Todd Gurley said his knee was fine, and Sean McVay agreed.
But Gurley, who received two votes for offensive player of the year, didn’t play like Gurley the past two games. He had five touches for 13 yards in the NFC Championship Game, and after McVay said he expected Gurley to play a “big role” in Super Bowl LIII, the Rams star running back had 11 touches for 34 yards.
So what gave?
“I actually think it is more of a result of the kind of opportunities he had,” McVay said. “I don’t want to [beat] a broken record, but the reality is that we didn’t get a lot of plays off in general until you kind of get into some of those known passing situations toward the end, and it seemed like we did end up having success.”
Gurley had a 13-yard run in the fourth quarter negated by a holding penalty on center John Sullivan. Instead of a first down at the New England 44, the Rams went backward, facing first-and-20 at their own 33.
“I thought the holding call was a really tough one for us,” McVay said. “We had a good drive going. Todd makes a nice cutback run on a tight zone, and then it puts us at first-and-20. Those kinds of plays seem like they continuously presented themselves throughout the night, and it never really enabled us to get in a rhythm. That was really tough.”
Gurley missed the final two regular-season games with left knee inflammation, but he hasn’t appeared on the team’s injury report the past three weeks.
“Todd is healthy, and we just didn’t really get a chance to get anybody going today offensively, and that starts with me,” McVay said.
