It has been a difficult week for the secondary of the Los Angeles Rams. First, Derion Kendrick suffered a torn ACL and is expected to miss the entirety of the 2024 season. Then, Darious Williams suffered a strained hamstring, leaving head coach Sean McVay to scramble and find a backup option in the form of Jerry Jacobs.
Hamstring strains are typically tricky injuries, as recovery times can be wide-ranging and re-injury risks are high if a player returns too soon. And while the Rams would love to have Williams back with the starters as soon as possible, they have to think of the long-term as they are a team with postseason aspirations.
Because of that, McVay and the Rams have no plans to rush Williams back, knowing that there is still a long way to go before the season starts and that L.A. cannot afford to lose him for the season as well, according to Stu Jackson of TheRams.com:
“When you’re talking about those types of positions, it can be really tricky,” McVay said after Saturday’s practice. “We are definitely not going to rush him back. Here’s the good thing, we’re about 40-plus days out from being able to play Detroit; when he did it, it was 44 days. So a little over six weeks, and so that’s a good thing, but hopefully we’ll just take it a little bit at a time. I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves, because you get an idea once you start to really get into some of the rehab processes, how is he feeling, you get him out on the grass being able to run, but in the meantime we will be smart with him.”
Williams’ injury occurred with just over six weeks to go until the first game of the season against the Detroit Lions on Sunday, Sep. 8. Hamstring injuries can absolutely be dealt with in a six-week window, but could also take closer to 8-10 weeks depending on the severity of the strain.
But the Rams would rather Williams miss a couple of games on the front end of the schedule than rush him back and run a higher risk of him missing games on the back end of the schedule. They took a similar approach with Cooper Kupp’s hamstring injury last training camp, placing him on injured reserve to begin the season to ensure he would not rush back.
Rams place Derion Kendrick on IR
The Rams announced they placed defensive back Derion Kendrick on the injured reserve list after he tore his ACL in training camp.
Kendrick suffered the injury during the Rams’ Wednesday practice and will miss the 2024 season. He is scheduled to go undergo surgery to repair his ACL in a few weeks.
