The Los Angeles Rams are headed into another preseason built for auditions, not box scores, and Wyatt Bowles and Brennan Presley look like two familiar names who could get another chance to matter. Sean McVay has used these games to sort through the bottom of the roster before, and he is likely to do it again with players fighting for the last active-roster spots and the best practice-squad fits.
That is why the Rams Depth Chart is drawing attention now. These preseason games are the place where LA lets the young and the unproven take the hard snaps, often against starters and rotational players from the other sideline, while the playbook stays as plain as possible. The final scores usually do not move the conversation. The auditions do.
Presley has already shown he can make the most of that stage. A year ago, he hauled in 11 of 13 passes for 164 yards and a touchdown in the preseason, and he also caught three passes for 24 yards from Dresser Winn. He worked with Stetson Bennett at quarterback, too. That kind of production would normally suggest a player has forced his way into the picture, but Presley, at 5-foot-8 and 174 pounds with a 4.46-second 40-time, is still being framed as a likely preseason name rather than a sure roster lock.
Bowles is in a similar lane. He is back for his second season in Horns after balling out in the 2025 preseason and then signing with the practice squad, which is exactly the sort of path the Rams have repeatedly used as a holding pattern for fringe players. Those snaps are not about polish for players who already have jobs. They are for the ones trying to survive the cutdown process and keep a foothold in LA.
That is the friction in every Rams preseason look. Strong numbers do not always lead to a roster place, and even a player who flashes can end up needing another year of waiting, developing and trying again. Presley’s past production makes him worth watching, but it does not change the basic equation: the next preseason chances are his chance to prove he belongs, and the final decision still sits with McVay when the roster starts to shrink.
