Todd Gurley's knee injury was worse than Rams thought

The Los Angeles Rams were put in an extremely difficult position at the end of the 2018 season. Todd Gurley was injured in the knee, Malcolm Brown was already on the injured list and John Kelly had not yet shown enough points to win a heavy workload.

While Gurley was unsure for the 16th week, the Rams signed C.J. Anderson after surprisingly cutting Pharoh Cooper. Until the morning of their 16th week match against the Cardinals, Sean McVay was waiting for Gurley to play, but he was rendered inactive, leaving the reins to Anderson.

Gurley also missed the season finale, perhaps because his knee injury was worse than expected. Anderson spoke on various topics about Fox Sports 1's "Undisputed" on Tuesday, including Gurley's knee.

Skip Bayless asked Anderson, "How bad was Todd when you got there?

"He was hurt more than we thought," said Anderson. "The injury was a little more than everyone thought in the building, including himself."

Bayless asked if he would call it "sprained knee" and, although Anderson said Gurley had not told him what the injury was, he said that was it.

"Yeah, he never told me, it was hard, I would say sprained knee," said Anderson. "It's obviously the same knee injury that he suffered in Obviously, I had a meniscus operation and once you have a knee, you still have one knee.That makes it worse and has had a lot of contacts earlier in the day. year – obviously, he's one of the best backs, that was probably the case. "

McVay and the Rams call it knee inflammation, which can be a persistent problem and the result of a heavy workload that Gurley has suffered in the last two years. No player in the NFL has touched as many players as he has since the beginning of 2017, so he hurt the two previous seasons.

The Rams insisted he was in good health for the playoffs, but he only got 14 races in the conference and Super Bowl combined, which led many to speculate on the McVay plan. Anderson shed light on what he knew about the situation, telling Bayless that he was going to put the back seat in Gurley if that was the approach L.A wanted to take against the Saints.

"When we came in, we knew we were going to use both of us," Anderson said. "Now, I do not think it was a tricky thing, it was more like it was up front. I was receptive to saying, "If Todd wants to go, he wants to go." And it suited me. Obviously, he has managed 21 touchdowns this year. What he has done in the league since his arrival has been great. So, it looked more like: 'CJ, we're going to play against you, but if our guy wants the ball and he wants to go there and he wants to do that, then we're going to roll with 30 & # 39; and that was in agreement with me. "

Anderson seemed to want to help the team, but the Rams needed him, which shows how unselfish he is. But based on his comments, it seems that Gurley was not in perfect health.

According to him, Gurley could have gotten the majority of the keys if he wanted to, but he might not feel 100% and could not handle his typical workload.

Whatever the case may be, this situation remains a mystery to which we will never be able to get answers.