The Rams deserve more credit for sparingly rebuilding their defense

It’s Tuesday and we have notes…

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

To illustrate why they deserve it, let’s review how the 11 starters got there. Among the draft picks were Bobby Brown III (fourth round) 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 went to Kansas City for a year and came back.)

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

The really crazy number? Here are the totals for Monday’s start 11: $21.33 million. That’s 8.4% of the team’s 2024 salary cap, which allows seven offensive linemen to carry eight-figure cap numbers, helps the team absorb some spending missteps (Joe Noteboom, Jonah Jackson) and deal with about $35 million in dead cap.

That group, by the way, held the Vikings to 269 yards, sacked Sam Darnold nine times, kept its passer rating below 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 of them.

All in all, Darnold 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 TJ 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 beginning in Week 8.

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

The hard part comes quickly. The Vikings could franchise Darnold for somewhere between $40 million and $45 million (based on projections) and kick the can down the road a year, just 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 them to match the offers that come. Or they could just go with JJ McCarthy.

Further complicating matters is how good the team has been. They won 13 games in 2022, dealt with a flurry of injuries in ’23 and bounced back with 14 wins this year. They have a proud core of veterans who led the charge. This group will want to know that their team is doing everything they can to contend in 2025. Meanwhile, McCarthy just lost four and a half months of development time, so as good as the Vikings can be with him (and they are with him), going with McCarthy is still a projection.

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

• Speaking of earning 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 safely say not everyone would have made.

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

It also makes you wonder about the contract the Jaguars gave Walker Little. Robinson, you’ll recall, benched Little for over three years.

• Diontae Johnson’s publication in Houston is a pretty good indication of where other teams are on the former 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 having 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 kicked out in the middle of the playoffs by a team that lost Tank Dell and Stefon Diggs for the year.

Good rule of thumb: Watch out for the player Tomlin’s Steelers are done with.

• Cleveland Browns’ promotion of Tommy Rees is a good indication of the feeling in the building surrounding the team’s new offensive coordinator. Coaching tight ends and serving as pass-game coordinator in 2023, Rees proved 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 good 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 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 personnel-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 looking at the idea of ​​bringing back Alex Van Pelt to help Rees in some capacity. Van Pelt got a raw deal in New England after making a nice development out of 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 who want 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 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 news there).

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

So I could see it would work as a marriage.

• Sean McVay moved into fourth place among active coaches in playoff wins on Monday – he is 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 soon be an active coach again, has 11).

But what caught my eye looking this up is how the guy in first round, Andy Reid, is now just five wins short of the 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 shy of Belichick’s record.

• One thing I’ve heard about what teams are looking for this year in defensive coordinators — someone tough to play against.

That’s where I think the interest in Wink Martindale came from. Ex-Ravens, Denver Broncos and New York Giants DC was at Michigan last year and his scheme is all over the place (Baltimore, Los Angeles Chargers, Miami, Tennessee) across the NFL. And it’s someone who throws the kitchen sink after a misdemeanor every week.

Not a huge shocker, then, that the Atlanta Falcons and Indianapolis Colts wanted to take a look. And for the same reasons, the two also interview 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 Tuesday. Go watch the guy’s highlights. He is a monster.