The Rams Deserve More Credit for Frugally Rebuilding Their Defense

It’s Tuesday, and we’ve got notes …

• I don’t think enough of a hat tip’s been given to Los Angeles Rams GM Les Snead and his personnel department for the job they’ve done in replenishing the team’s defense, post-Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey. (Shout-out to first-year coordinator Chris Shula, as well.)

To illustrate why they’re deserving of that, we can go over how the 11 starters arrived there. Among the drafted, Bobby Brown III (fourth-rounder) was taken in 2021, Quentin Lake (sixth) in ‘22, Kobie Turner and Byron Young (both third) in ‘23, and Jared Verse (first) and Kam Kinchens (third) in ‘24. Omar Speights (‘24) and Christian Rozeboom (‘20) both arrived as undrafted free agents. (Rozeboom actually left for Kansas City for a year and came back.)

That leaves three guys who came in on the veteran market. Darious Williams (three years, $22.5 million) and Kam Curl (two years, $9 million) landed mid-level free agent contracts from the team in March. Williams, much like Rozeboom, was initially a free agent out of college in 2018 who went elsewhere and returned. And Ahkello Witherspoon actually was initially signed in June 2023, then spent the entire ‘24 offseason unsigned, before joining the Rams practice squad in September.

The really crazy number? Here’s the combined cap charges for Monday’s starting 11: $21.33 million. That’s 8.4% of the team’s 2024 salary cap, which allows seven offensive players to carry eight-figure cap numbers, and helps the team absorb some missteps in spending (Joe Noteboom, Jonah Jackson) and handle around $35 million in dead cap.

That group, by the way, held the Vikings to 269 yards, sacked Sam Darnold nine times, kept his passer rating under 80 (77.6) and reached the end zone (on Verse’s scoop-and-score) as many times as Minnesota’s offense did.

Pretty impressive.

• The Minnesota Vikings have a complicated decision ahead.

Darnold, on balance, had a phenomenal year. The Vikings won 14 of their first 16 games this year, with Darnold starting all of them and posting a triple-digit passer rating in 13 of them. Yes, he had Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison and T.J. Hockenson. But he also dealt with offensive line issues—the interior was shaky at points and the season-ending injury to left tackle Christian Darrisaw was felt from Week 8 on. 

Then, the past two weeks happened. Darnold posted a 55.5 passer rating against the Lions in Week 18’s NFC North title game, then was picked, lost a fumble that was returned for a touchdown and got sacked nine times in the team’s playoff ouster against the Rams.

The hard part is coming fast. The Vikings could franchise Darnold, at somewhere between $40 million and $45 million (based on projections), and kick the can down the road a year, like the Chargers did by tagging Drew Brees and keeping Philip Rivers in the bullpen in 2005. They could let him go to the market, and ask him to allow for them to match whatever offers are coming. Or they could just go with J.J. McCarthy.

Darnold's poor performance the last two weeks may complicate Minnesota's quarterback decision for next season. / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Complicating matters further is how good the team’s been. They won 13 games in 2022, dealt with a flood of injuries in ‘23 and came back with 14 wins this year. They have a proud core of veterans that led that charge. That group is going to want to know their team is doing everything it possibly can to contend in 2025. Meanwhile, McCarthy just lost four-and-a-half months of development time, so as good as the Vikings might feel about him (and they do feel great about him), going with McCarthy is still a projection.

I’ve wavered on what I think they should do. I’m still not sure. It’s a tough spot. But a good sort of tough spot, in that having too many quarterbacks is a problem a lot of other teams would love to have.

• Speaking of serving that veteran core, the Vikings did just that before the trade deadline by moving a fourth-round pick to get Cam Robinson from Jacksonville, in the wake of Darrisaw’s injury. It’s a move I can say, comfortably, not everyone would have made.

With that established, Robinson had a real tough end to the season and it’s another example of how the offensive line is one position group you can’t just “fix.”

It also makes you wonder about the contract the Jaguars gave Walker Little. Robinson, you’ll recall, kept Little on the bench for three-plus years.

• Diontae Johnson’s release in Houston is a pretty good indication of where other teams are on the ex-Steelers star—and another example of Mike Tomlin’s strength in keeping guys like that on board for as long as possible. (Remember how little you heard about Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell being problems early in their careers?)

Johnson was traded from the Panthers for peanuts, dumped by the Baltimore Ravens for non-football reasons and now has been cast off in the middle of the playoffs by a team that lost Tank Dell and Stefon Diggs for the year.

Good rule of thumb: Beware the player that Tomlin’s Steelers are finished with.

• The Cleveland Browns’ promotion of Tommy Rees is a good indication of the feeling in the building about the team’s new offensive coordinator. In coaching tight ends and serving as pass-game coordinator in 2023, Rees showed himself capable of implementing new and innovative ideas and reaching players.

There are two good signs of the impression he made. One is that Kevin Stefanski was willing to pass on Klint Kubiak, with whom he shares a great relationship. The other is that Mike Vrabel, who helped with the team’s tight ends in ’24, wanted to bring him to New England.

Now Rees, the former Notre Dame quarterback who was an OC at both his alma mater and at Alabama, gets to be part of a very important decision at the position he used to play.

I’ll be interested to see what Rees does from here staff-wise, with Mike Bloomgren already poached from Rice—where he was the head coach—to be the offensive line coach. I could see the team look at the idea of bringing Alex Van Pelt back to help Rees in some capacity. Van Pelt got a raw deal in New England after doing a nice developing Drake Maye this year and was a glue guy on Stefanski’s staff from 2020 to ‘23 before other forces drove him out last year.

• Speaking of college head coaches bailing to be assistants in pro football, I know some people have wondered what Lincoln Riley might say if an NFL team came to him with an opportunity to be an offensive coordinator.

I do think the answer would be “no” now. But maybe not in a year or two.

• Kellen Moore, to me, remains an important name in the Dallas Cowboys’ search (not that I’m breaking new ground there).

Part of the appeal of hiring Jason Garrett in 2011, to Jerry Jones, was that Garrett was his sort of pet project—a quarterback who was allowed into game-planning meetings while he was still playing and pushed up the coaching ladder by the Cowboys owners. Moore’s entrance into coaching, and quick ascent, was similar to Garrett’s.

So I could see that being a marriage that would work.

• Sean McVay moved into fourth among active coaches in playoff wins on Monday—he’s now tied with Kyle Shanahan and Mike Tomlin at eight. John Harbaugh is second with 13, and Sean Payton is third with nine (McCarthy, who could be an active coach again soon, has 11).

But what caught my eye in looking this up is how the guy in first, Andy Reid, is now just five wins short of all-time leader Bill Belichick. Belichick has 31. Reid has 26.

That means if the Chiefs win the Super Bowl, Reid will be just two short of Belichick's record.

• One thing I’ve heard on what teams are looking for this year in defensive coordinators—someone who’s hard to play against.

That’s where I think the interest in Wink Martindale has come from. The ex-Ravens, Denver Broncos and New York Giants DC was at Michigan last year, and his scheme is everywhere (Baltimore, Los Angeles Chargers, Miami, Tennessee) across the NFL. And it’s one that throws the kitchen sink at an offense every week.

Not a huge shocker, then, that the Atlanta Falcons and Indianapolis Colts wanted to take a look. And for the same reasons, those two are also interviewing ex-Cincinnati Bengals DC Lou Anarumo.

• Early favorite for my favorite guy in the draft: Penn State TE Tyler Warren, who officially joined the class on Tuesday. Go watch the guy’s highlights. He’s a monster.