LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Rams are off to their first 0-2 start to a season since before Les Snead became their general manager 12 years ago.
They're coming off their worst loss under coach Sean McVay, a 41-10 thrashing from an Arizona Cardinals team the Rams had thoroughly dominated in McVay's eight-year career.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Rams are off to their first 0-2 start to a season since before Les Snead became their general manager 12 years ago.
Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford (9) throws in the pocket against the Arizona Cardinals during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Tutu Atwell (5) makes a catch against Arizona Cardinals safety Jalen Thompson (34) during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray (1) runs out of the pocket against the Los Angeles Rams during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
Los Angeles Rams running back Kyren Williams (23) scores a touchdown against the Arizona Cardinals during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
The Rams' extensive injury problems already encompass their top two receivers, their entire offensive line and two key members of their secondary.
And now they're about to play their biggest rivals and toughest opponents in McVay's career: The powerhouse San Francisco 49ers visit SoFi Stadium on Sunday.
Outside of an injury to Matthew Stafford, who's fully healthy, it's tough to imagine a way in which the first two weeks could have gone a whole lot worse for McVay or the team he led to six winning records in his first seven seasons.
“This league, nobody cares,” McVay said. “I feel terrible for those (injured) guys, and we certainly care, but the outside world doesn’t, and the games are going to go on.”
The Rams have fallen apart just two weeks into a season that began with hopes of playoff contention, even without retired star Aaron Donald.
Instead, the Rams are struggling to field a competitive team after just two games. The whole scenario has strong echoes of the 2022 season, when McVay's team went 5-12 amid major injury woes in the worst season by a defending Super Bowl champion in NFL history.
Several of the Rams' most important players will watch Sunday's game in street clothes. The injured list now includes receivers Puka Nacua (knee) and Cooper Kupp (ankle); starting offensive linemen Steve Avila (knee), Jonah Jackson (shoulder) and Joseph Noteboom (ankle); and starting defensive backs Darious Williams (hamstring) and John Johnson (shoulder). Several other key contributors will be playing hurt, including starting offensive linemen Kevin Dotson and Rob Havenstein.
“We’ve had some unfortunate breaks,” McVay said drily. “It’s nothing like I’ve been exposed to. This is unique, but this is an opportunity for us to be what we say we want to be.”
The Rams addressed their defense in last spring's draft, and the earliest returns are promising. Snead used his top two picks on Florida State's Jared Verse and Braden Fiske, and both have been key contributors in the front seven. Verse is already a problem on the edge, with four tackles for loss, a sack and a forced fumble in his first two NFL games. Third-round safety Kam Kinchens could be up for more playing time in Johnson's absence as well.
The Rams rebuilt their offensive line in the offseason to be tough up the middle, protecting Stafford and keying their running game. With two of those interior O-line starters out and a third playing injured, that plan will have to be set aside indefinitely. No team can have a backup plan for as many injuries as the Rams are facing on the line, but their backup tackles have not been sharp. They'll count on rookie Beaux Limmer, who played every snap at center last weekend, to step up again in Jackson's absence.
Safety Quentin Lake has led the Rams in tackles in each of the first two games, although that's also a criticism of Los Angeles' poor play at the line of scrimmage, as McVay noted. The Rams have allowed 394 yards rushing already this season.
The Rams' decision to dump linebacker Ernest Jones right before the regular season for a minuscule 2026 late-round draft pick upgrade looks even weirder now that Troy Reeder and Christian Rozeboom are struggling to fill his shoes with much less ability and talent. McVay and Snead have yet to provide an explanation for why the Rams didn't just allow their leading tackler to play out his rookie contract for 2024, and Los Angeles' linebacker play has been noticeably bad.
On top of the new injuries for Kupp, Jackson and Johnson, Rams rookie kicker Joshua Karty injured his groin. McVay said that injury isn't thought to be serious.
32 — The Rams' NFL rank in total defense after allowing 426.0 yards per game this season. Everyone suspected the defense would need a complete reset after losing Donald and coordinator Raheem Morris, but rookie coordinator Chris Shula's group has been bad, even with marginally better injury luck than the offense.
The Rams will be significant underdogs against the Niners, who have won 10 of McVay's past 13 regular-season meetings with Kyle Shanahan. If they can avoid losing several more starters to injury, they'll have a chance to regroup against less daunting opponents in the following few weeks.
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Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Tyler Johnson (18) runs against the Arizona Cardinals during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford (9) throws in the pocket against the Arizona Cardinals during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Tutu Atwell (5) makes a catch against Arizona Cardinals safety Jalen Thompson (34) during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray (1) runs out of the pocket against the Los Angeles Rams during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
Los Angeles Rams running back Kyren Williams (23) scores a touchdown against the Arizona Cardinals during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
GRENADA, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi town has taken down a Confederate monument that stood on the courthouse square since 1910 — a figure that was tightly wrapped in tarps the past four years, symbolizing the community's enduring division over how to commemorate the past.
Grenada’s first Black mayor in two decades seems determined to follow through on the city’s plans to relocate the monument to other public land. A concrete slab has already been poured behind a fire station about 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) from the square.
But a new fight might be developing. A Republican lawmaker from another part of Mississippi wrote to Grenada officials saying she believes the city is violating a state law that restricts the relocation of war memorials or monuments.
The Grenada City Council voted to move the monument in 2020, weeks after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. The vote seemed timely: Mississippi legislators had just retired the last state flag in the U.S. that prominently featured the Confederate battle emblem.
