Rams and Odell Beckham Jr. remain 'a work in progress'

Rams and Odell Beckham Jr. remain ‘a work in progress’

Rams head coach Sean McVay walks on the sideline.

Staff Writer

Nov. 22, 2021 7:21 PM PT

In the aftermath of two consecutive defeats, Rams coach Sean McVay spent last week looking inward — and then ahead.

McVay said Monday that he evaluated his team, got some rest, spent time with his fiancé and watched a full slate of NFL games.

All the while, he began focusing on Sunday’s game against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field.

“You don’t want to let overthinking get in the way of overcoming some of these obstacles that we have in front of us to play better football,” McVay said during a videoconference with reporters, adding, “The natural inclination is to fight the urge to feel like you need to make overarching changes, while not being naïve to the fact that we need to play better.”

An embarrassing 31-10 loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Nov. 15 dropped the Rams’ record to 7-3. But a victory over the Packers would keep them in the hunt for a favorable NFC playoff seed.

The Packers are 8-3 after Sunday’s 34-31 loss to the Minnesota Vikings.

Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, the reigning NFL most valuable player, leads a team attempting to earn the No. 1 seed for the second consecutive season. Rodgers has passed for 21 touchdowns, with four interceptions.

The Packers also feature receiver Davante Adams and running backs Aaron Jones and A.J. Dillon. Jones suffered a knee injury on Nov. 14 against the Seattle Seahawks and did not play against the Vikings. His status for Sunday’s game is to be determined.

“They’ve got the guys at the key spots that really carry the torch,” McVay said, adding that given the Packers’ success in 2019 and 2020 under coach Matt LaFleur, “you can argue that they’ve been the standard in the NFC.”

The Rams will return on Sunday to the site of last season’s divisional-round playoff defeat by the Packers.

They will attempt to recapture the form that helped them win four games in a row — albeit against weaker opponents — before losing to the Tennessee Titans and the 49ers.

McVay said that outside linebacker Leonard Floyd suffered a concussion against the 49ers but that he was “asymptomatic” and was expected to play against the Packers. Cornerback Dont’e Deayon could return from a hamstring injury, McVay said.

But for the second game in a row, most of the focus will be on how McVay melds receiver Odell Beckham Jr. into the offense.

Beckham signed with the Rams as a free agent and then practiced only once before playing against the 49ers. He caught a short pass on the first play of the game but only one other.

Afterward, Beckham said that the time afforded by the open date would enable him to “really try to learn every single thing possible,” in the Rams’ offense.

“I get to get back in the lab, and get to work and get through the playbook,” he said.

McVay said Beckham last week was “doing some stuff behind the scenes,” but he cautioned that fully implementing the three-time Pro Bowl player into the offense will remain “a work in progress,” this week and beyond.

“I think it was important for everybody to be able to get away,” he said. “And Odell was doing a great job of kind working on his own, getting himself physically ready to go. Because there was still some stuff that he was working through, just physically and getting his body feeling, you know, overall the way that he wants to, to play at the level we all know he’s capable of.

“And there’s some moving parts to that. What I didn’t want to do is immerse him in some information and then you end up adjusting and changing.”