Quote
dzrams
"The Rams plan on signing recently acquired WR Brandin Cooks to an extension before the season,
according to a team source. Cooks is scheduled to earn $8.5 on the final year of his deal in 2018.
He's part of the long-term plan, which is why they traded a No. 1 for him."https://twitter.com/wyche89/status/981572940088004609The first interesting thing that jumps out at me is the Rams are already talking extension plans before the season. I don't recall them talking that way last year after the trade for Watkins.
For good reason since he was coming off of an injury. But the fact that he hadn't had as much consistent production had to play some part in their desire to wait on him.
What isn't getting talked about a lot in all of the furor of the Rams bold off season makeover are the
long term reasons why the Rams have made all of the moves they've made.
We've had posts about them acting desperate. We've had posts questioning where the fire is. Clearly, there is a short term window that they are trying to take advantage of.
The acquistions of Talib and Suh are about maximizing this short term window.
But there is a long term plan that is being executed here too. All of these moves are also about reallocating resources to position groups that McVay and Wade prioritize in their respective schemes. They are taking out prior building blocks and replacing them with others.
The trades of Quinn and AO were primarily for this purpose. Everyone jumped on the rationale that they were not scheme fits. That was the smaller part. The bigger part was something Vinny reported: they were looking to move money into position groups that the coaches felt were more important in their schemes. Snead confirmed this when he said losing AO was a sacrifice but LB is not that important to Wade whereas CB is.
It's my view that the trades for Peters and Cooks also fall into this long term plan. I firmly believe their intent is to make both foundational pieces and sign them to extensions. We've already talked about how important CBs are to Wade. On the offense side, it's pretty clear now that WRs are just as important to McVay.
What remains to be seen is the continued execution of the plan. They need to sign Cooks and Peters to extensions. But I fully understand what they're trying to do here. It's not about two years and then rebuild. It's about getting the right foundational pieces, and making the right positional groups strong to build something that can have sustained success.
