I love hearing this so much. @MichaelBrockers drops a tidbit that the Rams' O has been practicing/preparing against the 6-1 D that stifled the offense last year. I'm not betting against Sean McVay and Kevin O'Connell. pic.twitter.com/RR8hCJy8uT

— Sosa K (@QBsMVP) September 10, 2020

Yeah Chuck, really out of left field. https://t.co/8ib7rzK6Zx

— Cody Johnston (@drmistercody) September 9, 2020

Takeaways From ‘Rage,’ Bob Woodward’s New Book About Trump
Mr. Woodward reveals that President Trump sought to play down the severity of the coronavirus and repeatedly denigrated the U.S. military.

link https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/us/politics/woodward-trump-rage-takeaways.html

“This is deadly stuff,” President Trump said of the coronavirus in a Feb. 7 interview with the journalist Bob Woodward for his upcoming book, “Rage.” But it was a vastly different story than he was telling the public at the time. Mr. Trump would later admit to Mr. Woodward that publicly, he “wanted to always” play down the severity of the virus.

Mr. Woodward conducted 18 interviews with the president for the book, which goes on sale next week. Mr. Trump also granted Mr. Woodward access to top officials inside the White House, revealing the inner workings of the president and his administration.

Here are five takeaways.

Mr. Trump minimized the risks of the coronavirus to the American public early in the year.
Despite knowing that the virus was “deadly” and highly contagious, he often publicly said the opposite, insisting that the virus would go away quickly.

“I wanted to always play it down,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Woodward on March 19. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

And while he was saying publicly that children were “almost immune” to the virus, he told Mr. Woodward in March: “Just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older. Young people too — plenty of young people.”

In April, as he began to urge the country to reopen, Mr. Trump told Mr. Woodward of the virus, “It’s so easily transmissible, you wouldn’t even believe it.”

Two of the president’s top officials thought he was “dangerous” and considered speaking out publicly.
Gen. Jim Mattis, Mr. Trump’s former defense secretary, is quoted describing Mr. Trump as “dangerous” and “unfit” for the presidency in a conversation with Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence at the time. Mr. Coats himself was haunted by the president’s Twitter feed and believed that Mr. Trump’s gentle approach to Russia reflected something more sinister, perhaps that Moscow had “something” on the president.

“Maybe at some point we’re going to have to stand up and speak out,” Mr. Mattis told Mr. Coats in May 2019, according to the book. “There may be a time when we have to take collective action.”

Ultimately neither official spoke out.

Mr. Trump repeatedly denigrated the U.S. military and his top generals.
Mr. Woodward quoted Mr. Trump denigrating senior American military officials to his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, during a 2017 meeting.

“They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals,” the president said.

And in a discussion with Mr. Woodward, Mr. Trump called the U.S. military “suckers” for paying extensive costs to protect South Korea. Mr. Woodward wrote that he was stunned when the president said of South Korea, “We’re defending you, we’re allowing you to exist.”

Mr. Woodward also reports that Mr. Trump chewed out Mr. Coats after a briefing with reporters about the threat that Russia presented to the nation’s elections systems. Mr. Coats had gone further than he and the president had discussed beforehand.

When asked about the pain “Black people feel in this country,” Mr. Trump was unable to express empathy.
Mr. Woodward pointed out that both he and Mr. Trump were “white, privileged” and asked if Mr. Trump was working to “understand the anger and the pain, particularly, Black people feel in this country.”

Mr. Trump replied, “No,” and added: “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.”

Mr. Woodward writes that he tried to coax the president into speaking about his understanding of race. But Mr. Trump would only say over and over that the economy had been positive for Black people before the coronavirus led to an economic crisis.

Mr. Woodward gained insight into Mr. Trump’s relationships with the leaders of North Korea and Russia.
Mr. Trump provided Mr. Woodward with the details of letters between himself and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, in which the two men fawn over each other. Mr. Kim wrote in one letter that their relationship was like a “fantasy film.”

