Rams land Ndamukong Suh, and the rest of the NFL has a nightmare on its hands

VINCENT BONSIGNORE

link: https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/26/bonsignore-rams-land-ndamukong-suh-and-the-rest-of-the-nfl-has-a-nightmare-on-its-hands/

Now this is just getting ridiculous.

First the Rams pounced on opportunity at the start free agency to assemble the best cover corner due in the NFL by trading for All-Pro cornerbacks Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib.

And now they’ve one upped themselves on Monday by adding Ndamukong Suh, the dominating veteran defensive lineman, to play alongside Aaron Donald and form the best defensive line one-two punch in the NFL.

What’s an opposing offense to do?

With Peters and Talib suffocating wide receivers on the outside and Donald and Suh dominating upfront is rush pressure and run defense, life just got a whole lot tougher for the rest of the NFL.

And the Rams present and near future is looking decidedly bright.

If you ever wondered how powerful the lure of Los Angeles would be for the Rams, let’s just say it’s already paying off. Pair it with a winning environment and a respected leader in Sean McVay, and it’s downright lethal.

Talib had a chance to go to the Bay Area after the Broncos worked out a trade with the 49ers, but nixed that idea in favor of Los Angeles and the chance to reunite with defensive coordinator Wade Phillips.

Peters was ecstatic to land in Los Angeles, a short flight from his native Oakland, to play in a city and state he is comfortable in.

Now Suh, the biggest free agent prize remaining on the market, picked the Rams and Southern California over multiple suitors.

And let’s not forget the $2.6 billion state-of-the-art stadium being built in Inglewood.

These are attributes the Rams can sell players on, and as we’ve seen over the last three weeks, they make a difference. And they’re about to unleash a ferocious defense on the rest of the NFL as a result.

It all seemed like a preposterous dream when Suh officially hit the open market after the Miami Dolphins released him in a cost-cutting move.

The 31-year-old five-time Pro Bowler would certainly have serious suitors, and therefore price himself out of the Rams range. They had money under the cap, but pressing linebacker needs on the edge and inside after trading both Robert Quinn and Alec Ogletree. Meanwhile, Donald is due a hefty new contract and Todd Gurley and Jared Goff aren’t far behind.

Sure, the Rams were intrigued by the possibility of adding Suh. But the harsh realities of the NFL salary system, and trying to find enough room under the cap to accommodate all their young stars, made it nothing more than a pipe dream.

Or so everyone thought.

Then Suh began making his way around the league in search of a new home, stopping first in New Orleans and Tennessee for face-to-face visits, and a surprising narrative began unfolding. Suh, it seemed, wasn’t so much focused on scoring another extravagant pay day as he was locating a landing spot that would help enhance his legacy. That meant a setup conducive to winning, and an environment in which he could potentially see himself spending the remainder of his career.

After already pocketing $60 million from a historic Dolphins contract, the sense was Suh was less about the money and more about the chance to win a Super Bowl ring.

That was right in the Rams’ wheelhouse, poised as they are as an up-and-coming NFL power with Goff, Gurley, Donald and Peters as their foundation, and offering the positive culture created by 31-year-old head coach Sean McVay and a conscientious locker room. They also provided a desirable location not too far from his hometown of Portland, Ore.

And with enough money under the cap this year — and close to $100 million in space projected for 2019 — the Rams were perfectly positioned to creatively satisfy Suh’s monetary needs without sabotaging future efforts to retain their young stars.

Suh, obviously intrigued, visited with the Rams all day Tuesday at their Thousand Oaks headquarters. The original plan had Suh heading up north immediately afterward to meet with the Raiders in Oakland. But by Wednesday morning, Suh cancelled the Raiders trip in order to process everything the Rams had to offer, and consider how it stacked up with the Titans and Saints pitches.

The Rams, now all in, anxiously awaited word.

On Monday, Suh made it official by picking the Rams over the Saints and Titans.

The Rams had their man. Also Monday – league sources say Rams done due diligence in Odell Beckham Jr. in a possible trade.

And the rest of the NFL had a new nightmare on their hands.

from Barnwell’s NFL free-agency and trade grades: Every big 2018 move

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/22923804/ndamukong-suh-reaches-deal-los-angeles-rams

Monday, March 26

DT Ndamukong Suh, Rams

Grade: B+

In the end, the market really wasn’t there for Suh to come away with the sort of massive, multi-year offer he would have likely received had the Dolphins cut him at the start of free agency. Suh reportedly turned down larger offers elsewhere, and Josh Norman stands as an example of a player who became available late in the process and was still able to pick up a market-resetting contract at his position, but there wasn’t really a great fit out there for the 31-year-old Nebraska product.

