No one will remember the play itself, amid everything that happened on Thursday night at SoFi Stadium. But the third-and-10 that Baker Mayfield faced from the Raiders 30-yard line with 3:44 left in third quarter may have best illustrated exactly what the Rams team he joined in California less than 48 hours earlier was up against, and just how they overcame all of it.
In the huddle, the Amazon cameras caught Mayfield flipping open the notecards tucked into his wristband, and reading a play off to his teammates. He then lined up in the shotgun, took the snap, hesitated a beat and snapped off to Tutu Atwell, with a tunnel screen set up for the diminutive receiver. Atwell cut back against the grain and shot through the heart of the Raiders defense for 14 yards to set up first-and-10 at the Raiders’ 16.
O.K., the first thing you need to know is the result of the play: It was called back, with a holding flag thrown on right tackle Rob Havenstein. The penalty put the Rams in in third-and-16, and then an eight-yard gain on a throw to Brycen Hopkins was wiped out by a personal foul that move the ball back, for fourth down, to the 43. Matt Gay wound up missing a 61-yard field to give the ball back to the Raiders, who were up 13–3.
So that’s indicative of how, yes, much of the night was hard for Mayfield & Co.
And the second thing you need to know? It was the play Sean McVay called off the wristbands for Mayfield all night.
Now, for those who don’t know, quarterback wristbands are, more or less, cheatsheets for a signal-caller. They smooth out the communication of a play call, allowing the quarterback to read the call off his arm, as he’s processing everything else around and in front of him. Which is to say, in any sort of fire-drill situation, like this seemed to be, they’d be vital to get a new quarterback in a spot to function in and run an offense.
One more time—McVay only used it on Thursday night, and it was on a play that wasn’t even among the 58 that Mayfield that played that counted on the stat sheet. So, because of Mayfield, a seemingly disastrous situation wasn’t quite as hard as it should’ve been.
“Yeah, first half, there was something wrong with the headset in my helmet, so it wasn't loud at all and I couldn’t hear,” Mayfield says, when I asked about the wristbands. “They switched it out at halftime, so that definitely helped after that. But yeah, it might've been one or two plays that he actually called on the wristband. Other than that, yeah, he’d said, ‘F— it’ to the wristband.”
Of course, McVay’s not saying unless he can trust the quarterback to operate without it. And Mayfield, somehow, some way, earned that trust in about 44 hours.
The result of it was, somehow, some way, the beaten-up Rams’ first win since mid-October.
