LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Stetson Bennett played in 37 football games during his final three seasons at the University of Georgia.<\/p>\n
He learned to thrive under enormous pressure, and he experienced incredible highs while quarterbacking the Bulldogs to two national championships.<\/p>\n
And since he left school 3 1\/2 years ago, Bennett hasn\u2019t taken a snap in anything bigger than an NFL preseason game \u2014 but that might change this fall.<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles Rams<\/a> are sending Bennett out again as their starter in their preseason opener at Kansas City on Saturday night. Exhibition games are fun, and Bennett has generally played well in them during his four seasons with the Rams.<\/p>\n But this is one of the most successful college quarterbacks of the 21st century, one who went 29-3 as a starter for Georgia, and Bennett admits he has missed real competition.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s definitely tough,\u201d Bennett said this week. \u201cWe get into this because A, we love football, and B, we love to compete. It definitely was tough just watching out there, and not really doing anything in practice and not really doing anything on Sundays. Again, we love to compete. It has been a test of patience, a test of willpower.\u201d<\/p>\n The fourth-round pick in 2023 has yet to play in a regular-season game for the Rams, but Bennett\u2019s interminable internship finally might be ending this season.<\/p>\n With veteran Jimmy Garoppolo<\/a>\u2019s departure after the Rams drafted Ty Simpson<\/a>, Bennett became the Rams\u2019 top candidate to back up MVP Matthew Stafford<\/a> this fall. Unless the Rams sign a veteran quarterback late in the preseason, Bennett will be one snap away from leading a powerhouse NFL team with Super Bowl aspirations.<\/p>\n Bennett played in the 2023 preseason as a rookie before taking the year away to address his mental health. He returned to the Rams in 2024 and served as their third-string quarterback for the past two seasons, playing only in the preseason and rarely even getting significant practice reps.<\/p>\n He says this slow path with the Rams has taught him \u201cpatience.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was trying to do the best that I can for me, for the organization, and taking a step forward every single day,\u201d Bennett added. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to solve all the world\u2019s problems today, and it won\u2019t be tomorrow, and it probably won\u2019t be for a long time. Just keep stacking days, keep getting better, and trust that one day it will be better.\u201d<\/p>\n Bennett credits much of his perspective to quarterbacks coach Dave Ragone, who kept Bennett involved each week while Stafford and Garoppolo took care of the Rams\u2019 actual quarterbacking.<\/p>\n Even if the Rams go into the season with Bennett as their QB2, that\u2019s no guarantee he\u2019ll get important NFL action. After all, Garoppolo got a grand total of 84 snaps in the past two seasons because Stafford has missed only one full game because of an injury since 2022.<\/p>\n But Sean McVay has praised Bennett\u2019s development in training camp \u2014 and in perhaps the truest measure of McVay\u2019s opinion, the coach publicly considered holding out Bennett from this preseason game.<\/p>\n McVay traditionally doesn\u2019t allow any of his most important players to touch the field during the preseason, but the Rams likely didn\u2019t want to force Simpson to play most of the game against the Chiefs.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s doing great,\u201d McVay said of Bennett. \u201cHe really has (grown), and I\u2019ve mentioned it. … He\u2019s a playmaker. He\u2019s going to be aggressive, but not reckless. He can make some things happen off-schedule, and the way we\u2019re able to get in and out of the huddle in terms of his overall command has been significantly improved upon.\u201d<\/p>\n The Rams shocked the NFL by drafting Simpson, but he is clearly behind Bennett on the depth chart. Bennett has received the large majority of snaps during training camp, with Simpson sometimes not getting any action in team drills.<\/p>\n Simpson likely needs live snaps just as much as Bennett, however: Although he started at Alabama last year, it was Simpson\u2019s only collegiate season as a first-stringer. He played in 31 games and threw only 523 passes over his four seasons with the Crimson Tide.<\/p>\n Not many players chosen in the top half of the first round head into their rookie season with no expectation of touching the field, but the Rams currently seem content to allow Simpson to mature behind Stafford and Bennett for a full year and more.<\/p>\n \u201cCertainly it\u2019s a huge difference just from college to the NFL, and then practice to a game,\u201d Simpson said. \u201cYou don\u2019t get hit in practice, so it\u2019s going to be a whole different lifestyle \u2014 making people miss, trying to make sure you get the ball out quick. … It\u2019ll be fun this weekend to get my cleats in the ground and see how it is.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n See AP\u2019s full NFL coverage here <\/p>\n Greg Beacham, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Stetson Bennett played in 37 football games during his final three seasons at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":973309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2079],"tags":[7,1014,58,2444,2611,6,424,9],"class_list":["post-973308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-rams","tag-football","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-rams","tag-losangeles","tag-losangelesrams","tag-nfl","tag-rams","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117096209632144703","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/973309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}