Josaiah Stewart's Résumé Has One Glaring Blank Line. The Rams Are About to Fill It In.
The depth chart at defensive end lists exactly one name with any claim to a starting role, and it belongs to a player who has never started an NFL game. That is the actual state of the Los Angeles Rams' pass rush right now — not a concern, not a depth question, but a hard structural fact sitting at the top of their formation.
I've spent two pieces this week working through what Myles Garrett's absence costs this team and what Josaiah Stewart's profile suggests he can become. The piece I haven't written yet is the one that confronts the gap between those two things directly. Because the Rams aren't just asking Stewart to step up — they're asking him to do something in 2026 that he has never done at any level of professional football. Starting is a different job than rotating. The margin for error is different. The preparation is different. Opposing offensive coordinators game-plan for starters. They don't game-plan for rotational contributors. That changes on Sunday, and the Rams have no choice but to find out how Stewart handles it.
What makes this particularly uncomfortable is the context those numbers sit inside. Braden Fiske — the interior anchor of this defensive line — posted five sacks last season, which matters here because it tells you where the Rams' pass rush production was actually concentrated. Fiske is the most proven disruptor on this front. Stewart, by contrast, enters his first start with the entire burden of the edge now on his shoulders, and the Rams' track record in close games last season — four wins in nine decisions when the margin was a possession or less — tells you exactly how little room this defense has to be average. When games tighten, this team has historically cracked. A pass rush that can't generate consistent pressure in the fourth quarter is a fast path back to that same 44% close-game win rate.
My read is that Stewart has the athleticism to survive this transition. What I don't know — what nobody knows yet — is whether he has the stamina, the preparation, and the mental adjustment to play 60 snaps instead of 25. Those are not the same player. The Rams are betting their defensive identity on the answer being yes, and they're doing it with no safety net behind him on the depth chart. This is the part of the Garrett surgery that the injury report couldn't capture: it didn't just remove a player, it removed the entire architecture of accountability that makes a rotational edge rusher comfortable in his role. Stewart was good because he didn't have to be great. Now he has to be great.
The Rams built something real last season — 12 wins, a point differential that suggested genuine quality, a quarterback playing at a level that should carry a team deep into January. But the wild-card exit wasn't an accident. It was the product of a team that couldn't execute when execution was the only thing left. Replacing Myles Garrett with a first-time starter doesn't fix that tendency. It stress-tests it, in the worst possible way, at the worst possible time.