St. Louis Rams 2015 Training Camp Profile: QB Austin Davis

After never attempting a regular season pass in his career and entering training camp as the third-string quarterback, Austin Davis started eight games for the St. Louis Rams last season. Another ACL tear for Sam Bradford and a Week 1 thigh injury for Shaun Hill gave Davis that opportunity, and over his first five starts he topped 300 passing  yards twice with multiple passing touchdowns three times.

The Rams traded Bradford to the Philadelphia Eagles this offseason in a trade for Nick Foles, who will take over as the team’s starting quarterback. Also in the quarterback mix for St. Louis is offseason trade acquisition Case Keenum and 2015 third-round pick (89th overall) Sean Mannion, and they will compete with Davis for the No. 2 and No. 3 spots on the depth chart.

Davis was 3-5 as the starter last year, and he showed good efficiency by completing more than 63 percent of his passes. The Rams are built around a good defense and a conservative, run-first offense, especially after using their first-round pick on Todd Gurley this year, so they ideally don’t need a quarterback to carry them to victories. That fits Davis’ profile perfectly, and he should be able to fill in fairly capably if Foles goes down to injury this year.

It’s fair to assume the Rams will keep Mannion on the 53-man roster, with the idea that he can possibly be their quarterback of the future. So the real training camp competition is probably between Davis and Keenum for one roster spot, and both guys should play a lot during the preseason. It’s hard to envision Davis or Keenum clearly looking better than the other in camp practices and preseason games, so the Rams may just choose who they are most familiar with if all things remain equal.

Davis is destined to be a career backup, and if the Rams really wanted to replace him behind Foles more serious competition than Keenum would surely have been added during the offseason. I think Davis would have to go down with an injury, or be unavoidably atrocious during training camp, to not be the Rams’ No. 2 signal caller going into the regular season.

Brad Berreman is a Senior Writer at Rant Sports.com. Follow him on Twitter.