Instead, Suh will just go to Los Angeles to form what surely must be the most terrifying pair of interior disruptors on one defensive line in recent memory. There were concerns about L.A.’s pass rush after the Rams traded away Robert Quinn, but Suh and Aaron Donald should be downright unblockable against the weak underbelly of NFL pass protectors, the league’s interior linemen. They’ve already sacked Russell Wilson four times and the season hasn’t even started yet.

Are there reasons to think that the pairing might not play out as well as the name value sounds? Three, I think. One is that Suh is genuinely coming off of his worst season since 2011, when he was suspended for two games — the only two he’s missed in his professional career. Suh has been able to stay remarkably healthy for an interior lineman, but he’s also played a ton of snaps by the age of 30. Since entering the league in 2010, he’s played 6,773 defensive snaps, more than any other defensive lineman in football. Just three linemen — Suh, Calais Campbell and Cameron Jordan — have topped 6,000 snaps over that span.

As a result, it has to at least be a little worrisome that Suh’s pass-rushing numbers dropped during each of his seasons in Miami:

YEAR TEAM SACKS HITS
2010 Lions 10 17
2011 Lions 4 9
2012 Lions 8 32
2013 Lions 5.5 20
2014 Lions 8.5 20
2015 Dolphins 6 20
2016 Dolphins 5 17
2017 Dolphins 4.5 12
The other issue is that teams haven’t really been able to turn two dominant interior defenders into productive pass-rushers at the same time. According to Pro Football Reference, no team has had two defensive tackles top 10 or more sacks in a season over the last 25 years. If we lower the cutoff to eight sacks, nobody has pulled that trick off since 1999. The Rams have the unquestioned top trio of defensive tackles in the game with Donald, Suh and Michael Brockers, but they’re simultaneously about as thin on the edge as anyone in football. The guys on the inside should guarantee Matt Longacre and company one-on-one matchups against tackles on virtually every snap, but the Rams would be better off if Suh was a similarly-productive 265-pound edge-rusher given the current construction of their roster.

The third concern is the least meaningful of the bunch to me, but also the most difficult to forecast. The Rams are taking risks this offseason in adding clearly-talented players who other teams were willing to cast off at distressed prices, including Suh, Aqib Talib and Marcus Peters. The argument, naturally, is that the Rams have a far more settled locker room and coaching situation with Sean McVay and Wade Phillips in charge.

Does that make sense? Sure, but things don’t always play out that way. This time last year, many folks were raving about the work Jack Del Rio had done in rebuilding the Raiders. The hottest young coach in football was Adam Gase, who had pushed the Dolphins into the playoffs in his first season in charge. One year later, Del Rio is out of a job and Gase has had to dump key contributors and rebuild his coaching staff in an attempt to fix his team’s culture.

The Rams are making wholesale changes to their defense and their locker room, and while Phillips is likely the best defensive coordinator in football, we’ll only know how that goes once those guys actually get onto the field and play alongside one another. I can’t fault the Rams for being aggressive, but aggression inherently involves risk. Maybe the Rams don’t get enough pressure off the edge to keep quarterbacks from getting outside the pocket. Perhaps Suh is toast. It’s difficult to imagine L.A. getting as much from guys like Donald and Todd Gurley as they did in 2017, if only because they were about as productive as an interior lineman and a running back can be in any given season in the modern NFL.

With that being said, though, Suh is a risk worth taking. The Rams still need to sign Donald to the stratospheric extension the reigning Defensive Player of the Year deserves, but bringing in Suh on a one-year, $14 million deal shouldn’t preclude Los Angeles from making that move. As former Giants general manager George Young put it with his Planet Theory, there are only so many big men with the athleticism to make a difference up front in the NFL on Earth, and when you get the chance to add one, you take it. While there are meaningful concerns about Suh, this is an opportunity the Rams could not — and should not — have passed up.

Agamemnon wrote:

We probably lose a comp pick in 2019. But gain it back for the year 2020 when Suh signs with another club

No. He was cut. So he doesn’t alter comp picks.

Aaron Donald pass-rushes his way to the top game grade from an interior defender in 2017

https://www.profootballfocus.com/news/pro-aaron-donald-pass-rushes-his-way-to-the-top-game-grade-from-an-interior-defender-in-2017

Los Angeles Rams interior defender Aaron Donald, PFF’s No. 1 ranked overall player this past season, earned a career-high and nearly perfect 99.7 overall season grade in 2017. Of course, Donald’s high-end consistency wasn’t without significant peaks, as he earned three of the top-five single-game grades by an interior defender in 2017, the best of which came against the Atlanta Falcons in the wild-card round of the playoffs.

