If the NFL schedule-makers had a better sense of occasion, Andrew Whitworth would be playing football on his 40th birthday Sunday.

Instead, the Rams don’t play the Arizona Cardinals until Monday night, so Whitworth will mark the big four-oh on Sunday by flying to Phoenix with teammates, only a handful of whom have even reached three-oh.

No party is planned on the night before the Rams (8-4) fight for their NFC West lives against the Cardinals (10-2).

“Not that I know of,” Whitworth said Monday. “At least I’ve instructed that there be none. I don’t like to make a big to-do about it.”

But Whitworth, the four-time All-Pro left tackle who entered the NFL during the George W. Bush administration, is hardly shrugging off the birthday. You play the biggest game of your season every year. You play your first as a 40-year-old only once – and then only if you’re a rare breed.

Whitworth is older than any active NFL player except Tom Brady (44). His 231 regular-season starts, 164 for the Cincinnati Bengals and 67 for the Rams, are the third most among active players behind Brady and Ben Roethlisberger and tied with John Elway for 29th all-time.

In a light mood the morning after the Rams ended a losing streak at three games by beating the Jacksonville Jaguars, 37-7, on Sunday, Whitworth talked about young players’ reactions to seeing a literal gray-beard perform as he does.

Jaguars linebacker Damien Wilson, 28, approached Whitworth during a TV timeout Sunday at SoFi Stadium.

“He came up to me and gave me a hug and said, ‘Be honest with me. How old are you?’” Whitworth said. “I was like, ‘Uh, I’m 39 years old.’ He was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding. You’re not!’ I was like, ‘I am. I’m 39.’ He was like, ‘That’s unbelievable. Can you give me some secrets?’”

Whitworth’s advice to young players: Take care of your body, and learn to relax.

Last season, he caught Washington defensive linemen Montez Sweat, then 24, and Chase Young, then 21, talking and pointing at him during a timeout.

“‘Hey, how old are you?’” one of them yelled. “‘I’m (38).’ ‘No way!’ It blew them away to think I’m that old. Some guys are blown away to hear I played with Chad Johnson (in Cincinnati).”

In his own way, Whitworth is blown away too. The 55th overall pick out of LSU, he made his first pro start at age 25 for the Bengals blocking for Carson Palmer on Sept. 10, 2006, a 23-10 victory over the Chiefs and Trent Green.

“First couple of times you get in there, you’re just hoping you get a chance to survive in the NFL, much less play 16 years later and also play as much as I have,” Whitworth said. “It’s definitely amazing.

“Probably for me, in my career, this is one of the few weeks where there’s a lot of reflecting because it is a pretty huge deal and something that I put as a personal goal almost seven, eight years ago.”

Whitworth says he set a goal of playing until he’s 40 after he completed a difficult rehabilitation from patella surgery in 2013, and he began to see it as realistic after he signed with the Rams as a free agent in 2017.

Whitworth is under contract through 2022. After missing seven games in 2020 and one this October with separate knee injuries, he can’t be definitive about his future.

He said Monday: “For now, I feel great body-wise, and I don’t see any reason to stop unless it doesn’t work out for both sides.”

The youngest Rams starter, linebacker Ernest Jones, turned 22 in November.

“He’s amazing,” Jones said of Whitworth, ”just for him to be doing this for this long, with the amount of respect that he (receives), and he still does it with class.”

Whitworth does have some elders to get advice from. He remembered something Wayne Gretzky said over a round of golf.

“(Gretzky said), ‘Just make sure you make people tear that jersey off of you and you don’t walk away until you’re ready, because you’ll miss those moments and there’s nothing like (the) locker room you’re living in right now,’” Whitworth said.

Whitworth absorbs age jokes in that locker room.

And some come from Rams coach Sean McVay, who’s 35.

“I’m always ragging him in some sort of way,” McVay said Monday. “But I’m probably just jealous because I couldn’t do what he did.”

HEALTH DEPARTMENT

The Rams were relieved to learn center Brian Allen has only an MCL sprain in his right knee after being injured on the first play of Sunday’s game.

“That’s good news where it’s not anything where you’re immediately ruling him out for Arizona,” McVay said, indicating Allen will go day to day on returning to practice.

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This is the other knee for Allen, who missed the entire 2020 season after hurting his left knee in 2019.

McVay said cornerback Robert Rochell came out of Sunday’s game with sore ribs and probably will miss practice time.

NOTES

The Cardinals were favored over the Rams by three points as the week began. This would be the first time the Rams are underdogs since the playoffs last January. Their game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in September was a pick-’em (the Rams won), and they were slight underdogs a few days before the Nov. 28 game against the Green Bay Packers but favored by kickoff (the Rams lost). … After going through seven kickoff returners in the first 11 games, McVay indicated Brandon Powell won the job with his 65-yard return of the opening kick Sunday. McVay praised Terrell Burgess’ blocking on the play. Powell, a former Detroit Lion and Atlanta Falcon whom the Rams signed in November, would have to be moved permanently from the practice squad to the active roster. … Whitworth said he got in touch with old friend Jared Goff after the former Rams quarterback threw the winning touchdown pass in the Lions’ first victory of 2021 on Sunday. Fans at SoFi Stadium cheered when the play was shown on the video board during the Rams’ game. “I thought it was pretty cool, in our stadium, the reaction the crowd had,” Whitworth said. “I reached out to him to tell him congrats and tell him how much he’s still endeared here. Happy for him.”