In describing his chemistry with Mr. Kim, Mr. Trump said: “You meet a woman. In one second, you know whether or not it’s going to happen.”

Mr. Trump also complained about the various investigations into ties between his campaign and Russia, saying that they were affecting his abilities as president and his relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

“Putin said to me in a meeting, he said, it’s a shame, because I know it’s very hard for you to make a deal with us. I said, you’re right,” Mr. Trump said.

The Rams’ first injury report of 2020 is here and it comes with good news for Darrell Henderson https://t.co/r25zOYQ2re

— Cameron DaSilva (@camdasilva) September 9, 2020

From earlier on @nflnetwork @AndrewSiciliano @RamsNFL @JaredGoff16 pic.twitter.com/a92zym1Yo4

— Michael Silver (@MikeSilver) September 9, 2020

March 17 and September 9 pic.twitter.com/iPBiByjdO1

— Kyle Maskson (@KyleAMadson) September 9, 2020

PFF: CB Jalen Ramsey signs record-breaking contract with the Los Angeles Rams

By Sam Monson and Brad Spielberger

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-jalen-ramsey-signs-record-breaking-contract-with-the-los-angeles-rams

According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Los Angeles Rams and cornerback Jalen Ramsey have agreed to a five-year, $100 million extension with a maximum value of $105 million that keeps Ramsey in L.A. through the 2025 season. The deal also contains a staggering $71.2 million guaranteed at signing, which is reportedly fully guaranteed and not just guaranteed for injury.

The Ramsey extension is the latest in a long line of self-induced overpays across the NFL. When a team trades substantial draft capital for a player — in Ramsey’s case, two first-round picks were sent to the Jaguars — that player has tremendous leverage over the new organization. The way to optimize the trade-and-sign is how the Chicago Bears did it with Khalil Mack, where the extension was already agreed to as a part of the trade.

Jalen Ramsey’s new $20 million per year average is almost a 20% raise over Darius Slay, the next highest-paid cornerback. This follows the deals signed by DeAndre Hopkins, who recently secured a 24% raise over Julio Jones at wide receiver, and Laremy Tunsil, who earned a 22% raise over Philadelphia Eagles right tackle Lane Johnson earlier this offseason.

Not only did all three raise the average-per-year mark, which only means so much from a cash-flow perspective, but they also secured impressive guarantees. At the end of the day, this is great news for Ramsey as he looks to build upon his first year in Los Angeles.

Ramsey was a rare, top-five pick at cornerback and has more than lived up to the billing, immediately becoming one of the NFL’s best defensive backs. He’s always had the skill and smack-talk of a $100 million man, and now his bank account will reflect that. He is still just 26 years old as he enters his fifth NFL season, and if he has more room to grow, that could be downright terrifying for the NFC West.

Since joining the league in 2016, Ramsey is fifth in completion percentage allowed (55.5%), 10th in yards per target allowed (7.2) and fifth in passer rating allowed (76.5).

Of course, the big matchups against opponents’ No. 1 wide receiver are what matter most, and Ramsey has the best passer rating allowed (82.1) and most forced incompletions (20) of any cornerback against PFF’s 10 highest-graded wide receivers since 2016.

Jalen Ramsey: Coverage stats against notable wide receivers (2016-19, regular season only)
Opposing WR Tgts. Rec. Allowed Yds. Allowed TDs Allowed Comp. % Passer Rating Allowed
Emmanuel Sanders 8 1 3 0 12.5% 0.0
T.Y. Hilton 31 14 218 1 45.2% 66.3
Antonio Brown 16 8 201 1 50.0% 77.1
Alshon Jeffery 13 7 104 0 53.9% 80.3
DeAndre Hopkins 59 32 396 2 54.2% 86.5
Tyreek Hill 7 4 62 0 57.1% 86.6
Julio Jones 7 4 69 0 57.1% 90.8
Average passer rating allowed since 2016 = 93.2

Perhaps most importantly, cornerbacks have the highest WAR potential of any defensive position, but the big reason why their market has been suppressed is because of the instability of the cornerback position. When you find a player like Ramsey, who consistently plays at a high level and doesn’t allow his lows to be too low, his contribution to the defensive scheme is invaluable.