Donald, despite in a losing effort, rose to the occasion in his first career playoff game. He recorded 11 total pressures and three defensive stops en route to a 98.6 overall single-game grade.

Aaron Donald

Donald dominated the Falcons’ interior offensive line from the start, as he totaled 10 of his 11 pressures through the first 30 minutes of play, tying Houston Texans’ J.J. Watt for the most first half pressures recorded in a single game in the PFF era (2006-2017). Adding to his feat, Donald needed just 20 pass-rush snaps to pick up 10 total pressures, while Watt did so on 30 pass-rush snaps in 2014.

Keeping Atlanta from making proper adjustments, Rams defensive coordinator Wade Phillips moved Donald up and down the line of scrimmage across multiple positions, allowing his best pass-rusher to attack different matchups. Donald recorded four pressures on 11 pass-rush snaps left of center and another seven on 23 pass-rush snaps right of center. Donald also took snaps inside the guards, opposite of the tackles and off the edge.

Donald’s expansive arsenal of pass-rush moves was also on full display, beating his opposition with ranges of speed, technique and physicality. He recorded five outside pressures, four inside pressures and two bullrush pressures throughout the contest.

As expected, Donald finished the game with the highest pass-rush grade (99.5) by an interior defender in 2017 with his efforts. Though overshadowed by his pass-rushing prowess, he also earned an 87.1 run-defense grade in the contest, his second-best mark of the season.

RUNNERS UP

No. 2 Kenny Clark vs. MIN (Week 6) – 95.1 overall grade

No. 3 Aaron Donald vs. SEA (Week 15) – 94.9 overall grade

No. 4 Geno Atkins vs. HST (Week 2) – 94.8 overall grade

T-No. 5 Gerald McCoy vs. MIA (Week 11) – 94.6 overall grade

T-No. 5 Aaron Donald vs. SEA (Week 5) – 94.6 overall grade

Gonzalez says:

In the salary cap world, 20 months is an eternity.That’s the amount of time that has passed since the NFL’s highest paid defensive player, Denver Broncos outside linebacker Von Miller, signed on the dotted line. It’s enough time for Miller’s contract to almost be considered obsolete as a potential comparison for Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald, the man who is eventually expected to surpass Miller with his own extension.

When it comes to Donald, the most relevant question isn’t necessarily how his contract should compare to Miller’s; it’s how many quarterbacks should rank ahead of him.

IMO Gonzalez is approaching this right. It’s not hard to see that the way 2nd contracts work in the market, Donald will be getting more than Miller, but less than the most recent highest 2nd contracts for qbs. So that’s between 19 M (way too low) and 28 M (it will be a long time before a non-qb gets a deal higher than the most recent qb signings). One difference I have with Gonzalez is that he doesn’t put it in terms of 2nd contracts. But IMO you have to do that, because 3rd and 4th contracts are much more variable. They depend a lot more on things like the health of the player and other circumstances. 2nd contracts for starting qbs set the market, because you are paying for what will be assumed to be the player’s premium years. After that, on 3rd and 4th contracts, it gets much more case by case depending on the player and his circumstances.

Anyway, this approach pretty much does away with the whole thing about “qb money.” The much more realistic view is that a non-qb won’t get more than THE MOST RECENT starting qbs who signed 2nd contracts. As was said, this year, that’s 28 M.

That’s better than the more amorphous idea that a non-qb can’t sign for “qb money.” You don’t want to put it that way because it suggests that a qb contract amount from 3 years ago sets the market for non-qbs. That’s just not how it works.(In fact, both Suh and Von Miller have already busted that idea. They signed for more than some qbs were getting at the time. But they DIDN’T sign for more than the most recent qb 2nd contracts).

It’s always the most recent qb signings involving 2nd contracts.

Being highest paid on defense might not be enough for Aaron Donald

Aaron Donald is sure to be the highest-paid defender in the league, but how will his salary compare to quarterbacks?

Alden Gonzalez

http://www.espn.com/blog/los-angeles-rams/post/_/id/38136/being-highest-paid-on-defense-might-not-be-enough-for-aaron-donald

LOS ANGELES — In the salary cap world, 20 months is an eternity.

