Gurley ‘more hurt’ than Rams let on

It’s not Malcolm Butler being benched, but one Super Bowl mystery may be solved.

Todd Gurley, whose usage and productivity evaporated in the playoffs to the point the MVP candidate was replaced by C.J. Anderson, might have, as suspected, been more banged up than the team let on.

Gurley sat out the final two games of the regular season with an injured left knee, then returned for the playoffs and was not on the injury report for the NFC Championship or Super Bowl. He insisted he was OK, but his numbers told another story: a combined 14 carries for 45 yards against the Saints and Patriots.

Anderson had to fill the void, and now he is explaining why.

“[Gurley] was really more hurt than what we thought,” Anderson said on FS1’s “Undisputed” on Tuesday. “The injury was a little bit more than what everybody in the building thought, including himself.”

Anderson said though Gurley never disclosed to him the injury, he believed it to be a sprained knee.

“Obviously, it’s the same knee injury he’s had before in his career,” Anderson said. “Obviously, I had surgery on my meniscus, and once you have a knee [injury], you always have a knee [injury]. So it aggravates, and he was getting a lot of touches earlier in the year — obviously, him being one of the best backs, that probably was the case.”