One final contract note, Tre’ Davious White‘s four-year, $69 million extension that was signed earlier this week ($17.25 million per year) just became one of the most team-friendly deals in the entire NFL — Bills GM Brandon Beane was very smart to lock that deal in when he did. White was drafted after Marshon Lattimore, Marlon Humphrey and Adoree’ Jackson back in 2017, so if any of these players have a strong year in 2020, they should expect an extension closer to Ramsey’s number than White’s.

Ramsey has been seen as the new prototype at cornerback since he came into the league. A player who was used all over the defense at Florida State, his skill set was seen to be most valuable as a perimeter shutdown corner. At 6-foot-1 and 208 pounds, Ramsey has the size, strength and length to battle physically with any receiver in the game, but with 4.41 speed in the 40-yard dash, he also has the wheels to live with speedsters.

We saw how quickly he was able to translate those tools to elite-level play, and in his second NFL season, he posted an overall PFF grade of 91.3 while allowing just 53.8% of the 106 targets sent his way to be caught as part of that outstanding Jacksonville defense of 2017.

From that point, Ramsey was deployed like an elite corner, often used to shadow the game’s best across the field and draw the toughest assignments in the game. When the Rams came calling to trade for an elite player, this contract was always going to materialize — they shipped multiple first-round picks to the Jaguars for a player who would change what they can do on defense, and they immediately began to use Ramsey to shadow the game’s best receivers.

In just a little more than half a season after being traded to Los Angeles, Ramsey was asked to shadow Julio Jones, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Allen Robinson II, D.K. Metcalf and Amari Cooper — he didn’t allow a touchdown or a single 100-yard performance in any one of those games.

What’s more, Ramsey’s ability to take the No. 1 weapon in an offense has a knock-on effect on the rest of the defense. Troy Hill, now freed from having to cover players who would physically overwhelm him, was able to show that he has fundamentally sound coverage skills at this level and earned a career-best overall PFF grade of 76.4, good enough to rank in the top 20 league-wide.

Ramsey’s ability to excel against a team’s best weapon can’t be overstated; it allows the team a freedom that other teams simply don’t have, and his impact goes beyond just the man he is covering on any given play.

Cornerback is one of the most volatile positions in the league in terms of year-to-year grading because of how dependent it is on the opposition you face. That old adage of the perfect pass and catch beats the perfect coverage every time is a valid truism, and so the longer the sample size you can construct for a cornerback, the better.

Over the last three years, despite drawing some of the toughest assignments in the game, Ramsey has earned an overall PFF grade of 91.0, third among outside corners behind only Stephon Gilmore and Casey Hayward Jr. He is clearly one of the game’s most dominant cornerbacks and has the ability to rival Gilmore as the most difficult cornerback to beat in all of football.

canadaram wrote:

I see Bryce Hopkins mentioned in a tweet above, but I haven’t heard/read much about his performance during camp/scrimmages. Admittedly I haven’t been giving this off-season my usual level of attention. That said, is there any word on Hopkins? I see he’s low on the depth chart, but I expected that.

The impression I got is that they like Hopkins and he’s just keeping his head down and learning to be an NFL TE. Meanwhile this year TE will be all Higbee, Everett, and Mundt. The expectation is that next year they let Everett walk and Hopkins replaces him.

Stu Jackson@StuJRams
Once CB Jalen Ramsey’s extension is officially signed, Rams defense will be anchored by him and DT Aaron Donald for at least the next five seasons (2020-24). Ramsey under contract through 2025, Donald 2024.

Lindsey Thiry@LindseyThiry
Jalen Ramey’s record-breaking contract – 5 years, $105 million – is the fourth record-breaking deal the Rams have completed since 2018.

Todd Gurley, 4 years, $60 million ($45 guaranteed)
Aaron Donald, 6 years, $135 million ($87)
Jared Goff, 4 years, $134 million ($110)