WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. — The Rams concluded their second joint practice on Thursday, the first of which last week was against the Cowboys and this week against the Saints. After Tuesday's joint practice between the Cowboys and Saints, Thursday's between the Rams and Saints was slightly shorter than originally planned, but was still productive overall, according to head coach Sean McVay.

McVay shared his thoughts on how he felt the joint practice went and what went into the allocation of reps for quarterbacks Stetson Bennett IV and Ty Simpson.

"It was really important for us to be able to get the 45 plays with the ones, 25 plays with the twos, two good special teams periods, and we were able to do that. So, very appreciative of that. I thought it was good competitive work on both sides, and we got something out of it. We'll look forward to diving into the tape." - McVay

McVay said that the original plan to do "48 plays in a team period and a two-minute (drill) with our first group," but it was ultimately shortened to the 45 plays. Despite the slightly shortened practice than was planned, McVay was "just grateful for the work and appreciative that (Saints head coach) Kellen Moore) and his guys made it work."

Due to the Saints already practicing with the Cowboys on Tuesday, McVay said that he understood "they had just gotten a lot of work on that Tuesday" and "they had some guys that were a little bit banged up."

McVay was also simply pleased with the fact that this was a time to go against a different look on offense and defense. McVay argued that the point of the joint practices against the Cowboys and Saints is "most importantly, we've been going against each other for what feels like a while now, so to see some different schemes really in all three phases is beneficial."

Traditionally, and through the first game of this years preseason, the Rams choose to sit many starting and rotational players during the preseason. So any practice time for the first team against another opponent is "important, especially because of the way that we approached the preseason, and was very pleased with our players," McVay said.

"(The second-team offense) had 25 reps. Stetson took 13 of them. Ty took 12 of them. (Associate coordinator/quarterbacks coach) Dave (Ragone) and I, and the rest of the coaching staff will sit down and figure out how we want to approach the game once we're able to look at the film." - McVay

In the last joint practice with the Cowboys, Bennett received the vast majority of the reps on the second-team offense, and this time around they were nearly 50/50. McVay explained that the decision behind nearly splitting the reps evenly between Bennet and Simpson "was really exclusively just because there was so many less reps."

McVay said earlier in the week that he would take into account how Bennett and Simpson performed in practice on Tuesday and the joint practice on Thursday to evaluate the allocation of reps in the second preseason game against the Saints. He emphasized that once they watch the film, they will make a decision.

Despite McVay's philosophy of playing as seemingly few key contributors and role players in the preseason as possible, Bennett played the first quarter against the Chiefs last weekend. The reasoning behind that move is because of his lack of regular-season snaps, not taking a single one in his career this far. So "you want to just get a consistent body of work for him to be able to run our offense, and I think some of the things that his game can really come to life might not necessarily be felt in these practice settings, because he's got those legs where he can really be able to create off schedule," McVay said.

Ultimately, using both quarterbacks in the joint practice and the first preseason game was to "get a fair opportunity for those guys to run the offense with enough snaps," for both Bennett and Simpson. And for Bennett, "more than anything, it's just playing real live football for a guy that hasn't played a lot of it other than preseason games," McVay said.