Why Myles Garrett injury is larger cause for concern than 4 missed games for Rams
The Rams barely had time to unpack their bruised egos from Australia before their season took another punch to the gut.Losing to the 49ers was bad enough.Losing Myles Garrett makes the recovery considerably more complicated.Days after the 49ers dismantled them, 27-7, in Melbourne, the Rams are facing an extended stretch without the pass rusher they acquired to help turn their Super Bowl ambitions into reality.Garrett is headed for arthroscopic knee surgery and injured reserve, with an absence of at least four games looming.Suddenly, a team that spent the offseason collecting reasons to believe is accumulating reasons to worry.And the biggest concern goes beyond how many games Garrett misses.What version of Garrett will the Rams get when he returns?That is the question hanging over a season that already looks considerably more challenging than the summer sales pitch suggested.Everyone can hope the procedure addresses what has been bothering Garrett, that rehabilitation goes smoothly and that he eventually resumes terrorizing opposing offensive lines.But hope doesn’t strap on shoulder pads.
It doesn’t chase down quarterbacks, command double teams or slam the door on a fourth-quarter comeback.Healthy players do.And for all the optimism the Rams might summon, this much remains true: An in-season knee surgery does not come with a guarantee that everything troubling the knee disappears once the stitches do.Recovery depends on the underlying damage and the procedure performed.Without those specifics, nobody outside Garrett’s medical team should be assigning certainty to his recovery, much less predicting when he will regain his full explosiveness.There is returning to football.Then there is returning to being Myles Garrett.The Rams invested heavily in the second outcome.Garrett’s revised contract spans five years and $208.2 million, with $37 million fully guaranteed this season and $99 million guaranteed through 2028.
That followed a trade that cost the Rams Jare...