Rams general manager Les Snead has been to the mountaintop but his vantage point at the moment might be deep in the valley as the Rams are coming off a 5-12 title defense that led to the severing of ties with significant players from a roster that won the Super Bowl just a year earlier.
Snead spoke via video conference on Wednesday, addressing his 53-man roster entering the Sept. 10 season opener and broader considerations for the Rams for the upcoming campaign.
That included responding to another NFL luminary, New England Patriots coach and GM Bill Belichick, whose comments to Boston radio station WEEI mentioned the Rams and Tampa Bay Buccaneers by name as teams that are struggling with inferior rosters now because they went all in to build a window for contention.
“Obviously he’s got a lot of wisdom. There’s definitely some truth in what he’s saying,” said Snead, who hadn’t heard the specific comments but understood the gist.
“If you do some creative things like we did with the (salary) cap, there’s no secret that, at some point, you have to, if you wanna call it, pay that debt off. But there’s always ways to maneuver within the roster, when you have younger players then you can still compete with some of that dead money,” he continued.
The Rams and Buccaneers are the NFL’s leaders in dead-cap dollars this season, but both have won a Super Bowl more recently than Belichick (albeit not more frequently: he’s been a part of eight championship-winning coaching staffs). Wednesday also marked the second straight day that the Rams dealt with a smidge of controversy, and Snead also responded briefly to comments by quarterback Matthew Stafford’s wife Kelly that there was some disconnect between the starting quarterback and some of his younger teammates.
“I don’t think Matthew has a problem connecting with his teammates,” said Snead, pointing to the intimate work environment in which Stafford has thrived as a leader.
As for the roster, the Rams announced their 15-man taxi squad, which was headlined by guard Logan Bruss, who was cut on Tuesday. Bruss was a third-round pick just a season ago but a preseason tear of his ACL and MCL cost him his rookie year. Moves between guard and tackle, among other factors, contributed to his descent down the depth chart.
“He got introduced to the NFL trying to block Aaron Donald while trying to learn a new position, that probably set him back a little bit, and then the ACL (tear),” Snead said.
“(We’ll) see what we didn’t do well, organizationally, maybe what he didn’t do well and there’s times there’s bad luck involved. In his case, it was probably the ACL (tear) setting him back and not necessarily having the reps that some of the other players may have gotten,” he added.
Snead praised Bruss’ willingness to continue working with the organization on its taxi squad and also spoke of the size, seasoning and versatility that newly acquired guard Kevin Dotson added to the Rams’ recipe. Though the Rams signed cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon and receiver Demarcus Robinson well after the fury of the free-agent period had ended and added Dotson as recently as Sunday, Snead said that with the waiver period passing, opportunities would be few and far between to improve his personnel in-season.
Snead indicated that he was comfortable with the roster, including a group of young outside linebackers that featured Michael Hoecht, who converted from defensive tackle to edge rusher last season, and three other players with one year of experience between them. Apart from eying opponents’ practice squads, signing a kicker and potentially fielding calls at the trade deadline, Snead proclaimed that the Rams were, foreseeably, done making moves until next offseason.
“We’re about to get real here, not this weekend, but the next,” Snead said.