett’s situation private, he asked the media to move on to a new topic and avoid the question altogether.
“We’ll also place (QB) Stetson Bennett on NFI,” McVay said on Wednesday. “Out of respect for him and the situation, I’m going to leave all the specifics in particulars in-house and want to be able to do that out of respect for that situation, so not going to really have any follow-up information or anything that I’ll give in that regards after that, so you guys go ahead.”
“I really hope that you can please respect my wishes in regards to keeping that in-house,” McVay said. “I understand you have a job to do, but there’s certain things that I think are a little bit bigger and more important and out of respect for the particulars in the specifics, we want to be able to keep it in-house and that’s where I’d like to leave it please.”
