Rams may not announce a starting QB any time soon

On Monday morning, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport tweeted that “it’s expected to be challenging for (Jared Goff) to play” on Saturday. He did not cite that there were any “sources.” He did not announce any actual news. By the safest account, Rapoport may have simply observed that Jared Goff will be less than two weeks removed from thumb surgery when the LA Rams play the Seattle Seahawks in the wild card round and that it might be a good bet to expect John Wolford.

Fair enough. I just wanted to clear that up, because these “tweeters” have a way of disguising hunches as news.

There is no news on the “Jared Goff or John Wolford?” front, but we can expect that any lack of news will complicate the gameplan for the Seahawks, Seattle head coach Pete Carroll and defensive coordinator Ken Norton. What I saw from Wolford on Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals did not necessarily merit confidence that he would be a better option to start a playoff game than an average quarterback, or that he would even be a better option to start than Goff, but he gave observers every reason to believe that he is a significantly different option than Goff.

Sean McVay ran an offensive gameplan that suited his available personnel, but that plan did not include Andrew Whitworth or Cooper Kupp, like it might get to on Saturday. What say would Whitworth and Kupp have when it comes to the quarterback who they’d like to block for or catch passes from? It’s not necessarily true that Goff is more accurate than Wolford — that’s been an ongoing issue for the quarterback who Goff protest too much — but if people are making a fuss about the relationship between Wolford and Van Jefferson, then surely we can respect the one between the starters too.

Kupp has never even been targeted by a quarterback other than Goff in his career. Robert Woods, Tyler Higbee, Gerald Everett, Josh Reynolds would of course share a similar one-track resume. I’m not even saying that Goff is the right answer; I’m simply laying out that a reasonable and rational argument could be made for Goff.

The argument for Wolford is only reasonable in the sense that he is not Goff. The argument for Wolford, absent the presence of a disappointing starter, is highly irrational.

McVay made due with what he had and he still came away with zero offensive touchdowns. Wolford’s offense made mistakes in the red zone and the Rams were lucky to be facing Chris Streveler instead of Kyler Murray or — let’s just say any quarterback not named Chris Streveler.

Which is about as “out of left field” to the rest of the country right now as the name “John Wolford.” Keep that in mind.

We ran this poll on TST once already, but I’ll do it again with 24 hours to decompress since the Rams made the playoffs. Indeed, John Wolford was at quarterback when that happened. It may not even be up to him, Goff or McVay if he is the starter on Saturday. Should Rapoport’s guess about Goff’s thumb pay off for Rapoport’s predictions, Wolford will be the starter. Is that going to put LA in the best position to win?

The lack of knowing could already be working to some degree.