The tarps went up soon after the vote, shrouding the Confederate soldier and the pedestal he stood on. But even as people complained about the eyesore, the move was delayed by tight budgets, state bureaucracy or political foot-dragging. Explanations vary, depending on who’s asked.
A new mayor and city council took office in May, prepared to take action. On Sept. 11, with little advance notice, police blocked traffic and a work crew disassembled and removed the 20-foot (6.1-meter) stone structure.
“I'm glad to see it move to a different location,” said Robin Whitfield, an artist with a studio just off Grenada's historic square. “This represents that something has changed."
Still, Whitfield, who is white, said she wishes Grenada leaders had invited the community to engage in dialogue about the symbol, to bridge the gap between those who think moving it is erasing history and those who see it as a daily reminder of white supremacy. She was among the few people watching as a crane lifted parts of the monument onto a flatbed truck.
“No one ever talked about it, other than yelling on Facebook,” Whitfield said.
Mayor Charles Latham said the monument has been “quite a divisive figure” in the town of 12,300, where about 57% of residents are Black and 40% are white.
“I understand people had family and stuff to fight and die in that war, and they should be proud of their family,” Latham said. “But you’ve got to understand that there were those who were oppressed by this, by the Confederate flag on there. There’s been a lot of hate and violence perpetrated against people of color, under the color of that flag.”
The city received permission from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to move the Confederate monument, as required. But Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes of Picayune said the fire station site is inappropriate.
“We are prepared to pursue such avenues that may be necessary to ensure that the statue is relocated to a more suitable and appropriate location,” she wrote, suggesting a Confederate cemetery closer to the courthouse square as an alternative. She said the Ladies Cemetery Association is willing to deed a parcel to the city to make it happen.
The Confederate monument in Grenada is one of hundreds in the South, most of which were dedicated during the early 20th century when groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy sought to shape the historical narrative by valorizing the Lost Cause mythology of the Civil War.
The monuments, many of them outside courthouses, came under fresh scrutiny after an avowed white supremacist who had posed with Confederate flags in photos posted online killed nine Black people inside the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Grenada's monument includes images of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and a Confederate battle flag. It was engraved with praise for “the noble men who marched neath the flag of the Stars and Bars” and “the noble women of the South," who “gave their loved ones to our country to conquer or to die for truth and right.”
A half-century after it was dedicated, the monument's symbolism figured in a voting rights march. When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders held a mass rally in downtown Grenada in June 1966, Robert Green of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference scrambled up the pedestal and planted a U.S. flag above the image of Davis.
The cemetery is a spot Latham himself had previously advocated as a new site for the monument, but he said it's too late to change now, after the city already budgeted $60,000 for the move.
“So, who's going to pay the city back for the $30,000 we've already expended to relocate this?” he said. “You should've showed up a year and a half ago, two years ago, before the city gets to this point.”
A few other Confederate monuments in Mississippi have been relocated. In July 2020, a Confederate soldier statue was moved from a prominent spot at the University of Mississippi to a Civil War cemetery in a secluded part of the Oxford campus. In May 2021, a Confederate monument featuring three soldiers was moved from outside the Lowndes County Courthouse in Columbus to another cemetery with Confederate soldiers.
Lori Chavis, a Grenada City Council member, said that since the monument was covered by tarps, “it's caused nothing but more divide in our city.”
She said she supports relocating the monument but worries about a lawsuit. She acknowledged that people probably didn't know until recently exactly where it would reappear.
“It’s tucked back in the woods, and it’s not visible from even pulling behind the fire station,” Chavis said. “And I think that’s what got some of the citizens upset."
FILE -Rep. Stacey Hobgood Wilkes, R-Picayune, asks a question from the flood of the House Chamber, Thursday, March 7, 2019, at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)
Charles Latham stands among the grave markers in the Confederate cemetery in Grenada, Miss., April 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
The sun sets on the grave markers in the Confederate cemetery in Grenada, Miss., April 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
The sun sets on the grave markers in the Confederate Cemetery in Grenada, Miss., April 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
This photo shows a site behind a fire station on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024, in Grenada, Miss., where a Confederate monument is to be relocated after it was removed from the courthouse square downtown. (AP Photo/Emily Wagster Pettus)
Lori Chavis, a city council member in Grenada, Miss., speaks Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024, about a plan to move a Confederate monument from a prominent spot in downtown to a secluded area behind a fire station. (AP Photo/Emily Wagster Pettus)
A base that had held a Confederate monument in downtown Grenada, Miss., since 1910, stands empty after a crew removed the monument, Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024.( AP Photo/Emily Wagster Pettus)
A century-old Confederate memorial statue is outlined underneath the weather-worn tarp covering the monument in Grenada, Miss., April 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Small sections of the century-old Confederate memorial marble statue are seen underneath the weather-worn tarp covering the monument in Grenada, Miss., April 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
A weather-worn tarp covers the century-old Confederate monument in Grenada, Miss., April 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Charles Latham speaks about the century-old Confederate monument in Grenada, Miss., April 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
FILE - Robert Green, a leader in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, speaks from the Confederate Memorial statue in the Grenada town square in Mississippi, June 14, 1966, after planting an American Flag above the bas relief of Confererate President Jefferson Davis. (AP Photo, File)
Charles Latham speaks near a century-old Confederate memorial statue in Grenada, Miss., April 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Pieces of a Confederate monument are secured onto a flatbed truck Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024, after a crew removed them from the spot where the monument had stood since 1910, in downtown Grenada, Miss. (AP Photo/Emily Wagster Pettus)