The NFL’s Highest Paid

The top 20 players ranked by their average salary in 2018:

PLAYER AVERAGE SALARY

QB Kirk Cousins: $28M
QB Jimmy Garoppolo: $27.5M
QB Matthew Stafford: $27M
QB Derek Carr: $25.01M
QB Drew Brees: $25M
QB Andrew Luck: $24.59M
QB Alex Smith: $23.5M
QB Joe Flacco: $22.13M
QB Aaron Rodgers: $22M
QB Russell Wilson: $21.9M
QB Ben Roethlisberger: $21.85M
QB Eli Manning: $21M
QB Philip Rivers: $20.81M
QB Cam Newton: $20.76M
QB Matt Ryan: $20.75M
QB Tom Brady: $20.5M
QB Sam Bradford: $20M
QB Ryan Tannehill: $19.25M
LB Von Miller $19.08M
QB Case Keenum: $18M
Source: OverTheCap.com

That’s the amount of time that has passed since the NFL’s highest paid defensive player, Denver Broncos outside linebacker Von Miller, signed on the dotted line. It’s enough time for Miller’s contract to almost be considered obsolete as a potential comparison for Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald, the man who is eventually expected to surpass Miller with his own extension.

Since Miller’s deal, the salary cap has jumped from $155.27 million to $167 million to $177.2 million. When he signed it, Miller was the NFL’s 14th-highest-paid player. Now, heading into the 2018 season, he ranks 19th with regards to average salary.

This offseason alone, we have seen five quarterbacks — Kirk Cousins, Jimmy Garoppolo, Drew Brees, Alex Smith and Sam Bradford — sign contracts worth more than Miller’s. Two others — Matt Ryan and Aaron Rodgers — will soon agree to deals that reset the market altogether.

When it comes to Donald, the most relevant question isn’t necessarily how his contract should compare to Miller’s; it’s how many quarterbacks should rank ahead of him.

The average per year (APY) of the 18 quarterbacks ahead of Miller currently sits between $28 million and $19.25 million for 2018. If Donald signs his extension this offseason — he’s heading into the final year of his rookie contract, but the Rams and Donald’s agents have set a timeline for negotiations — his average salary will sit somewhere between that.

But where, exactly?

For comparison’s sake, we identified the last three highest-paid defensive players and looked at how many offensive players were still earning more once they signed. Information was provided by Jason Fitzgerald of OverTheCap.com.

LB Von Miller

Deal: 6 years, $19.08M APY; $70M guaranteed

Signed: July 15, 2016

Richer players: 13. QB Andrew Luck ($24.59M), QB Aaron Rodgers ($22.2M), QB Joe Flacco ($22.1M), QB Russell Wilson ($21.9M), QB Ben Roethlisberger ($21.85M), QB Eli Manning ($21M), QB Philip Rivers ($20.81M), QB Cam Newton ($20.76M), Matt Ryan ($20.75M), Tom Brady ($20.5M), Drew Brees ($20M), Kirk Cousins ($19.95M), Ryan Tannehill ($19.25M).

DT Ndamukong Suh

Deal: 6 years, $19.06M APY; $59.96M guaranteed.

Signed: March 11, 2015

Richer players: 5. Rodgers ($22.2M), Ryan ($20.75M), Flacco ($20.1M), Brees ($20M), QB Peyton Manning ($19.2M).

DE J.J. Watt

Deal: 6 years, $16.67M APY; $51.88M guaranteed.

Signed: Sept. 2, 2014

Richer players: 9. Rodgers ($22.2M), Ryan $20.75M), Flacco ($20.1M), Brees ($20M), Peyton Manning ($19.2M), QB Colin Kaepernick ($19M), QB Jay Cutler ($18.1M), QB Tony Romo ($18M), QB Matthew Stafford ($17.67M).

Suh was the NFL’s sixth-highest-paid player when he signed his contract with the Miami Dolphins, but there’s a caveat. Roethlisberger, Newton, Wilson, Rivers and Eli Manning all signed richer extensions within six months of his deal. Most of them — perhaps all of them — were anticipated during that time.

If you consider those five, Suh’s APY ranked 11th. If you take that into account, the last three highest-paid defensive players ranked, on average, 12th in APY when they signed their contracts. If Donald were to rank 12th today, he’d be averaging between $21 million and $21.85 million on a new extension. It’s an inexact science, of course. And obviously guaranteed money is a lot more significant than average salary in these instances.

Donald — reigning Defensive Player of the Year and three-time first-team All-Pro at age 26 — is the game’s best at his position by a wide margin. Maybe he gets more than the above projection. Maybe he gets less, considering he’s set to cost less than $7 million toward this year’s salary cap.

But this much seems clear: Being the game’s highest paid defensive player is no longer enough.