A curious thing unfolded in the Los Angeles Rams‘ secondary in their Week 1 win over the Houston Texans: Veteran cornerback Darious Williams didn’t play a single snap despite starting 11 games for L.A. a year ago. The 32-year-old didn’t even play on special teams despite being active for the game.
Instead, the Rams started Ahkello Witherspoon and Emmanuel Forbes Jr., with Cobie Durant mixed in as the third cornerback. It was odd for the Rams to effectively bench the veteran cornerback, and head coach Sean McVay didn’t offer a solid explanation, either.
Sean McVay told reporters Monday that the Rams decided to go with just a three-man rotation at cornerback because that was the game plan that made sense for the matchup. He added that the plan could change week-to-week and praised Williams for how the player handled the benching.
“Darious has done a great job. We felt like the approach was going to be with those three corners,” McVay said. “I’ve always told you guys, I look at it as we’ve got four guys that have been excellent. We felt like the three-man rotation was going to be what was best for our group as it related to approaching that game. Darious handled it like a total stud. He was ready to go if need be. I was really proud of him and how he’s practiced, how he’s responded, but that was the thought process there.”
Regardless of the why, the result worked for Chris Shula’s squad. L.A. held Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud to just 188 passing yards, zero touchdowns and one interception. Another seemingly-intercepted pass was negated by a defensive penalty.
A year ago, Williams had an interception, seven defended passes and 45 combined tackles while playing 96% of the team’s defensive snaps. Now, he’s seemingly CB4 on the depth chart after one week.
We’ll see how this plays out moving forward during the season.